General Notices. 



37 



11 



Insufficiency of Parchment Labels. — > I much wish to call the attention of 

 your readers, particularly those who are nurserymen, to a point in which they 

 are especially concerned. I allude to the too common practice of sending out 

 trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants, labelled merely by attaching to them the 

 name written on a slip of parchment. A more unsuitable substance for bearing 

 exposure to weather can hardly be imagined ; and, as it may not always be 

 convenient for the purchaser to attach more durable tallies immediately on 

 receiving the plants, it may often happen that the delay of a day or two causes 

 great inconvenience and confusion. To give a case in point : I received lately 

 from Lancashire a collection of particularly choice gooseberry trees. As they 

 arrived at the moment of my leaving home for a week, I could not then attend 

 to them. On my return, seeing they had the objectionable parchment labels, 

 I proceeded to give them strong wooden ones ; but judge of my mortification 

 at finding that, from the occurrence of several wet days 

 (and, I think, also from the attacks of slugs), many of 

 the names were illegible. Indeed, in one case the label 

 had altogether rotted, or been devoured by the slugs, 

 which appear to find the wet glutinous parchment a 

 particularly nice morsel. The most common slight 

 wooden labels cut with a pocket knife from laths, or 

 any odd bits of deal board can be made by hundreds 

 on a wet day ; and if a little white lead is rubbed on 

 with the finger at the time the label is ivanted, and the 

 name written with a good black lead pencil, it will cer- 

 tainly last a year at least. Of course it would be better 

 if the wood were Kyanised, especially for those re- 

 quired to be stuck in the ground or in pots. Fig. 10. is 

 the form I attach to trees and shrubs, and fig. 11. that 

 which I use for plants in pots. I am sorry to see the 

 parchment labels used by some of the most eminent 

 nurserymen in the neighbourhood of London. Surely, they would 

 not find the wooden tallies much, if any, more expensive than 

 parchment ones ; and I am sure they would give much more satis- 

 faction to their customers. 

 While annoyed with my recent disappointment, I was delighted at receiving 

 from an eminent Scottish nursery, a parcel consisting chiefly of small shrubs 

 for the American borders ; in which (even down to the little -ffiibus arcticus)) 

 a wooden tally was attached to each plant. Perhaps, a word of advice from 

 you, in some future Number of the Magazine, may call a little attention to the. 

 subject. The figures given above must be so well known to every one that 

 they require no description. — W. C. Nov. 10. 1838. 



Application of Coal Tar to Fruit Trees. — Much has been said respecting the 

 application of coal tar to fruit trees. A respectable neighbour of mine ap- 

 plied it to the stems of young apple trees, all of which were killed thereby. — 

 W. G Hereford, Nov. 1838. 



Epilobium hirsutum. — W. Taylor, F.L.S., finds that the down of the seeds 

 of this plant, which, when the pods are mature, is found in considerable quan- 

 tities, are useful for stuffing pillows, cushions, &c. ; and may also be spun into 

 thread, with or without an admixture of cotton. — W. T. Nov., 1838. 



Yerbena Tcucr'ioides, one of the most ornamental species of the genus that 

 has yet been discovered, and which is so beautifully figured in Paxton's Maga- 

 zine of Botany, and in the Botanical Register for December, is one of the 

 twenty-four species described by Sir W. J. Hooker, in his very interesting work, 

 the Botanical Miscellany ; and of which twenty-four species only three or four 

 have been introduced. If these three or four have so enriched our gardens 

 as to form a new and striking feature in them (we allude more particularly to 

 V. chamaedrifolia and its varieties), what may we not expect to be the result, 

 when all those described by Dr. Hooker are introduced ! Let the reader only 

 peruse Dr. Hooker's descriptions in the Miscellany. Speaking of this work, 



