December 12, 1872. ] 



JOURNAL 0? HORTIOULTUBE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



471 



Granada to other parts of the world, particularly to the United 

 States. They are very hard, and permit of being shaped into 

 any form, and so are often employed in place of ivory. The 

 tree belongs to the Palm tribe, and has been named by Spanish 

 botanists Phytelephas macrocarpa. The following is a de- 

 scription of it given by Spanish writers : — " The Indians cover 

 their cottages with the leaves of this most beautiful Palm. The 

 fruit at first contains a clear insipid fluid, by which travel- 

 lers allay their thirst ; afterwards this same liquor becomes 

 milky and sweet, and it changes its taste by degrees as it 

 acquires solidity, till at last it is almost as hard as ivory. The 

 liquor contained in the young fruits becomes acid if they are 

 cut from the tree and kept some time. From the kernels the 

 Indians fashion the knobs of walking-sticks, the reels of 

 spindles, and little toys, which are whiter than ivory, and as 

 hard, if they are not put under water — and if they are, they 

 become white and hard again when dried. Bears devour the 

 young fruit with avidity." 



The following is an answer, well amplified, to a very 



old charade : — A lady requested to know Why a gardener is 

 the most extraordinary man in the world? and the solution 

 was, Because no man has more business on earth, and always 

 chooses good grounds for what he does. He commands his 

 own Thyme ; he is master of the Mint ; he raises his own 

 Celery every year ; and it is a bad year indeed that does not 

 produce him a Plum. He meets with more boughs than a 

 minister of state ; he makes more beds than the French kings, 

 and has in them more Painted Ladies, and more genuine 

 Roses and Lilies than are to be found at a country wake. He 

 makes raking his business more than his diversion, as many 

 fine gentlemen do, but makes it his advantage both to his 

 health and fortune, which is the case with few others. Then 

 he indulges his own pleasures ; and then he is plain in his dress 

 with his Bachelor's Buttons, yet he encourages Cockscombs with 

 Prince's Feathers, and greatly admires che Pride of London, 

 and with pleasure beholds his Love-lies-bleeding under a 

 Weeping Willow. His wife, notwithstanding, has as much 

 Lads'-love and Heart's-ease as she can desire, and never wishes 

 for weeds. Distempers fatal to others never hurt him, and 

 he thrives most on Consumption ; he is Nature's assistant, 

 and is as famous for his Balm of Gilead, Female Balsam, and 

 genuine drops as an apothecary, and his Thrift abounds by 

 Honesty. He is a great antiquarian, having in his possession 

 Adam's Needle, the Tree of Life, Jacob's Ladder, Solomon's 

 Seal, the Holy Throne, Venus's Looking-glass, the Arms of 

 France, and the Crown Imperial. He is well acquainted with 

 the Globes, and has crossed the line oftener than any mariner 

 in Great Britain ; he is the King of Spades, and is happy with 

 his beautiful Queen Margaret ; he can boast of more Laurels 

 than Alexander the Great, and Bleeding Hearts than your 

 ladyship ; but his greatest pride, and the world's greatest cause 

 of envy is — that he can have Yew at any time. 



ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY'S MEETINGS. 



The second meeting of this Society was held on November 18th 

 at Burlington House, H. W. Bates, Esq., being in the chair. 

 Mr. W. C. Hewitson sent for exhibition a fine specimen of the 

 Camberwell Beauty Butterfly, Vanessa Antiopa, taken by him- 

 self in his garden in Oatlands Park, near Weybridge, on the 

 1st of November. It was doubtless on the point of hybernating. 

 Mr. Vaughan exhibited Crambus verellus, a new British Moth, 

 taken by Mr. C. A. Briggs at Folkestone in the month of July 

 last ; also some varieties of the Red Admiral and Painted Lady 

 Butterflies. Mr. Meek exhibited another new British species 

 of Moth, Nephopteryx argyrella, belonging to the family Phy eidie, 

 taken near Gravesend ; also several interesting varieties of Bri- 

 tish Lepidoptera. Mr. Wallace forwarded the exuviae of some 

 insect, apparently belonging to the family Tineidse, which had 

 committed much damage in the collections of dried Mosses and 

 Lichens made by Dr. Spruce in Brazil. Mr. Meldola exhibited 

 a drawing of the dark variety of the caterpillar of the Death's- 

 head Moth. 



The following memoirs were read : — Notes on the entomolo- 

 gical papers published in the " Verhandlungen der Schweizer- 

 ischen Naturforschender Gesellschaft," from 1823 to 1864, by 

 Mr. Albert Miiller ; Reply to Mr. Dunning's comments on Mr. 

 Lewis's strictures upon Dr. Hagen's memoir on the British 

 Psocidae, by Mr. Lewis. 



The December meeting of this Society was held on the 2nd 

 inst., the President, Professor Westwood, in the chair. Dr. H. 

