190 



ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



appeared desirable to find some means of giving a general notion 

 of the vegetable kingdom — a matter of the greater difficulty on 

 account of the enormous extent of some natural orders. 



To accomplish this, 400 plants in pots are placed on the borders 

 of the garden, representing all the important families. This 

 arrangement has proved very instructive. A perfectly similar 

 arrangement has been applied to the stoves of the garden, in each 

 division of which there is a synoptical table of the contents. 

 Officinal poisonous trees, plants important in commerce or the 

 arts, as also plants of every climate and order, are grouped as 

 much as possible so as to enable the student during winter to 

 study, thanks to their concentration and mode of grouping, what 

 is spread over the whole garden in summer. 



The anatomical and physiological characters of plants deserve a 

 not less particular attention. With this end, we have formed a 

 physiological section, surrounded by protecting hedges, designed 

 to show the details of the normal and pathological development of 

 trees. The following general view will afford some notion of our 

 plan. The normal increase is represented in part by tables, in 

 part by vertical sections of oaks (Quercus pedunculata) which 

 have attained an age of from 161 to 500 years, and of red deal, 

 Pinus abies and JP. Picea. Amongst these last we have a sec- 

 tion of a trunk of a fir which came from Bohmerwald, 4500 feet 

 above the level of the sea, which was 175 feet high, with 507 

 annual rings, and 14 feet in circumference at 5| feet above the 

 surface of the soil. Another trunk from the same locality pre- 

 sents 448 annual rings. Its height was 186 feet. A third, 

 from Heuscheuer, in Silesia, has 395 rings. 



Abnormal growth is represented by the linear fusion of branches 

 of red and white beech, trunks of oak, larch, and linden, bent 

 in the form of a crook, and by that of the roots of trunks 

 a hundred years old. Then follow specimens, after the fashion of 

 palms and screwpalms, of red and white larch, whose trunks rise 

 from the soil, supported by pillars four or five feet long, haying 

 put forth everywhere aerial roots. The formation of veins and 

 knots of wood is displayed on a large scale, trunks twisted to the 

 right or left, injuries produced by insects, remarkable formations 

 of fungi, &c. In the middle of this department there is a fossil 

 trunk, in its original position, of Pinites protolarioc, Groepp., 

 36 feet in circumference, coming from the bed of lignite at Saurau 

 in Silesia: the interior is hollow; but, judging from what remains, 

 it must haye had from four to five thousand rings. Around the 



