80 Trani>actioin of the London Horticultural Society. 



REVIEWS. 



Akt. I. Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London, Second 

 Series. Vol. I. Part IV. 4to. London, 1833. 



(^Continued from Vol. X. p. 504.) 



35. A Report upon the principal Varieties of the Cherry cidtivated in 

 the Garden of the Society. By Mr. Robert Thompson, Under- 

 Gardener in the Fruit Department. 



36. A Note upon the Brabant Bellefleur Apple. By John Lindley, 

 Ph. D. F.R.S., Assistant Secretary. 



39. Notes upon some French Stetving Pears. By John Lindley, Ph. 

 D. F.R.S., Assistant Secretary. 



The essence of these three papers may be considered as given 

 in the new edition of the Encyclopcedia of Gardening. 



37- Journal of Meteorological Observations made in the Garden of 

 the Horticultural Society, at Chiswick, during the Year 1830. By 

 Mr. William Beattie Booth, A.L.S., till June, 1830; subsequently 

 by Mr. Robert Thompson, Under- Gardener in the Fruit Depart- 

 ment. 



Another of those elaborate and most valuable papers, from 

 which, at a future time, most useful generalisations may be made 

 respecting the weather. 



38. On the beneficial Effects of the Accumulation of Sap in Annual 

 Plants. By Thomas Andrew Knight, Esq., F.R.S., President. 



This is a most valuable paper, both in a scientific and prac- 

 tical point of view, and we shall therefore make large extracts 

 from it. 



" Biennial plants very obviously form, in one season, the sap which they 

 expend in the following season in the production of blossoms and seeds ; and 

 the capacity of the reservoirs they form is greater or less, in proportion as ex- 

 ternal circumstances are more or less favourable. Trees also generate, in a 

 preceding season or seasons, the sap which feeds, in the spring, their unfolding 

 blossoms and young leaves. Annual plants, on the contrary, possess no such 

 reservoirs ; and they must generate, in each season, all the sap which they can 

 expend, exclusively of the very small portion derived fi*om the seeds from 

 which they spring. But, by appropriate management, and creation of varieties, 

 annual plants may be made to accumulate, in one period of their lives, the sap 

 which they expend in another, with very great advantages to the cultivator. 



" The first produced female blossoms of the melon plant, particularly of the 

 larger and superior varieties, do not often set j and, if they set, the fruit they 

 afford never attains as large a size, or as much excellence, as the same plants, 

 at a more mature age, would have given to it under the same external circum- 

 stances. This, I imagine, arises not only from the different quantity, but from 

 the different qualities, of the sap in the young and in the more mature plant ; 

 for I have found the sap of very young birch and sycamore trees to be speci- 

 fically much lighter, and to contain much less saccharine matter, than the sap 

 of trees of greater age, of the same species, and growing in the same soil, and 

 in the same seasons. Under the influence of abundant light, in those climates 



