August 9, 1877. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



119 



Second. Mrs. Allcroft, Mrs. Niven, Miss Sewell, and one or two 

 Beedlings were fine. ClasB C, twelve Carnations, not less than 

 nine varieties, Mr. George Rudd was first and Mr. R. Gorton, 

 The Woodlands, Eceles, second. In Mr. Rudd's stand the 

 blooms of Sir J. Paxton were marvellous examples of size and 

 quality ; Admiral Cnrzon, Mars, Clipper, and Marshal Ney were 

 very fine. In Mr. Gorton's stand the best flowers were Christi- 

 gala, r. f. ; Sybil, r.f. : Eccentric Jack, c.b. ; and Dr. Foster, p. f. 

 A third prize was awarded to Mr. Brown, and fourth to Mr. 

 Thomas Mellor. Class D is a corresponding claBS for Picotees, 

 and here Mr. Rudd was again an easy first, his best blooms being 

 Zerlina, Alliance, J. B. Bryant, Mary, and Fairy Queen, the 

 latter a light-edged rose of good quality. Mr. Brown waB se- 

 cond, and Mr. T. Mellor third. In Class E, six distinct Carna- 

 tions, and limited to growers of 120 pairs, Mr. Stack of Chester- 

 field was first, and Mr. Taylor of Middleton second. Class F is 

 a corresponding class for Picotees, and here the first honours 

 went to S. Cooper, Esq., of Timperley, Cheshire; Mr. Taylor of 

 Middleton being second and Mr. Slack third. In Mr. Cooper's 

 stand Ann Lord and Mary were good blooms. 



We come now to the classes for single blooms, where Mr. 

 Simonite was again champion ; be won first, second, fourth, 

 and fifth in scarlet bizarres with Dreadnought, Seedling, Mars, 

 and Admiral Curzon ; Mr. Booth was third with Admiral Curzon. 

 In crimson bizarres Mr. Simonite won all the five prizes with 

 J. D. Hextall, to one of which the blue ribbon of the Exhibition 

 was awarded, and a grand specimen it was, full of petal, colour, 

 and quality. In scarlet flakes Mr. Rudd waB first with Sports- 

 man, second with Clipper; Mr. Simonite third with a seedling, 

 and Mr. Booth fourth and fifth with Sportsman. In rose flakos 

 Mr. Booth was a first with Sybil, the remaining prizes going to 

 good blooms of James Merryweather and John Keet. In purple 

 flakes Mr. Simonite gained all the prizes, the winning blooms 

 being placed in the order of their names — Dr. Foster, JameB 

 Douglas, Mayor of Nottingham, James Douglas, and Squire 

 Meynell. 



In light red Picotees Mr. Simonite was first, second, fourth, 

 and fifth with his own seedlings, Mr. Cooper third. The first- 

 prize flower in this class was of excellent quality. In the heavy 

 red clasB Mr. Booth was first with J. B. Bryant, and Mr. Gorton 

 second with Miss Small. In light purple edges the first prize 

 went to a seedling, the remaining five prizes going to Mr. Cooper 

 for fine blooms of Ann Lord. In heavy purples the three firBt 

 prizes went to Mr. Chadwick, Ashton-under-Lyne, for blooms 

 of an unnamed seedling, the three last prizes to Mr. Booth for 

 Picco. Heavy rose-edged was a poor class. Mr. Chadwick was 

 first and Mr. Booth Becond with Mrs. Lord, Mr. Gorton third 

 with Juliana. In light rose Mr. Simonite was first with a fine 

 variety of his own raising, named Teresa; this was also selected 

 as the premier flower in the Exhibition. The other varieties 

 that gained prizes in this class being MiBs Wood and Miss 

 Sewell. 



Mr. Simonite had made a mark in the floral world at many 

 previous exhibitions, but I question whether he ever stood bo 

 high as he has done on this occasion. He may not only be 

 proud of showing the premium Carnation and Picotee, but the 

 flowers were both his own seedlings ; and if his flowers had 

 been at their best, even better varieties would have been shown, 

 especially in the crimson bizarre class of Carnations, and light 

 red Picotees. In the former Samuel Barlow, John Simonite, 

 and Frank Simonite are all advances on existing varieties. In 

 the latter his Mrs. Simonite is a model of what a Picotee ought 

 to be ; it is a red-edged Mary with pure white petal. Mrs. F. D. 

 Horner and Mrs. R. Gorton are also fine light-edged reds worthy 

 of a plaoe in the best collections. It waB a misfortune that Mr. 

 Lord's flowerB were not in, as some of his seedlings not yet dis- 

 tributed are of high-class quality. I question if there are any 

 flowers in the heavy roBe class to be placed before Misa Horner ; 

 and his Mrs. Dodwell, rose-flake Carnation, is a most refined 

 flower. — J. Douglas. 



PAINTING. 



What can be more annoying than, after being at the expense 

 of constructing and painting a fine large glass house, to find 

 the whole of the internal paint covered with a black fungus ? 

