123 



ly impregnated with ammonia, and in such red 

 spider cannot live. 



Prevention is, in all cases, better than cure, and 

 to this end a dressing applied in winter to trees that 

 are liable t > be attacked, will be found effectual, 

 coating not only the stems and branches, but the 

 walls. This dressing may be made of soft soap, at 

 the rate of four ounces to every gallon of water, 

 with enough of this to equal parts of flowers of sul- 

 phur and fresh lime to bring them to the consist- 

 ency of paint for the trees, and of whitewash for 

 the walls. The application should be repeated on 

 the walls and heated surface when the leaves attain 

 their full size, and again when the fruit commences 

 to ripen. Its action depends on the fumes of the 

 sulphur being generated by artificial or sun-heat, 

 and the soft soap causes the mixture to adhere ; the 

 lime, too, is a powerful remedy against spider, and 

 its more formidable rival mildew. By thus dress- 

 ing the ste us and branches, the eggs are destroyed. 



Lastly, daily sprinkling the floors and every avail- 

 able surface, from the time that growth commences, 

 with soot water, made by placing in a cask a peck 

 of dry soot, and pouring over it thirty gallons of 

 water, will produce an atmosphere in which red 

 spider will rarely appear. Soot water, with the ad- 

 dition of a peck of sheep's dung to thirty gallons of 

 water, is excellent for filling evaporation- troughs, 

 and so, too, is guano, at the rate of four ounces to 

 the gallon of ivater. For syringing, the soot water 

 should be clear, and it will not injure the most deli- 

 cate foliage ; but guano water for syringing, should 

 not only be clear, but strained, and not stronger 

 than one ounce to the gallon. Dressing with soot 

 borders in which are trees or plants liable to be at- 

 tacked, is a very good preventive ; also watering 

 overhead with guano water in the evening ; but the 

 best of all preventives and remedies is to keep the 

 plants moist, to give plenty of air, and to maintain 

 as cool an atmosphere as is consistent with their 

 healthy development. — G. Abbey in Journal of 

 Horticulture. 



Sarracenias. — Pitcher plants are so quaint in 

 their organization, so striking in their appearance, 

 that they attract the attention, both of the profes- 

 sional and the amateur. It is hardly necessary to 

 remind the reader that under the common name of 

 Pitcher Plants, several very distinct groups of 

 plants are included, and that sometimes Cabbages, 

 Lettuces, and other plants become exceptionally, 

 and for the nonce, enti ed to the designation, inas- 

 muc has they occasional y produce p tchers. Some- 

 times the pitcher is formed from the mere rolling in 



and union of the edges of a leaf, sometimes from 

 the dilatation of a leaf-stalk into a funnel or horn- 

 like tube. 



The North American Sarracenias afford good 

 illustrations of the latter, and with the closely allied 

 Darlingtonia from California, and the Helianiphwa 

 from British Guiana, constitute a very well marked 

 natural group, confined to the American continent, 

 and in the case of Sarracenia purpurea extending 

 from Canada to Fl rida, and thus evincing a capa- 

 city for existence under widely different elimatal 

 conditions. The headquarters of the genus may^ 

 however, be considered to be the Southern States 

 of the great trans- Atlantic republic. The flowers 

 of the Sarracenias are remarkable for their large 

 petal-like, umbrella-shaped stigmas, which conceal 

 the stamens, much in the same way as those organs 

 are covered in Iris by the petaloid styles : but thb 

 great size of the stigma only exists in Sarracenia ^ 

 and is not found in Heliamphora, while Darlington- 

 ia is intermediate between the two in having a 

 slightly five-lobed stigma. 



The structure of these pitchers, judging froiB 

 that of S. purpurea, is broadly this ; there is an 

 outer and inner epidermis, or skin, consisting of 

 cells with a wavy outline, and permeated by stomata 

 or pores on both surface ; from the inner epidermis, 

 or that forming the lining of the pitcher, project 

 numerous coarse, conical hairs, whose points are 

 directed downwards, as if to prevent the escape of 

 any insect that may be enticed into the pitcher by 

 the water therein, though it is hard to see what 

 benefit can accrue to the plant by its thus serving 

 as a beetle-trap. The cellular tissue of the pitcher 

 is loose and spongy, permeated by pitted duets and 

 thick-walled wood cells, but destitute, so far as we 

 have observed, of true spiral vessels. The struc- 

 ture of the stem is decidedly exogenous, — a point 

 of some consequence in a botanical point of view, as 

 it was at one time questioned whether these plants 

 were truly Exogens or no. Since then, however, 

 the germination of some of the species has been 

 observed, and two long linear cotyledons have been 

 seen. Seedlings do not appear to be common, and 

 are unknown in this country. 



Doubts have sometimes been raised as to whether 

 the water that is found in the pitchers is secreted 

 by those organs, or whether it comes from without. 

 Certainly in some of the species drops of water may 

 be seen through the transparent tube, while the 

 mouth of the tube is still closed by the lid. 



The different species of Sarracenia are distin- 

 guished one from the other by the form and arrange- 

 ment of their pitche and the size and color of 



