Avucust 1, 1874.] 
GARDENERS’ CHRONICLE. 
129 
i NE NEW QUEEN ONION. 
THE EARLIEST ll CULTIVATION. 
Sown now will produce nice Oni fit for use, this year, and 
will keep late into next spring. "Seed per ounce, 2s. 6d. ; per 
or 
he following choice varieties for present sowing : 
GIANT ROCCA, WHITE TRI- 
or spring use 
one of the edtliest in cultivation, a fine selected stock, pat 
~ ounce, 1s. ae ed ERS’ COCOA-NUT ditta, E ounce, 
et 6d. 
ER 
EE ahr aes Seeds for Autumn a see our ‘ ag 
e for Amateur Gardeners,’ gratis to 
ELS BROTHERS, 
The Royal Norfolk Seed ett Binns Norwich: 
O Dia 
=~ Fe NEW svig 
pia li OF THEIR CHOICE STRAINS OF à WS 
; ) 
FLORISTS FLOWERS |: 
REFOR PRESENT SOWING. 
e Post Free. 
VIAVIOGITVO €UadNS 
SNOLLOAS 
OLARIA. 
this fepourise poni PAN Flower has been saved 
st strains only. Price, 2s. 6d. per packet. 
OBSON’ S, JAMES’S, THOMAS’S 
s can be supplied at the advertised prices. 
The following can aalo be supplied :— 
ane CHOICE CY CLAMEN, 6 varieties 
of other CHOICE FLOWER SEEDS 
“for Greene Sealing, gratis and post fi 
. FUERON and SONS, 
bap eon NTM me TO THE QUEEN 
BERKS SEED "ESTABLISHMENT, 
READING. 
ee 
ee THE FOLLOWING 
HOICE 
n ION SEEDS 4 z 
For Present Sowing. 
if sown aara aiii ponio fa q0- 
| Summ 
ieoa: V yea 
—Ve ý hen finest can si 
b. to 31b. “Nery ney mi po 
RLY RED ITALIAN and LARGE EARLY 
ITALIAN. —Very large, hardy, and good 
Each TAr 
ITALI and GIANT LATE 
TA wonni, ina aa be after the 
large. Each rs. 
MARZAGOLA—Very ae aere rs. per 
Vegetable and Flor Set | 
on applic 
SATURDAY, AUGUST 1, 1874. 
NEW MATERIAL FOR PAPER. 
HILE the archeologists are discussing the 
Zizanion of St. Matthew (the “ Tares” 
of the English version of the famous parable), it 
would appearthat in the Zizania of Linnzus there 
is amost valuable resource for modern manu- 
facturing industry. ‘The former question doubt- 
r to which 
Zea, Itea, a and many others: it was there- 
fore no more than consistent with his general 
practice to aie sfer the name Zizania to a 
grass confined to North America, or at all 
however, is it, as the matter now turns out, that 
Linnæus should have selected the name of 
a pestilent weed, the only association we have 
with which is the uninviting one of the “ Prince 
of Darkness,” for a plant which, after the lapse 
an auxiliary to the diffusion of the light of know- 
ledge. The Zizania, in a word, has been ascer- 
tained to be a first-rate material for use in the 
manufacture of white paper, a use’ which is’ 
second only to that of supplying food, though, 
as we shallsee presently, the Zizania does both 
“ Among the many things,” said the Publishers’ 
Circular of Dec. 18, 1872, “ which science is 
unanimously requested to do, there is one 
which concerns ; publishers, booksellers, aak 
y. Will science, 
can science, discover any material Borit AANA 
we can make paper abundantly and cheaply?” 
The answer appears to be furnished in the aoe 
before us, and if all be well sustained that i 
asserted of its adaptiveness to what is Rise Fr 
one of the greatest requirements of the age, 
Zizania will acquire a significance in the nine- 
teenth century more ier perhaps than 
any other term of prim 
companion only i in clectron which word with 
the ancients | an amber—the 
substance wherein the subtle agent 
helps us to converse at will with the most dis- 
tant regions first observed, 
though at that time with no idea of its mar- 
vellous potentialities. 
Before proceeding to particulars of the dis- 
Pe lately made in regard to the fitness of 
the Zizania as a material for paper, it may be 
well to give a short account of the plant con- 
sidered as an object of botany, few wet in 
this country being np ara with more than 
the appellation. It is a grass of the tribe 
Oryzex, thus having a degree of affinity with 
the Rice plant of oriental Asia, but from which 
it is well distinguished at the same time | 
by the he of the flowers. In the Rice 
` plant, Oryza sativa, the flo wers ar € 
4 bag a ith 
light canoe of the 
among the reedy and flexible s 
‘to render it an hamia- place of 
f large aquatic grasses, nor 
which now 
in number—an interestingjfact, seeing that the 
grasses which clothe our English soil with its 
sweet-scented vernal grass that gives the odour 
to the hayfield has only two, and in the little 
Festuca Stie there is abortion of all these 
ns but one. Five species in all have been 
discriminated of the genus ; Z. aqu 
flowers are sufficiently unlike those of the others 
as to have led some of our botanists to distin- 
guish it under the name of Hydropyrum escu- 
lentum. For convenience sake, at all events in 
relation to paper-making, it is better to let the 
it were, emphatically Zizania. 
h silly. plumed Reed-grass, or Pek je of 
and eels 
thorough water plant, having its habitat in 
swamps, ponds, and shallow streams, which it 
fills during the summer and autumn with a 
of herbage — HORIA and Agr even 
the forest-like P es represen 
fectly. The “fot -and luxurian so m 
the more remarkable since the plant is only an 
avi : Wheat, 
achieved by Indian Corn. 
development. a 1 
above the surface of ee water, of fully 7 or 
8 feet—the maximum having been observed, not 
uncommonly, to be 12 to 14—the density of a 
Zizania grove, as met with in the remote wilds 
of N America, and the ease with which the 
Indian can brush its way i 
combine | 
The natives are prone to seel its shelter, 
especially in times of peril, or at all events they 
were accustomed so to do ‘in days gone by, as 
many a time pictured graphically Ai pu wes 
American ee Occasio: et 
growth is 
of this remarkable plant present no features 
materially different from those of the omer 
che athe thing : 
striking in peti eerste hope 
nearly to th oe 
As in the trae’, itis terminal and erect, ‘ 
and of great size, the rachis of the specimen 
in my herbarium ; 15 it es long. A 
drawing 
actions, 
the usual appe 
ce, and from this it would 
r the little rode in Loudon’s Ency- 
¢clopedia was diminished, as also rme in 
the Treasury of Botany. e se 
large, and in substance, when n quite ripe, so 
b and and farinac men Farha 
at the E ko | 
groves as as if by instinct. ‘Because of 
their really 
