Vol. 1.— No 1. 



AND GARDENER'S JOURNAL. 



Every perfect Flower is composed of seven ele- 

 mentary organs, including the seed vessels and seed, 

 and the receptacle, stem, or base on which the other 

 parts rest, and by which they are connected with 

 the plant. There are a number of other appendages 

 attached to some flowers whieh seem as if designed 

 by nature to facilitate, though not essential to, the 

 reproduction of plants ; as the nectary or part con- 

 taining honey, which seems designed, in the econo- 

 my of nature, to allure bees and other insects which 

 pass over the stamens and pistils of the plants and 

 greatly assist the fecundation of the latter. 



The seven elementary organs of a Flower arc as 

 follow, viz : 



1. Calyx.— The outer covering of the flower before 

 it is expanded : its colour is generally green. The 

 poppy affords a familiar example. 

 ■2. Curol— The coloured leaves of the flower which 



arc included in the Calyx. 

 3. Stamens.— The mealy knobs supported on the 

 ends of small fillaments ; they contain the pollen 

 of the plant. These are considered the male or- 

 gans and on their number and situation is founded 

 the artificial classification of Linnseus. 

 I. PutS. — The central organ of the flower, projec- 

 ting from the pericarp orseed-vesscl. This is con- 

 sidered the female part of the flower ; and without 

 this no flower will produce seed. 



5. Pericarp. — The vessel which contains the seed 

 whether a pood, as in the bean and cabbage, or a 

 pulpy substance, as th" apple, currant, or mellon 



6. Seed.— Containing the rudiments of the young 

 plant. 



7. Receptacle. — The stem or base on which the 

 other six parts rest, and connecting them with the 

 plant. 



The Seed is divided into four essential parts, viz : 

 1st. Corclc— The embryo of the new plant, which 



exhibits the plume or top, and the rostil or root of 



the new plant. 

 2d. Cotladojis.— The thick fleshy lobes of the seed, 



which, rising above the ground, when the seeds 



germinate, become the seed leaves. 

 3d. Tegument. — The skin or bark of seeds which 



separate from the lobes when the seeds germinate. 

 1th. Hilum. — The external scar to whieh the 



membrane is attached, by whieh the young seed 



is suspended in the receptacle, and through which 



nutriment is conveyed to the young seed in 'ts 



immature state. 



SPONTANEOUS VEGETATION. 



" And God said, let the earth bring forth grass., the 

 herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yiebting fruit, 

 after his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth ; — 

 and it was so." — Gen. 1, 11. 



Messrs. Editors. — I perceive, by the papers, 

 that you are about to publish a weekly work, devo- 

 ted to the arts of farming and gardening and other 

 branches connected therewith. Now, as 1 have a 

 little taste that way, beyond the mere "ditching and 

 hedging," appertaining to 'those pursuits, and am 

 heartily tired with the point-no-point politics of the 

 day; I am determined" to give up entirely that un 

 profitable contest, which is very justly said to be " the 

 strife of the many for the good of the few." 



I am truly glad to find the country is about to be 

 served with a paper, which, if it is as well conducted 

 as you promise and the talent of the country wai rants* 

 will be a most important desideratum, and the vehicle 

 of doing much good. 



The following remarks and speculations are sent 

 to you for the purpose r{ helping you to start, as all 

 new machines move rather hard at first ; and to so- 

 licit the opinions and suggestions of your readers and 

 correspondents. 



I ask, what is the cause of the apparent self-pro. 

 duction of many weeds and plants, and the probabil- 

 ities whether they are spontaneously produced, or 

 whether they are the produce of a former parent, 

 "yielding seed after its kind." 



It is a well known fact that, on clearing up a new 

 country, thousands of weeds, herbs, and grasses, 

 pring up almost simultaneously, as though they were 

 all sown atone time and by some invisible hand. 



There are several kinds of vegetables that only 

 seem to acquire life by fire, and the more intense the 

 greater theproduct. I have known the bird cherry 

 to come up as thick as I have ever seon flax growing 

 in the field, the seeds of which must have lain dor- 

 mant for numbers of years, until a great fire laid 

 waste the forest and revivified them into life. I 

 once saw a piece of intervale which had laid in n 

 natural pasture for more than twenty years, ploughed, 

 immediately planted to corn on the turf ; on which 

 :prung up all those common kinds of noxious weeds 

 that commonly infest the oldest cornfields. I once 

 knew a field, which, 19 years before, had borne tur- 

 nips, and subsequently had lain as pasture and mead- 

 ow, on being ploughed up, came up with turnips al- 

 most thick enough for a crop. I once came into the 

 possession of a lot of land on which was a wood- 

 vard, which had been used as such for about thirty 

 years. About 4 square rods of which was fenced 

 into the garden, from whence was t aken about 60 

 loads of chip manure. After coming to the surface 

 earth, it appeared so good and in so fine order that 

 I planted it with onions, but in a few days there arose 

 such innumerable hosts of every thing but onions, 

 that it seemed like Hamlet's " unweeded Garden, 

 things rank and gross possessed it merely." 



