March 20, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



143 



weak, and tends to break at the slightest strain, becomes com- 

 paratively strong, and does not resume its very breakable con- 

 dition on the addition of water. The operations are carried 

 out as follows : 



The damp masses on the frame are transferred to a travel- 

 ing endless cloth, which leads them to a pair of rollers, which 

 may be plain or provided with corrugations in the direction of 

 their length, the ribs of the one roller being made to gear into 

 the recesses of the other one, whereby they effect a simulta- 

 neous strong bending and squeezing of the masses. The cut- 

 ting of the material in passing through the corrugated rollers 

 is avoided by causing the endless cloth to pass over the lower 

 roller and by placing a canvas covering around the upper 

 roller. The pressed masses fall from these rollers on to a 

 second endless cloth, which conveys them to a second pair of 

 rollers, from which they are conveyed to a third pair, and so 

 on, they being preferably pressed in this way six times. By 

 continued treatment of the wood the fibres become at length 

 so pliable and isolated from each other that they can be em- 

 ployed directly for coarse filaments. For obtaining a perfect 

 isolation of the fibres, however, without material deteriora- 

 tion, these operations alone are not suitable, and their special 

 purpose is to loosen the fibres in the transverse direction, so 

 that in the following operation a thin, long fibre may be ob- 

 tained. For this purpose the boiled and pressed masses are 

 completely dried. After drying they are combed in the direc- 

 tion parallel with the fibres by means of devices provided 

 with pins or teeth, in a manner similar to the operations for 

 combing tiax, cotton, etc., but with the difference that the 

 pins or teeth of the apparatus must be made very strong. 

 The separation of the extractable matter from the fibre pro- 

 duced by boiling the gums and soluble organic matter can be 

 effected at any time. It is, however, preferably effected after 

 the fibre has been spun into threads, etc. 



Recent Publications. 



Field and Hedgerow, by Richard Jefferies. Longmans, Green 

 & Co., 1889. 



Under this attractive title Mrs. Jefferies has collected, since 

 her husband's death, twenty-nine of his latest essays, originally 

 published in a number of different periodicals. The longest is 

 the " English Deer-Park," about which a word was said in this 

 journal when it was printed in the Century Magazine last au- 

 tumn. Many of the others are bits of description, commentary 

 or analysis, only three or four pages in length. But all have 

 the distinctive stamp of Jefferies' mind and style strongly set 

 upon them, and all were worth republication. The variety in 

 ostensible subject-matter is also great. These are some of 

 the titles: "Nature and Books," "The July Grass," "The 

 Country Sunday," " Swallow-Time," " Buckhurst Park," " Some 

 April Insects," "The Makers of Summer," "My Old Village," 

 " My Chaffinch," and " Locality and Nature." Nevertheless, 

 they may all be divided into two classes — those which chiefly 

 exhibit the writer's keen love for the minutest facts of Nature, 

 and those which chiefly reveal his equally keen interest in the 

 minutest traits of rural man. Perhaps in future fimes the 

 greatest value of the book may seem- to lie in its record of the 

 odd superstitions and methods of expression of the English 

 rusfic in this our time, and in the picture which, taken as a 

 whole, it presents of his material and spiritual condifion. But 

 to us, interesting though it is in this respect, those pages which 

 deal with birds and flowers and the countless aspects of the 

 wide out-door world are the most attractive. Minuteness of 

 observation and delicacy of analysis could no further go, and 

 color facts, especially, are dwelt upon in a way which one 

 would expect only from a landscape-painter with the most 

 sensifive retina and the most extended experience. Jefferies 

 himself would certainly have resented such a comparison, for 

 his feeling about artists seems to be that they are men spoiled 

 by the " conventionalities " of their craft for the clear obser- 

 vation and intelligent appreciation of the beauty which the 

 world presents. Nevertheless, such powers of observation 

 and appreciation as his are characteristically those which go 

 to make up the artistic temperament ; and despite the success 

 he gained as a writer, one who knows what the study and 

 practise of art really mean, must believe that he would have 

 compassed a still higher success had he taken to painting in- 

 stead of writing. What he wished most of all — he tells us him- 

 self over and over again — was to open the unseeing eyes of 

 the average man to the loveliness of Nature, to define with the 

 nicest exactitude her ever- varying charms of color and form, 

 and especially to bring forth the spirit which underlies her 

 colors and forms, and speaks through them to the human 

 soul. And, as he likewise tells us in this volume, in the chap- 



ter called " Nature and Books," he finds language wholly un- 

 equal to the task, and decides that though millions of books 

 have been written about Nature, the books which will really 

 interpret her are still all to be indited. The truth is that such 

 books cannot be indited. Language can never do the work 

 that Jefferies wished to do. And though art cannot do all that 

 he felt desirable in the way of the definite presentment of tiny, 

 intangible details, it can interpret the spirit of nature to the 

 spirit of man far more effectually than syllables of prose or 

 verse. What is even Wordsworth's work in this direction to 

 Corot's ? With the sounds of Nature poetry, of course, can 

 deal more or less successfufly, while painting cannot deal at all. 



