Tendency to Prejudice among Gardeners. 15 



Oxygen gas is so essential to germination, that any appli- 

 cation to seeds that affords it to them in abundance greatly 

 accelerates the process :' hence, M. Humboldt found that 

 chlorine, which yields abundance of that gas when in contact 

 with water, by combining with its hydrogen and setting the 

 oxygen at liberty, produced this acceleration of vegetation. 

 At Vienna several seeds, which were of considerable age, and 

 had constantly refused to germinate, did so readily v.'hen 

 treated with it. Plants raised from such seeds arc undoubt- 

 edly more weak than others raised from seed in which no such 

 extra-stimulus is required. IVIr. George Sinclair, author of 

 the excellent Hortus Grcnnineus IVobiirnensis, however, in- 

 forms me that he has employed chlorine with singular success. 

 He obtains it by mixing a table-spoonful of muriatic acid with 

 a similar quantity of black oxide of manganese, and half a pint 

 of water. After allowing the mixture to remain two or tiiree 

 hours, the seed is to be immersed in the liquid for a similar 

 period, and then sown. Another, and, I consider, the most 

 eligible mode of applying the chlorine, was also suggested to 

 me by the same distinguished horticulturist. In this way, he 

 says, he has made tropical seeds vegetate, which refused to 

 germinate by other modes of treatment. He placed the mixed 

 ingredients mentioned above in a glass retort, insertino; its 

 bulb in the hot-bed, and bringing its beak under the pot in 

 which the seeds were sown, connecting it with the draining 

 aperture of the pot. The chlorine gas is gradually evolved, 

 passing through the earth of the pot to the seeds, accordingly 

 as the heat required for the different species induces. 



Aghard and others have proved that seeds will not germi- 

 nate in any gas without a mixture of oxygen. 



{To be conlinued.) 



Art. IV. On the Tendency to Prejudice aynong Gardene7-s ; and on 

 the Importance of the Studij of Botany for crery Class of Cnlti- 

 vators. By W. D. 



Sir, 

 It is well known that, in many of the humbler professions 

 of life, a great antipathy is generally manifested to every thing 

 which bears on its face the appearance of novelty ; and this 

 prejudice is formed without any one ever taking the trouble to 

 examine whether the novelty, whatever it may be, is decidedly 

 an important one, and calculated to be of essential benefit, or 

 not. This evil spirit, for v,e can call it by no more appro- 