Again. Marl, which is dug and transported consid- 

 erable distances as a manure, is taken'put of pits 10 

 to 20 feet in depth pieces of which have been taken 

 immediately from the pit, covered with glass, kept 

 wet and exposed to light, and in a short time white 

 clover has sprung up, grown and matured itself. It 

 is a well known fact that seeds sown too deep in the 

 earth rot and will not grow; and farmers and gard- 

 ners are often disappointed, during a wet spring, par- 

 ticularly, on having to plant a second time :— In fact, 

 we know of no instance of any of our field or garden 

 eeds lying in the ground over the year and then 

 coming up. 



Now the question I demand is, Whence come all 

 of these cases of Vegetation ? Were they produced 

 naturally from the earth without seed ? Do we live 

 in a day of [miracles, when material "form, shape, 

 and comeliness," spring from nothing? Will a hun" 

 dred grains of sand, congregated together under any 

 circumstance, produce a pig-weed large enough for 

 the birds of heaven to rest upon ? Or, are they all 

 produced from seed, after its own kind, which have 

 'ain buried for 10, 30, or nan hundreds of years, be- 

 yond the reach of light or heat ? and if so, why have 

 they not shared, by decomposition, the fate of all other 

 vegetable matter ? A. B 



peach or contagion in tbo animal Bjii'.em— 

 which is analogous to appoplexy, or perhaps 

 gangrene. 



Some writers alledge that seedling trees, and 

 new seedling grafts on sebdling stock, are not 

 effected. Others that confinement in close 

 planted orchards, and want of circulation of air 

 is the cause. Others that those trees which 

 blight have a long tap root that runs deep into 

 the earth and brings up water as sap which is 

 not charged with carbonic acid and the salts 

 of the surface, and kills the tree, as taking too 

 much cold water does into the animal stomach , 

 or introducing it into an artery of a living sub- 

 ject; and another person, well skilled in these 

 matters, says that he has lost all of his trees 

 (20 or 30) in the crotches of which he has not 

 hung old scythes, sickles, chains and other 

 heavy iron articles. Now, who shall decide 

 when doctors disagree ? The conjectures are 

 as various as the minds employed in investiga- 

 ting the subject. 



The vulgar term, fire blight is in reality not 

 badly chosen — for the appearance is the very 

 same 36 1 have observed in trees that have stood 

 so near a fire as to have their leaves scorch»d 

 and the vitality of the small branches destroy- 

 ed. Such a tree, in the course of three 

 or four days, puts on exactly the same appear- 

 ance and smell as the blight. 



Now comes my hypothesis. Is not the 

 eause, the primum mobile of this destructive 

 diseaoe some defect, in the leaves, which arc 

 the lungs of the plant, and which elaborates 

 the sap and without which neither the venous 

 ncr arterial system can proceed — the rising sap 

 accumulates, stagnates, firmentalion commen- 

 ce*, heat is generated, acetous acid is formed, 

 which would produce exactly the state of things 

 wo find in the blighted tree. 



The leaves may become unhealthv by excre- 

 ting some morbid or acrid substance, or by ho- 

 ney dew. which as yet is not satisfactorily ex- 

 plained, or by some small insects destroying 

 the secreting or excreting vessels of the leaf or 

 puncturing the pettiole and desiroying the tubes 

 that carry and return the sap, at a period when 

 the tree is too far exhausted by bearing and 

 the lateness of the season to push out the new 

 bud. H Y. 



West Bloomtield, 26th 12th mo. 1830. 



FIRE BLIGHT. , 



Messrs. Emtors— I see by the papers, and 

 learn from persons from various quarters, that 

 blight, or fire blight, as it is called, is producing 

 great ravages on apple, quince, and particularly 

 on pear trees, of the grafted and best kinds, 

 which threatens total annihilation to some of 

 the finest varieties hitherto known ; and as the 

 same disease is obtaining in this country, many 

 instances of which I observed the past setson, 

 I beg leave to add my mite to the stock of con- 

 jecture, which seems to be the only advance- 

 ment that the best physiologists of the coun- 

 try have as yet been ablo to oft'er as to its cause 

 — in fact it seems to be shrouded in the most 

 impenetrable veil of mystery, and as yet has 

 eluded the closest and most critical analysis 

 of our best Horticulturists. 



It has been imputed to a redundancy ofsip, 

 a surfeit, to the too great heat of the sun, to in- 

 sects and to disease received by impregnation 

 of the blossom, analogous to the yellows in the 



Sy Those gentlemen to whom we have ta- 

 ken the liberty to forward this number, and its 

 extra, if they shall think favorably of the under- 

 taking, and of the merits of the work, will ob- 

 lige us by forwarding iheir names and those of 

 am friend to whom such a paper as this would 

 be desirable. As it is of its kind unique in this 

 state, and intended lor genera! circulation, we 

 expect to look abroad for a great part of our 

 patronage 



O 3 The proprietors have undertaken the 

 publication wi'h the determination of makiug it 

 permanent : they therefore suggest to those 

 gentlemen who would wish to see the Farmer 

 become a durable and useful paper, the propri- 

 ety of not only interesting themselves in its 

 circulation but also of contributing to its col 

 iimns. 



ACCTIONS- 



The duties paid by auctioneers in Philadel 

 phia duriog the last quarter amount to $32, 

 944.90. 



