Queries and Answers. 121 



powerful pen of Mr, Main, and arrest the attention of other able horticul- 

 turists, who would reflect and throw new light upon each other's ideas as 

 to the motion of sap. Yours, truly. — A. S. sen. May, 1830. 



The Strawberry Wall. — In your Magazine (Vol. V. p. 438.) is an 

 excellent plan for growing strawberries clean and high flavoured. Plain 

 tiles, with the corners chopped off" to let the plants through, I consider less 

 costly than stone, at least in the south. In Vol. V. p. 581. you give us a 

 description of Westdean House and garden ; I regret you did not treat 

 us with an account of the parapets and garden wall copings of cement, 

 and how they have stood the weather. — Id. 



Tysu's Method of raising Ranunculuses. — If the system there pointed 

 out were to be generally followed, a most splendid addition might confi- 

 dently be expected ere long to the present stock, there being no limits to 

 its varieties. Mr. T3'so does not, however, follow up the system to the 

 perfection of which it is capable. He states that it is necessary to have a 

 bed of seinidoubles, as double flowers produce no anthers. Now, double 

 ranunculuses (at least flowers as double as any that produce pericardiums, 

 perfect doubles [)roducing neither the one nor the other) do not unfre- 

 quently produce anthers, although in very limited numbers. In the sum- 

 mer of 1829 I succeeded in obtaining the finest well-filled seed frojn Thom- 

 son's Queen, impregnated by a flower as double as itself; and last sunnner 

 I had additional proof of the anthers of such flowers being quite efhcieut 

 for the purpose, the above being the first time I ever obtained seed in 

 this way. There has not been time of course to ascertain its worth, but 

 the experiments which Mr. Tyso has so skilfully and successfully conducted 

 leave little doubt of its value. The chance of success, however, is much 

 less in impregnating by doubles than by semidoubles : because the anthers in 

 the fonner are so few, that, if the operation be not perfoi'med very soon 

 after the pollen makes its appearance, the opportunity is lost ; whereas, in 

 the latter, there is not only a much greater number, but also a succession 

 on their coming to maturity. — James Reid. Bruvejield, near Dunfermline, 

 Nov. 8. 1830. 



Coiu Cabbage. — Your correspondent M. H. is deceived in cojisidering 

 the cow cabbage or Cesarean kail to be the Anjou cabbage. A specimen 

 of the former would con\Tiice him of his error. — Bernard Saunders. 

 Nursery y Jersey, Nov. 1. 1830. 



Art. VII. Queries and Answers. 



Greenish hlack-marJicd Caterpillars on Cabbages. — In your last Number 

 (Vol. VI. p. 477.) Mr. Thomas Morgan puts a question concerning a 

 " number of minute eggs " enveloped in a silky substance, and apparently 

 produced by " the greenish and black-marked worms found on cabbages." 

 Presuming that by " the worms " described he means the caterpillars of 

 P6nti« brassicae (large garden white butterfly), which I have no doubt 

 are what he alludes to, I feel no hesitation in referring " the minute eggs " 

 to the pupae of a well-known small parasite called Microgaster glomeratus 

 (/chneumon glomeratus of Linna>us), of whose operations I extract the 

 following account I'com. Insect Transformations, p. 61, 62., where a figure 

 of the insect will be found in its tlift'erent states, together with that of the 

 caterpillar on which it preys. The insect has also already been figured in 

 "your Magazine of Natural History (vol. iii. p. 52.) under the erroneous 

 name of Platygastcr ovulorum. * " It must have occurred to the least 



* Sec Vol. HI. p. 452. 



