April 13, 1882. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
303 
3 feet in diameter and bearing 180 flower buds, was sold for 
£9 19,?. Gd. A fine plant of Bollea coelestis of an excellent variety 
realised fourteen guineas, and other smaller plants were sold for 
proportionate prices. 
- An elaborate treatise upon the weather of 1881 as ob¬ 
served in the neighbourhood of London has been issued by Mr. 
Edward Mawley, Addiscombe, Croydon, one of the Honorary 
Secretaries of the National Rose Society. It comprises tables of 
meteorological observations for each month in the year, they being 
accompanied by comparative comments upon the weather in other 
districts and in previous years, concluding with a summary of the 
observations. Mr. Mawley deserves much credit for the care and 
labour he has expended upon the work, which will'undoubtedly 
possess much interest and value for the scientific and amateur 
meteorologist. It is published by Messrs. E. Stanford, Charing 
Cross, and Withams & Strahan, Laurence Lane, E.C. 
-At a meeting of the South African Philosophical Society 
attention was called to the haphazard system pursued in con¬ 
nection with the management of the South’African Forests 
of the Knysna district, owing to the practice which prevailed of 
wood-cutters felling a tree and destroying a couple of hundred 
other trees in getting it out. The wood-cutters who do the mis¬ 
chief are represented to be merely squatters, having no holdingsj 
and generally in the hands of the wood-merchants. The Knysna 
forest, one of the few remaining forests of the colony, will, it is 
feared, if no action is taken by the Government, soon be a thing 
of the past. The entrance to the harbour only wants a little 
deepening to make it one of the finest on the coast, as the water 
in the river is just as deep now as it was when surveyed many 
years ago ; but if the forest is destroyed, the depth of the river 
must be seriously affected. Last year some 9000 tons of wood 
were shipped, independent of that sent inland .—(Indian Agri- 
eulturist.) 
- In Mr. W. Bull’s extensive and choice collection of 
Orchids at Chelsea the Odontoglossums are now extremely 
beautiful, a large number of species and handsome varieties 
being in flower. The house specially devoted to these is parti¬ 
cularly gay, and gives at a glance an admirable idea of the extent 
of variation in the genus and the great beauty of many species- 
The well-known O. cirrhosum, O. Rossi, O. crispum, O. gloriosum, 
O. maculatum, O. Halli, and many others are abundantly repre¬ 
sented by varieties of great merit—all the best, indeed, that can be 
obtained. One form of O. cirrhosum was particularly fine, the 
sepals and petals being very broad and the spots rich in colour. 
O. Halli nigrum, which was certificated at the Botanic Society’s 
Spring Show, is remarkable for the large, deeply coloured, nearly 
black-barred flowers—a wonderfully fine and distinct variety. One 
specimen of a pretty form of this species had four spikes, one 
bearing twenty flowers, and the others fourteen, thirteen, and 
eleven each. Of the numerous new introductions and varieties 
very notable is O. baphicanthum, which has whitish flowers 
spotted with chocolate, a variety being grown greatly superior to 
the type. 0. crispum mirabile is superb, with large flowers of 
excellent shape and richly spotted with chocolate at the base of 
sepals and petals. 0. Pescatorei album is a pure white-flowered 
variety, very handsome; with 0. triumphans, O. Wilckeanum 
album, 0. gloriosum nigro-pictum, and 0. cordatum, constitute an 
unrivalled display at the present time. In the other departments 
Cattleyas are advancing grandly, Masdevallias, Dendrobiums, and 
the magnificent plants of Cymbidium Lowianum being conspicuous 
features amongst many others that are noteworthy. 
- The Philadelphia Telegraph states that an examination 
of the Delta of the Mississippi shows that, for a distance of 
about three hundred miles of this deposit, there are buried forests 
of large trees, one over the other, with interspaces of sand. Ten 
distinct forest growths of this nature have been observed, which 
must have succeeded one another. These trees are the Bald 
Cypress of the Southern States. Some have been observed over 
25 feet in diameter, and one contained 5700 annual rings. In 
some instances, too, these huge trees have grown over the stumps 
of others equally large. From these facts geologists have assumed 
the antiquity of each forest growth at 10,000 years, or 100,000 for 
the whole. This estimate, however, would not include the interval 
of time that elapsed between the ending of one of these vast and 
wonderful forests and the beginning of another. 
- Of Orchids now in season there are few, if any, which 
can rival Ccelogyne cristata. It has many good points. It 
is cheap to purchase, easy of cultivation ; it flowers freely, and 
its flowers, besides being very beautiful, have the additional ad¬ 
vantage of enduring fresh for several weeks, nestling among the 
egg-shaped bulbs and deep glossy green leaves. Some years ago 
Mr. R. Yates of Sale, near Manchester, grew this species exten¬ 
sively, and had some superb examples of it, and the largest 
fetched as much as twenty guineas. I quote this fact because 
quite recently a superb specimen, 5 feet in diameter and a yard 
deep (bearing quite a thicket of flower spikes, some of which 
bore from six to nine blossoms), was recently sold by auction in 
London, and was bought by Mr. Sander of St. Albans for the 
modest sum of eleven guineas. It is supposed that this plant was 
from Sir Trevor Lawrence’s collection, in which doubtless by this 
time stage room is becoming scarce. It does not yet appear to 
be known very widely that there are four distinct forms of this 
chaste Orchid. First and dearest, the pure white variety C. cris¬ 
tata alba from the Gledhorn collection, and for which Mr. Bull 
is said to have given £200 ; next in whiteness and chastity comes 
the variety C. cristata Lemoniana (in compliment to Sir Charles 
Lemon), or, as it is often called, “citrina,” in allusion to the 
yellow blotch on the lip ; then comes the usual type now grown 
in all good gardens ; and lastly, but not by any means least 
worthy, comes C. cristata major, a large-flowered free-growing 
form of the type, bearing bulbs the size of large hens’ eggs, and 
spikes of seven to ten flowers of better substance and no flatter 
in form than any other variety whatever. Instead of the common 
type growers would do well to obtain this variety, which I hear 
is now in bloom at Chelsea, with nine large flowers to the spike, 
although the blooms producing them are not so large as the 
above description indicates, but such a size they really do attain 
when well grown .—(The Gardener.) 
-At the ordinary meeting of the Meteorological So¬ 
ciety, to be held by permission of the Council of the Institution 
of Civil Engineers at 25, Great George Street, Westminster, on 
Wednesday, the 19th inst. at 7 P.M., the following papers will be 
read—“ Barometric Gradients—Wind Velocity and Direction at 
the Kew Observatory,” by G. M. Whipple, B.Sc., F.M.S., and 
T. W. Baker, F.M.S. “ On Difference of Temperature with Eleva¬ 
tion,” by George Dines, F.M.S. 
- In the course of some interesting remarks by Mr. J. E. 
Russell upon tropical fruits and flowers, recorded in the Trans¬ 
actions of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, occurs the 
following passage in reference to a Cacao orchard in central 
America :— 
The most valuable indigenous production is the Cacao tree, from the 
fruit of which chocolate is prepared. The description given by the 
Spanish discoverers of the drinks used by the natives indicates that this 
was early known to them. The Cacao tree grows about as large as a 
moderate-sized Plum tree, and is exceedingly beautiful. They are 
raised in nurseries and afterwards planted in orchards, and by the 
side of each a Banana is set to shade the young Cacao tree until it is 
5 or 6 feet high. Most tropical plants when growing wild must spring 
up in the shade, and consequently when raised by art they must have 
shade afforded them artificially. At intervals in the orchards is 
