1/6 Notes aiid Gleanings. 



ceptable, especially as, when mature in growth, it will afford welcome flowers ; 

 for it is a sport from A. striatum. It is a free-growing, nearly hardy shrub, the 

 leaves tliree times lobed, the central lobe the longest, the two side lobes having 

 sub-lobes near the base. The variegation consists of blotches, veins, and 

 spots of clear lemon-yellow, sulphur, and cream-color, on a ground of bright 

 grass-green. 



Cordia glabra {^ot. Mag., t. 5774). — A noble stove-shrub, native of Brazil. 

 It may be likened in leafage to a rhododendron, and in flowers to a smallish 

 ipomcea ; of the purest white. — Gardener'' s Magazine. 



Pure Seeds. — A calendar of farm operations in March begins thus : " It is 

 of importance that we sow only those seeds which we want to grow, and that 

 they be alive when we sow them." To the other conditions of success in plant- 

 growing, viz., the preparation of the bed for these seeds, and their proper posi- 

 tion on and under its surface, we do not now refer. It is with their purity and 

 vitality that we have now to do. 



No one has done more than Prof. Buckman to awaken the attention of farm- 

 ers to the importance of this subject. He has shown them how they suffer from 

 both carelessness and roguery in the seed-trade. How often has he not reported 

 from ten thousand to fifty thousand weed-seeds in a single pint of clover ; in a pint 

 of rye-grass seed several thousand seeds of crowfoot and of holcus, and in a pint 

 of linseed ten thousand to fifteen thousand seeds of charlock, mustard, cress, 

 &c. He has taught us also, by careful analyses, not only of seeds, but of pasture 

 lands, how this mass of weeds is not only sown, but grown. Ten years ago, in 

 a field of "seeds" at Cirencester, he dug up a square yard of clover-ground, 

 and found forty-six plants on it neither rye-grass nor clovers, which alone the 

 farmer believed he had sown. There were seven plants of plantain, eight of 

 crowfoot, two hardheads, two dandelions, one hawkbit, six of ground-ivy, four of 

 self heal, one small bindweed, one fool's-parsley, two mouse-ear, six field-madder, 

 two of couch, four of creeping bent. Several of these are flat-growing weeds, 

 occupying the surface ; such are bindweed, plantains, crowfoot, dandelion, &c. 

 Many of them are strong-rooted, and some of them creeping-rooted plants, rob- 

 bing the substance of the soil ; suc'i are couch, hardheads, crowfoot, &c. All 

 of them are interlopers, displacing useful plants whose seed nominally alone 

 was sown, and whose growth alone was desired. How came they there .'' In 

 the seed box when the field was sown, the seeds (nominally clover-seed and rye- 

 grass) with which it was filled were not "only of the kinds desired," and proba- 

 bly many of them^ were dead. The farmer does indeed himself sow most of his 

 weed pests, and they come up with his sown crops. Take the case of the clover 

 crop : eac!i weed-seed sown, first, subtracts from the sum of the clover-seeds in 

 the measure ; second, very many of the weeds grow so fast as to smother and kill 

 many of the clovers in their neighborhood ; and then, third, many of these weeds, 

 seeding in the first year, are succeeded in the following year by an immense 

 increase. These three circumstances, says Prof. Buckman, are often of them- 

 selves enough to account for so-called clover-sickness. 



In the case of the turnip, again, the farmer suffers by the admixture of char- 



