39 
August i, 1885.] The Australasian Scientific Magazine. 
clean-feeding snail who would nevertheless gulp down an oyster. Now, 
the snail makes very good food for many of our birds, but there are very 
few fishes that could render a good account of an oyster. The book is 
interesting as a literary curiosity, but we think, for many reasons some of 
which we have indicated above, Mr. Holt will not gain many converts to his 
new dietary. 
Alocassia Sander i ana. — This is a very handsome and truly grand 
arad, introduced from the Eastern Archipelago, and forming one of the 
finest of the va negated- leaved stove plants yet introduced into Europe. On 
the young leaves the colour is bright glossy green, and on the older leaves 
the surface has a metallic blue reflection. The leaf blade is arrow shaped, 
the front portion with about three triangular lobes on each side, the basal 
portion with one or two smaller lobes. The thick costa and the stout 
cross veins are white, conspicuously bordered with ivory white, the margins 
also being white. This is one of the most beautiful of all the alocassias, 
and a most magnificent foliage plant. It was recently shown at the great 
Whitsun Horticultural Exhibition at Manchester, and awarded a first class 
certificate of merit. 
Young standard fruit trees — apples, for instance — are often sadly 
neglected. The long, straight shoots of hundreds of them are neither 
shortened at the time of planting nor afterwards. The result of that great 
error is that a few shoots push from towards the extremities, while the 
lower portions, to the extent often of eighteen inches or more, are 
practically destitute of growths, and the first crop the trees bear drags 
down the branches, and they never get up again. Such trees are practi- 
cally spoiled, or, at least, they are manifestly inferior to others of the same 
age that have been pruned, and the subsequent growth intelligently 
pinched during the first few years after planting. We would rather shorten 
the young shoots now with tufts of growth near their tips, that are to be 
found on trees planted last autumn or this spring. Then leave them as 
they are, on the principle of choosing the lesser of two evils ; and young 
trees that have been properly pruned, and the young growths pinched back 
systematically, will have presently main branches so strong that they would 
bear heavy weights without bending down. Such trees will be in a condition 
to bear more fruit than the untended trees can possibly do, and they are 
immeasurably superior, having regard to their future career and productive- 
ness. They will be strong, well formed, and studded with spurs, and will 
need but comparatively little pruning afterwards. 
We have just received Part V. of “ The Forest Flora of South Australia,” 
by J. E. Brown, F.L.S., Conservator of Forests for the Government of 
South Australia. The plates, which are seventeen inches by thirteen 
inches, are chromo-lithographed by E. Spillar, Government printer, of 
Adelaide, and in addition to flowering and fruiting branchlets show sections 
of flower, fruit and stem. This number contains two plates of Eucalyptus 
gracilis , popularly called malice, one of white the other of the red barked 
variety : Myoporum insulare , the u blue-berry tree,” sometimes called the 
“ native currant tree,” “native myrtle,” or “native juniper;” Melaleuca 
squarrosa, , the “ bottle brush tea tree,” and Pittosporum phillyrmides, the 
u poison berry tree.” Very valuable for botanists not living in Australia 
are the notes in the descriptive letterpress which Mr. Brown makes of 
the faithfulness of the chromo-lithographs, as without some such criticism 
the value of the plates could be but surmised. Thus the orange tinge of 
the “ white mallee” at the first glance raises the question, why is not this 
called the yellow mallee ? The bark is certainly represented greyish-white, 
