576> Queries and Answers. 



healthy plants from Soham, a village some miles distant, and since that time 

 I have seen but very little of the curl here. Changing the seed is the best 

 remedy for the disease. My plants from the potatoes of the red-nosed kidney 

 kind from Aberdeen (p. 43?.), which you sent me, have been unhealthy with 

 the curl, but I expect a healthy crop from them next year. — J. Denson, sen. 

 Waterbeach, near Cambridge, Sept. 17. 1834. 



Art. VII. Queries and Answers, 



Ce^reUS speeiosissimus. — I understand that this splendid plant can be made 

 to bloom twice a year ; but not having heard how this is to be done, I should 

 be greatly obliged if any of your readers would contribute the desired inform- 

 ation through your pages. — A Subscriber. Doncaster, Aug. 4. 1834. 



A Double-Flowered Crocus: is suck a Thing known? — In p, 213. mention is 

 made of double crocuses : are there such things, or is it a mistake ? I never 

 before heard of double crocuses, and have often wondered, considering how 

 much crocuses are cultivated, that no such thing had been met with. They 

 must be exceedingly beautiful : where are they to be had, if they really do 

 exist ? — W. T. Bree, in a letter dated August 7. 1834, * 



The words " hepaticas, single and double crocuses," in p. 213., line 19. from 

 the bottom, are, doubtless, erroneously put for " hepaticas, single and double ; 

 crocuses." I have never known of a double-flowered crocus, but once saw a 

 crocus flower, if not two, in which there were six stamens, but they were not 

 accompanied by more than the usual number (six) of segments of the perianth 

 or corolla : the flower was, if I have rightly remembered, of the common 

 species, Crocus iuteus Lam. — J. D. 



The Shaddock and the Mango, (p. 466.) — It was only yesterday that I ob- 

 served a question addressed to myself by Mr. Roberts of York, on a subject 

 which appears to me no less marvellous than it very naturally does to him, 

 and 1 lose no time in replying to it as far as I am able. Horticulture, in all 

 the British settlements which I visited, during a sojourn of many years in the 

 "West Indies, appeared to be at the lowest possible ebb ; and a planter's 

 garden, like the sign-dauber's black bear or golden lion, required a printed 

 notice to warn you that it was not a wilderness, so little did it wear of the 

 appearance of art, and so utterly guiltless was it of any thing approaching to 

 science, or even neatness ; the plants being left to luxuriate in all the wanton- 

 ness of nature-; <that is, if they escaped being overpowered by weeds of rank 

 luxuriance during the rainy seasons. Hence you may readily suppose it never 

 was my good fortune to witness any horticultural experiments beyond the 

 quarterly pruning of the grape vines which frequently shaded the trellis porch 

 of some planter's house, of more than an ordinary turn for experiment ; and 

 by the judicious exercise of which he was enabled, as I have, I believe, ac- 

 quainted you in former letters, to obtain four crops of grapes annually from 

 one vine ; and as I was not myself the possessor of so much as one inch 

 of ground, either as proprietor or even tenant, I had no opportunity of 

 trying any experiments. The shaddock has hitherto been regarded by botanists, 

 and I should presume upon sufficient grounds, from the days of Linnaeus to 

 the present, as a distinct species of Citrus (C. decumana), of which the for- 

 bidden fruit, grape fruit, and several others, are supposed to be accidental va- 

 rieties. Hence it need not be a matter of surprise that from the seeds of a 

 shaddock we should have more or less of these varieties, as well as genuine 

 shaddocks ; and it is equally possible, although I cannot pretend to any ac- 

 quaintance with the fact, that, by a kind of natural hybridisation, effected by 

 insects, hybrid varieties of shaddock, more or less approaching to oranges or 

 lemons, according to the nature of the male parent, may have sometimes 

 arisen : but, never having heard of such an occurrence, which, if familiar to the 

 planters, would not have been suppressed during any of the years, or in any 

 of the islands, of my residence (and they were not a few), I should be much 



