W Notice of Mr. Smith of Monkwood. 



The Bokhara Clover. — Mr. Gorrie, jun., took a specimen to the Highland 

 and Agricultural Society's show, at Inverness, from plants grown by his father, 

 raised from the seeds we sent him. The specimen, Mr. Gorrie, sen., informs 

 us, was about Sift, high, with numerous branches of from 18 in. to 2 ft. in 

 length; the plant having grown unsurrounded by others. It was just coming 

 into flower about the 20th of September. It had numerous thick, strong, white, 

 stringy roots, apparently perennial ; leaves longer and narrower, and of a lighter 

 pea-green colour than those of ilfelilotus officinahs. Pods racemose, orbi- 

 cular, small, 2-seeded. Style persistent; flowers small, white. Stipules lan- 

 ceolate. From the plant flowering the first year, Mr. Gorrie thinks it cannot 

 be the AT. arborea. It possesses, he says, an estimable property not common to 

 other melilots ; viz., that cattle eat it freely. Should it turn out a perennial, 

 or even a biennial, Mr. Gorrie thinks it may prove useful in alternate hus- 

 bandry. A patch of plants were eaten readily by cows in the beginning of 

 August, and the second cutting on September 23. was 2 ft. high. — Co7id. 



The Cajjer is so rare in England, that I cannot help taking notice of it in a 

 particular manner, having myself brought it to perfection in England without 

 the trouble of hot-beds or green-houses, and I believe I was the first that has 

 made the caper familiar to our climate. It is now about four years since my 

 friend Mr. Balle, of Camden House, received some caper seeds from Italy, 

 which I then sowed in the scaffold holes of his garden walls, to imitate, as 

 near as possible, the method of their growth about Toulon, and at the same 

 time put several of the seeds into a hot-bed ; the consequence was, that those 

 which were sown in the wall rubbish shot near 6 in. the same summer, and 

 the few that came up in the hot-bed were scarce 3 in. high the first year, 

 although they were housed with the tenderest exotic plants, and those in 

 the walls stood the winter without shelter. The second year those plants in 

 the walls made shoots of a foot in length, while those in the pots hardly 

 added 2 in. to their height. The third year, in April, I cut the shoots of the 

 foregoing summer from the plants that were abroad, leaving only a bud or two 

 of each near the original stem, which, the same summer, made shoots nearly 

 3 ft. long, to the number of about forty upon each plant, and put out buds for 

 blossoms ; but the plants in the pots did not advance above 2 in. In short, 

 the last year, one single plant in the wall had not less than a quart of blossom 

 buds upon it fit to pickle, and the plant perfected some of its fruit. Thus, if 

 the plant be headed down in the spring like a willow, it will every summer 

 make a beautiful bush, and afford as good capers as grow in Italy. (^Bradley's 

 Works of Nature, 1721, p. 36.) 



Art. IV. Mr. Smith of Monhtvood, Ayrshire. 



Mr. Smith is one of the most enthusiastic practical botanists that Scot- 

 land can boast of; and, being now 80 years of age, has through unavoidable 

 circumstances been reduced to a state which claims the sympathy of all 

 his friends. Whoever is personally acquainted with the man, will not re- 

 quire another word said in his behalf. To those who are not, we submit the 

 following brief notice, drawn up from a private letter of his friend and neigh- 

 bour, Mr. Skinner, and from personal knowledge. Mr. Smith is a native of 

 Ayrshire, in which country, after going through the regular routine of an 

 apprentice and journeyman gardener, he went to England in pursuit of 

 professional improvement, and worked at Stow, Syon House, and in several 

 metropolitan nurseries. He was some years superintendant of the London 

 Botanic Gardens, under the celebrated Mr. Curtis, founder and author of the 

 Botanical Magazine and Flora Londinensis, from whose kindness, when he re- 

 turned to Ayr in 1784 to commence business as a nurseryman, he received 

 700 species of hardy plants, which formed the foundation of the first pubhc 

 collection of any note made in Scotland. In 1786, Messrs. Dickson of the 

 Leith Walk Nurseries, Edinburgh, purchased 400 species from him ; and many 