 Saussure, of Geneva, was elected one of the eight foreign honor- 

 ary members of the Society, in the place of the late Professor 

 Pictet. The President exhibited some drawings of details of 



several hitherto unfigured species of Strepsiptera, in illustration 

 of the recently published memoir by Mr. S. S. Saunders on that 

 remarkable tribe of insects ; also a coloured drawing of a singu- 

 larly-marked variety of Cynthia Cardui. Mr. F. Bond exhibited 

 some interesting British Lepidoptera, including a specimen of 

 LycEena iEgon, one pair of the wings of which was brown and 

 the other pair blue ; a black variety of Acronycta megacephala ; 

 varieties of Miselia Oxyacantha and Notodonta dodonasa ; and a 

 large new British species of Ichneumon, reared by Mr. Mitford 

 from Lasiocampa Trifolii. 



Major Munn, through Mr. F. Smith, inquired whether, in the 

 experience of any of the members, the queen bee ever used her 

 sting in stinging observers. Mr. Smith stated that on one occa- 

 sion he had taken the queen from the comb without her attempt- 

 ing to sting him ; and the President stated that he had never 

 in his hive-bee experience been stung by the queen. Mr. Smith 

 added that the females of certain Sand Wasps of the genera 

 Cerceris and Philanthus could not be made to sting the hand, 

 although they stung the insects which they buried by way of 

 store for their progeny. 



Mr. Champion exhibited two new British Beetles of small 

 size, Thyamis distinguenda and Lithocharis picea. Mr. Albert 

 Miiller communicated notes on the habits of a species of Ne- 

 matus, belonging to the family of the Sawflies, the caterpillars 

 of which, at the end of October, he had found devouring the 

 leaves of a Sallow hush on Shirley Heath, the midribs of the 

 leaves only being left, the larva} residing together in small 

 families. He had observed that these larvse are attacked by the 

 young of a species of field Bug (Pentatoma bidens, Linnceus), 

 which sucks out all the juices of their bodies, leaving only the 

 outer skin. He had observed one of the latter destroyed as 

 many as thirty-six of the Sawfly larva? in four days. The mode 

 of attack of these voracious insects was carefully described. 



Mr. Dunning read some notes on the genus Acentropus, com- 

 pleting his memoir on that curious Moth, the species of which 

 had now been observed in Scotland, Belgium, and Holland. 

 No specimens had been found in Scotland since the days of Dr. 

 Leach until recently rediscovered by Mr. Syme. Mr. Boyd had 

 found the pupa on the destructive American water weed, Ana- 

 charis, which had destroyed the Potamogeton, the true food 

 plant of the caterpillar of the Acentropus. 



The following memoirs were read: — 1, Descriptions of eleven 

 new species and genera of exotic Beetles of the family Tene- 

 brionidse, by Mr. F. Bates. 2, The first portion of a descriptive 

 catalogue of the Phytophagous Coleoptera of Japan collected by 

 Mr. George Lewis, by Mr. J. Baly. 3, Descriptions of fourteen 

 new species of Butterflies from the extra-tropical part of South 

 Africa, by Mr. Rowland. Trimen. 



MB. PYE'S ORANGE ORCHARD AT PARRAMATTA. 



How many out of ten thousand Europeans have plucked an 

 Orange from its tree, or an oyster from its bed ? Perhaps one 

 or two of us — certainly not more. That golden fruit is familiar 

 to such an extent to every Britisher that we almost forget that 

 we never see it before it has been curiously boxed and bandaged 

 and sent over the seas. The tree, with those silver blossoms, 

 so dear to the dreams of the maiden, in hopes one day to wear 

 them, and with that golden fruit, so dear to the taste of all 

 of us, young or old, grows only in a sunny southern clime. 

 The Orange is a lump of sunshine. It tells ontside and within 

 equally of the sun that coloured it, and of the golden sunbeams 

 whose colour, sweetness, and taste live in all parts of it — palpa- 

 ble to every eye that can feed the mind, and tongue that can 

 taste beyond the mouth. All such thoughts and many more 

 were with ua when it was proposed that we should go some 

 fifteen or twenty miles out from Sydney to see an Orange plan- 

 tation — Orange grove, as it was termed. As the trip included 

 a voyage up the pretty Parramatta River and promised to fill-up 

 time in a day's good outing, we cheerfully agreed to be escorted 

 to an Australian orangery, and for the second time in our life 

 to see a sight of which we had for twenty years retained a plea- 

 sant remembrance. The remembrance went far over the waters 

 to the island of Madeira, in which we saw our first Orange trees. 

 We never tasted wine nor Oranges until we tasted both at 

 Madeira. It is said that tea that has been brought over the 

 sea has lost more than half its flavour. That -which is sold at 

 the great fair of Nishini Novgorod in Russia, brought thither 

 overland from China, we are told, is a delectable drink to what 

 most of ns get from the teapot. Whether the tea question in 

 that view can be disputed we will leave now, but as to the 

 Madeira wine and the Oranges that we got in that island we 

 decline to admit of argument. That wine was nectar, and 

 those Oranges, picked from the trees, ambrosia. All the wines 

 that we have tasted since have been as ditch water to that old 

 Madeira that had never left its own island home. 



We are going up the Parramatta River all the time we are 



