348 [Assembly 



The hot houses extend about a mile and three quarters, full of bcau- 



iful fruit trees. The flower gardens contain immense numbers and 



varieties of flowers. Some of the conservatories are fairly carpeted 



with Fuchsias, and plumbago capensis, the latter of a beautiful blue, 



and of ravishing effect from its quantity of flowers, &c., &c. 



''Some plants refuse hybridation, among them is Wheat. 1 tried 

 poppy faithfully, by endeavoring to change the Tournefort poppy j 

 but it still kept its red lively tint, without a shade of change. So 

 of the grape vine, it seems to me impossible to hybridize it." — Loise- 

 leur Deslongchamps. 



Revue Uorticole, Paris, April, 1848. 



Arxindinaria falcata. The gigantic grass of the Himalaya 

 Mountains. 



M. Van Houtte offers for sale this grass, derived originally from 

 the cold regions of the Himalaya. This plant attains the height of 

 from thirty to fifty feet, and presents the luxuriant vegetation com- 

 mon in the tropics, and at the same time the remarkable and precious 

 quality of resisting intense cold. It inhabits the crests of the Hiraa- 

 layays, the region of perpetual snow, along the northern slopes, in 

 latitude thirty-one degrees, at an elevation of about sixteen thousand 

 feet. It is singular that the southern slopes of the Himalaya are 

 deprived of their forests much before the northern slopes; but the 

 fact is beyond all doubt. Sometimes in snow beds, nine feet deep, 

 this giant grass could not grow — there must be thaws. Van Houtte 

 says, I sowed some seeds of this Bamboo last fall, and set out the 

 young plants in open air; it bore the frosts of v, infer, losing merely 

 some of its young stems. We desire to see this noble plant in our 

 gardens and fields, it will be beautiful and useful. 



EFFECTS OF SULPHURIC VTHEK (cHLOROFORm) UPON SENSITIVE PLANTS. 



The Mimosa Pudica, being placed under a glass vase with cotton, 

 wet with ether, in twenty minutes the plant lost all its sensibility; 

 could not be made to move by touching it with a pin at its mo.'^t sus- 

 ceptible parts; some change in its color was perceptible. The plant 

 was ten minutes insensible and then gradually recovered. This ex- 

 periment was often repeated, and always with the same .esults. We 

 tried the experiment on the Oxalis sensitiva, which is less irritable 

 than Mimosa Pudica, and it did not lose its sensibility in less than 

 twenty-f^ve minutes, then recovered slowly. 