" The moan of doves in immemorial elms, 

 The murmur of innvimerable bees." 



Such emotions as these words excite lines and colors cannot 

 excite. But sight finds still more and richer food in Nature 

 than sound ; and had Jefferies been a painter he would surely 

 have been better satisfied with his own lot as well as a more 

 important factor in the delighting of the world. Then he 

 would not have cried in despair, " The flower has not given 

 us its message yet. ... I want the inner meaning and the 

 understanding of the wild-flowers. . . . Why are they ? What 

 end ? What purpose ? " Approaching such questions, as 

 Jefferies did, from the intellectual point of view, no answer is 

 possible ; but approaching them from the ardstic point of 

 view the answer reveals itself to the painter as he paints, and 

 the observer as he gazes. The end of Nature's beauty is the 

 delighting of man, and it delights man fully only when he has 

 read something of himself into her forms and colors. Uncon- 

 sciously Jefferies felt this, trying, as he did, to read man into 

 Nature with the help of words ; but words were not the proper 

 tools for his purpose. 



Nevertheless, all that they could do, without the magic of 

 rhyme and rythm, he accomplished ; and there is no eye but 

 will see more beauty in Nature, and see it more clearly, and 

 appreciate it more intensely, after reading such passages as 

 the one which attempts to analyze the color of the May Dan- 

 delion, or comments on the "Winds of Heaven," or in 

 "Locality and Nature" describes a river-bank on Exmoor. 

 The way, too, in which human and natural factors are con- 

 stantly mixed together, no matter what may be the title of the 

 page, is in refreshing contrast to the writing of many lovers of 

 Nature, who seem to believe that because they love Nature 

 they must either ignore or protest against the presence and 

 the works of man. 



Recent Plant Portrafts. 



Rotanical Magazine, February. 



Strelitzia Nicolai, /. 7038 ; a splendid arl)orcscent species, 

 long cultivated in Ein'opean gardens, and, imtil 1858, when it 

 flowered at St. Petersburg, confounded with another south 

 African species, S. Augusta. The geograjjhical range of the 

 latter, and the exact locality where the former species grows 

 spontaneously are still unknown. 



Styrax Obassia, t. 7039 ; " one of the most tittractive of the 

 many hardy shrubs introduced within late years from Japan, 

 where it is a native of the soufliern mountains of Kiusiu and 

 Sikok. Siebold, who discovered it in Jajian, attributes to it no 

 other property but its scent of Hyacinth." The hardiness of 

 this very ornamental shrub, or small tree, in oiu^ northern 

 states has not been entirely established yet. 



Iris Meda, /. 7040 ; " this is a well-marked new Iris, which 

 was discovered in Persia, in the year 1882, by the Austrian 

 traveler, Polac, and introduced by him to Vienna. Its nearest 

 alliance is with the south European Iris Chaina;iris, of which 

 the flower in the type is yellow, and of which there are two 

 fine violet varieties." The ])erianth-tube of the flower of this 

 new plant which has been produced in England in the gardens 

 of Professor Michael Foster, whose collection and knowledge 

 of Irises are imrivaled, is greenish yellow, copiously varied 

 from top to bottom with ])rown ; the outer segments are brown 

 in the centre, with a dense yellow band. Tiic flower is curious, 

 rather than handsome in its markings ; and its interest woifld 

 seem to be rather botanical than horticultural. 



Opuntia Rafinesquii, t. 7041 ; a well-known and widely- 

 distributed North American plant. 



Dendrobium gracii.icaui.e, /. 7042 ; an inconspicuous spe- 

 cies of no horticultiu-al value ; a native of Queensland, of New 

 South Wales, and of Lord Howe's Island. 



Odon'j-oglossum carispum, var. Ruckerianum Superbum ; 

 Revice Horticole, February i ; M. Andr^ suggests that this fine 

 plant, which is a native of flie mountains to the north of 

 Bogota, may be a natural hybrid between 0. crisptim and 0. 

 A7tderso7iianum. 



