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REVIEWS 



Seidell's Everyman's Garden Every Week* 



Mr. Selden has written a very useful little book which is full of 

 information for the amateur gardener. Its introductory chapters 

 are upon cold weather planning and reading; saving the family 

 purse; garden soils, good and bad; tools that are essential; garden 

 eugenics; water whenever needed; garden mistakes of various 

 sorts ; and taking planting cues from nature. These are followed 

 by chapters describing work which may be done to advantage 

 during every week from early April until November, and the book 

 concludes with chapters on indoor work and suggestions for the 

 garden calendar. The book is packed full of suggestions, direc- 

 tions and remarks concerning garden crops of all kinds, and cannot 

 fail to be of great service to a large constituency. 



N. L. Britton. 



Blackman, V. H. AND Paine, S. G., ^ Recording Transpiro- 

 meter, Ann. Bot. 28: 109-113, 1914, describe an ingenious device 

 for automatically recording the loss of water from a plant. The 

 properly prepared potted plant is placed on the left-hand pan of a 

 balance and counter-poised. Nearby is a water reservoir with a 

 tube placed so as to discharge a uniform series of drops directly 

 over an opening in the cover of a flower pot. When the ex- 

 periment is started a small vertical funnel, attached to a hori- 

 zontal metal tube, intercepts the drops and discharges them into 

 a waste vessel. The metal tube passes through two solenoids 

 placed end to end. As water is lost by the plant the left-hand 

 balance pan rises and finally, by means of a mercury cup attached, 

 makes an electric contact, closing the circuit through the further 

 one of the two solenoids. This draws back the metal tube, and 

 water drops now fall into the flower pot. As the left pan descends 

 the circuit is broken, but drops continue to fall into the pot until 

 the rising right pan, by means of an arrangement similar to that 

 on the left pan, closes an electric circuit through the near solenoid, 

 thus moving the tube back into its original position. 



* Selden, C. A. Everyman's Garden Every Week, pp. 1-338, small octavo. 

 Dodd, Mead & Company, 1914. 



