316 THE PH ILADELPHIA FL ORIST. [Na. 10 



marsh, and which, penetrating hetween the stalks and interlaced leaves J-* 

 of all these plants, serves to bind them and to make a surface, which 

 hardens still more when covered with a bed of rushes. The next 

 thing is to make these artificial islands stationary ; the cultivators do 

 this by thrusting in at equal distances stalks of willow, sufficiently 

 deep to resist the force of the winds— an arrangement which permits 

 these floating masses to rise and fall with the water of the lake. With 

 fresh grasses, they form along the whole length of the rafts conical 

 heaps about a foot and a half high, and as large at the base, and hol- 

 lowed at the top into a kind of nest, which they fill with the mud 

 from the bottom of the lake, and which they generally mix with wood 

 ashes ; then planting commences, The cultivator takes young plants 

 of melons and cucumbers, which he has in readiness; he puts three in 

 each heap, and abandons them to themselves." 



Moorcroft, and after him another traveller who has passed through 

 the valley of Cashmere, assures us that they have never seen in Eu- 

 rope so vigorous and productive plantations of melons and cucumbers. 

 The gathering is done like the planting, in boats, in which they go 

 around the beds. These beds are generally strong enough to bear the 

 weight of the man whose business it is to gather the produce. This 

 mode of culture is not confined to Cashmere ; it is also found in China. 

 In that country each cultivator possesses his raft, numbered, which he 

 moors to the bank, and which he launches into the middle of the 

 lakes or of the ponds, after having deposited his young plants of 

 melons or of water melons, which he tends and gathers by drawing 

 to the banks the little floating islands which bear them. This Chinese 

 culture is very rational, they know how much need of water melons 

 have at their period of full growth, and they understand how their 

 young roots, in continual contact with the water into which they 

 penetrate, serve to give the plants uncommon vigor. This mode, 

 then, very simple as is evident, is in harmony with what we know 

 of the vegetation of melons, and of the functions of roots. JVaitdin, 



Humboldt in his " Aspects of Nature," says of the valley of Cash- 

 mere, H the delightfulness of its climate is considerably impaired by 

 foqr months of snow in the streets of Sirinagur, its principal city.-— 

 * * * The beauty of its vegetation has from the earliest 

 times been very differently described, according as the visitor came 

 from the rich and luxuriant vegetation of India, or from the northern 

 regions of Turkestan, Samarcand and Ferghana." 



GARDEN MEMORANDA. 



Dryburgh's, Logan Square. Mr. Dryburgh has been established a 



long time, and he is already surrounded by buildings. His speciality J^ 



%: is the furnishing of cut flowers ; and here we may see in the present, Gj 



3fe29bv stfQVm 



