550 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



may be used to alter the colours, not only of offsets and slips, 

 but also of the flowers that arise from mother plants [i.e. 

 sports]. . . . The expert gardener endeavours to recover sickly 

 roots of choice flowers, and purposely he infects others with sick- 

 ness ... by taking up the roots a little before they come to 

 flower, and laying them in the sun to abate their luxury, and to 

 cause them to come better marked the year following " (p. 93). 

 I quote these few cases of the effects of a poor soil to show that 

 growers have found out by experience, if not by experiment, at 

 least something towards the production and fixation of sports. 

 On the other hand, nutrition enhances the intensity of colourisa- 

 tion. A friend told me that he watered white-flowered Balsams 

 with a solution of ammonia ; by this means the plants bore red 

 flowers. Soot, which conveys much ammonia to the soil, is said 

 to heighten the red colour of Apples. Chloride of lime has been 

 found to cause a self-coloured Camellia to become striped, &c. 

 Mr. Claydon also found that Weigela changed from white to rosy- 

 pink, according to the nature of the soil.* These few facts are 

 suggestive of experimentation, as the number of earths and 

 salts, &c, which might be tried are innumerable. And since 

 ingredients of the soil is the only one of all the circumstances 

 which conspire to make up the plant's environment, which is 

 really in the power of the grower, it is clear that it is in this 

 direction that experiments should be made. 



Chemical Constituents of Chrysanthemums. — The prin- 

 cipal chemical constituents of the Chrysanthemum are said by 

 Mr. George Truffaut to be in order of their importance : — 1, lime ; 

 2, phosphoric acid ; 3, potash ; 4, soda ; 5, magnesia ; 6, 

 nitrogen ; 7, silica ; 8, sulphuric acid ; 9, oxides of iron and 

 manganese ; 10, chlorine. In the flowers, nitrogen exists 

 abundantly as well as phosphoric acid, magnesia, and potash ; 

 lime exists in the leaves, and large quantities of silica in the 

 roots. The compost recommended by Mr. Truffaut in the 

 Journal dc la Socidtd Nationalc d' Horticulture de France as 

 the outcome of his investigations consists of — " Leaf-mould, 

 1 part ; mould from an old cucumber bed, 1 part ; coarse sand, 

 1 part ; loam, 1 part ; wood-ashes, \ part. Over this is dusted a 

 small proportion (1 per cent.) of phosphate of lime."f 



* Oard. Chron. Dec. G, 1890. p. 608. 

 f Ibid. May 2, 1896, p. 557. 