 This has been my case, and to remedy thiB evil I made the 

 following experiments. Five years since I had an orchard 

 house painted with a thin kind of creosote, at a temperature 

 of 180° or thereabouts. In a month after this painting I 

 painted a door of this house with only one coat of paint (oil 

 and white lead). This coat still looks well and there is not a 

 particle of mildew or fungus to be seen on it. Since that time 

 I have carried out the same mode to some considerable extent, 

 and nothing can look better. The creosote gives a good smooth 

 body, it destroys all germs of fungus, and at half the expense 

 of labour and material. Many persons are now adopting my 

 plan. The creosote to be used costs 5d. per gallon ; it is not 

 the common sort, but that used for steeping timber without 



being heated. I always heat it, as it penetrates the wood much 

 better and dries more rapidly. I can strongly recommend this 

 mode of painting for any kind of work.. — Observer. 



EXPERIMENTS ON THE FLOW OF THE SAP. 



[Read at the Scientific Committee of the Royal Horticultural Society.] 

 (Continued from page 71.) 



The system of vegetable physiology now in credence was built 

 upon the faith of the existence of a circulation of the sap, and 

 everything has by degrees been arranged to fit neatly into it. 

 I think I have shown to be rotten £>achs' theory, and in remov- 

 ing it, without having any other props to put in its place, down 

 must come the hypothesis that the plant derives all its carbon 

 from carbonic acid in the atmosphere, or its nitrogen from free 

 uncombined nitrogen through the leaves, and, of course, all 

 power of taking anything into the system through the leaves, 

 and all hypotheses of feeding, whether vegetarian or carnivorous, 

 through these organs. These theories of circulation by imbi- 

 bition, diastasis, endosmoae and exosmose, I regard aa already 

 defunct. Six weeks' unavailing effort to get the slightest in- 

 dication of any of these phenomena in the living plant seem 

 enough for me. The current is steadily upward, and not only 

 permits nothing to come down against it, but is too powerful to 

 permit anything to deviate from its own place and force its way 

 into another, even by uniting with it on the way upwards. I 

 say, therefore, that for a plant to absorb oarbonic acid whether 

 free or combined through the leavea for the purpose of supply- 

 ing it with that important element involves a physical im- 

 possibility, and yet this is one of the best-received vegeto- 

 physiological hopotheses. It has the advantage of giving a 

 glimmer of an explanation how plants may have first originated. 

 They consist of carbon, nitrogen, and mineral ingredients, 

 besides oxygen, which may be derived from the latter. It is 

 open, then, to say that plants derive their mineral constituents 

 from the degradation of rocks, and their carbon and nitrogen 

 from the atmosphere — and some plants (aa Lichens) may. 

 But when we come to test the hopothesis by common sense 

 and experience they tell us all that you may try to grow a 

 plant in mineral ingredients and leave it to get its carbon from 

 the atmosphere as much as you like, but it wo'n't grow. As far 

 as common people can aee it will only thrive in humus, in other 

 words where its rootB can draw carbon from the organic matters 

 already elaborated in the soil by the long-continued accumu- 

 lation of past ages. But Sachs 6tites it very broadly. " The 

 fact is unquestionable," says he, " partly established by direct 

 researches on vegetation, partly inferred from the circumstances 

 under which many plants live in a natural condition, that moat 

 plants which contain chlorophyll— e. g., our cereal crops, BeanB, 

 Tobacco, Sunflower, many aaxicolous Lichens, Alga?, and other 

 water plants obtain " (through the leaves — he does not say so 

 here, but it is implied, and is of the essence of his theory) " the 

 entire quantity of their carbon by the decomposition of atmo- 

 spheric carbon dioxide, and require for their nutrition no other 

 compound of carbon from without." — (Sachs' " Text Book" 

 (Dyer's Trans), p. 620.) 



Now in the first place one of the principal of the circum- 

 stances to which he certainly above alludes muBt be the in- 

 fluence of light on assimilation, his interpretation of which I 

 have endeavoured to refute. Next I may mention another 

 phenomenon which seems to me equally adverse to his views — - 

 viz., that the plants of which we are Bpeaking exhale oxygen 

 during the day, and carbon during the night. If carbon in what- 

 ever form passes up from the root to the leaves during the day, 

 and a chemical decomposition takes place whereby it or other 

 ingredients are altered in their way, oxygen must be liberated, 

 and after being carried on with the stream of sap will be set free 

 when it reaches the leaves, while the carbon will be used up in 

 the plant ; and this is just what takeB place by day. But at 

 night, when no feeding or assimilation is going on, no chemical 

 action takes place either, but the carbonic acid with which the 

 sap is charged escapes through the thin cuticle of the leaf, as from 

 an uncovered vesBel, without any interchange of oxygen at all. 



As to the experiments referred to by Professor Sacha, I be- 

 lieve the principal one waa made by De Saussure about the be- 

 ginning of this century (1805), but unhappily I have been unable 

 to see the paper containing it. I know no recent experiments 

 with carbon. As recorded, SausBure's experiment proved that 

 plants in sunlight increase in their amounts of carbon, hydrogen, 

 and oxygen st the expense of carbonic acid and water. But there 

 is no indication whether he attempted to determine whether 

 the carbon was taken up by the leaves or the roots; and as that 

 was not what he was trying to find out, I am disposed to infer 

 that no precautions were taken to decide that point. He seems 

 to have been very careful in measuring the contents and con- 

 stituents of the air, the plant, and the earth; but aa it is plain 

 from that very fact that they were all three subjected to the 

 same experiment at the same time, I do not imagine that the 

 experiment could touch our point. 



