3 82 
[October, 
AMERICAN AG-RIO QLTUPJST. 
vitality. Profiting by that lesson, I this season sowed 
two acres of celery seed (in quantity about 20 lbs.), 
the rows being about nine inches apart—“ the mark¬ 
er ” deepening the lines some two or three inches. 
After the man who sowed the seed, there followed 
another, who, with the ball of the right foot, press¬ 
ed down with his full weight every inch of the soil 
over the seed. The ground was then lightly touch¬ 
ed with a rake to level it, a light roller was then 
passed over it, and the operation was completed. 
Our crop of plants, notwithstanding the intense 
heat and drouth of the past summer, was as fine as 
it well could be, every seed seeming to have ger¬ 
minated. Besides, this “firming” of the soil had 
also prevented the dry, hot air from penetrating to 
the roots, so that, though we nearly averaged 90° 
during the mouth of July, hardly a plant was burn¬ 
ed off. Now, from the same bag of celery seed 
that produced these plants, we sold seed to some 
hundreds of our customers, and we have already 
had scores of letters asking why their celery seed 
did not come up ; not a few of them insinuating 
that the seed they had obtained was not good. To 
all such we, by letter, stated emphatically the cause 
of failure, and I trust that all whose seeds of celery 
or anything else fail to germinate, will first fairly 
investigate whether or not the fault has not been 
with themselves, rather than with the seed. I 
think it was the second year after I had begun the 
business of market gardening, that I planted six 
acres of sweet corn on a light, warm soil in the first 
week in July. As it is ofteu the case at that sea¬ 
son of the year, the ground was dry when planted, 
and it was nearly the end of the month before all 
the corn was above ground. The ground was care¬ 
fully cultivated, but the whole operation was near¬ 
ly in vain; as, before the corn had produced the 
desired “roasting ears,” the crop was caught with 
frost and destroyed. Now, two or three pressures 
of the foot on each hill would have started the 
seeds at once, making a difference of two or three 
weeks in the maturing of the crop, and would prob¬ 
ably have put a thousand dollars into my pocket, but 
I did not know the cause of failure then, nor, I must 
acknowledge, for many years after. Some years 
ago, as an experiment, I sowed seeds of beets, 
turnips, corn, and spinach, in July, treading in 
every alternate row. The beets and corn matured 
then- crops in every instance where the seed had 
been trodden in, and failed to do so where this had 
not been done. In the case of the spinach and 
turnip seeds, the rows trod in germinated freely 
and at once, while the rows of those that had been 
left loose nearly failed entirely. The experiment 
was made with a view to show that beets of all 
kinds sown as late as the first of July, when the 
seeds germinate at once, have yet time to produce 
a crop, and sweet corn has time enough to produce 
its ears sufficiently mature for use in the green 
state, and furthermore to prove what I had long 
believed, that thousands upon thousands of acres of 
turnips fail from the want of “firming” the soil 
when the seed is sown. Of course if large areas 
are sown in turnips, the treading in w'ith the foot 
might not be practicable ; the next best thing is the 
roller, but that must be heavy enough to effect the 
purpose. As I have before hinted in the case of 
celery plants, the looseness of the soil not only pre¬ 
vents rapid germination, but even if germination 
does take place, and a long period of hot and dry 
weather follow, the young plant itself may be burn¬ 
ed out, if the soil is Joose, so that the dry, heat¬ 
ed air can penetrate to the weak and tender root. 
This burning out after the seed has germinated, is 
sweeping in its effects on all seeds that are sown 
after midsummer, such as spinach, beets, turnips, 
etc., if the weather is dry and the soil loose. I beg 
to caution my inexperienced readers, however, by 
no means to tread or roll in seed if the ground is 
not dry. The soil may often be in a suitable condi¬ 
tion to sow, and yet be too damp to be trodden 
upon or rolled. In such cases these operations 
may not be necessary at all, for if rainy weather 
ensue, the seeds will germinate of course, but if 
there is any likelihood of continued drouth, the 
treading or rolling may be done a week or more 
after the seed has been sown, if there is reason to 
believe that it may suffer from the dry, hot air. 
Another very important advantage gained by tread¬ 
ing in the seeds is, that when we have crops of 
beets, celery, turnips, spinach, or anything else 
that is sown in rows, the seeds to form the crop 
come up at once ; while the seeds of the weeds, 
that are just as liable to perish by the heat as are 
those of the crop, are retarded. Such of the weed 
seeds as lie in the space between the rows when the 
soil is loose, will not germinate as quickly as those 
of the crop sown ; and hence we can cultivate be¬ 
tween the rows before the weeds germinate at all. 
Such was our experience the past season in the two 
acres of celery plants alluded to, as the rows of the 
celery were clearly defined before the weeds had 
germinated at all, so that the hoe was applied at 
once, rendering the cost of culture less than half 
what it would have been had the seeds of the celery 
and those of the weeds started simultaneously. 
One of my neighbors, a market gardener, with 
whom I was conversing on the importance of this 
subject, stated to me that he had failed thrice in 
succession with lettuce seed sown in July, either 
from its failing to come up at all, or being burned 
off after it germinated; but in every case he had 
sown in dry weather, and had failed to tread in the 
seed, simply rolling the ground. Although one of 
our most successful men, with long years of ex¬ 
perience, he had never before adopted the plan of 
“firming” the soil upon seed in dry weather, but 
at once became convinced of its importance on my 
statement of the leading facts stated in this article. 
How Flowers are Fertilized. 
BY PROP. ASA GRAY. 
ARTICLE VIII.—BEANS AND OTHER FLOWERS OF 
THE PULSE FAMILY. 
In the course of an eloquent defence of a Salem 
sea-captain, charged with ill-treating and half-starv¬ 
ing his crew, the late Bufus Choate electrified the 
jury by his eulogy of “that excellent esculent and 
superlatively succulent vegetable, the bean.” We 
are to discourse upon the same topic, but not from 
the same point of view, nor in the grandiloquent 
style of the famous Massachusetts advocate. Al¬ 
though it is to be a standard dish in our present re¬ 
past, the bean is too good, for our puipose, to be 
served at the beginning. We propose to bring it in 
at the end, and to begin with a papilionaceous or 
Pulse blossom, which ranks with the False Indigo 
and Clover as to plan of fertilization, that is, with 
the flowers we were occupied with in our last arti¬ 
cle. Clover-blossoms are individually small; so 
we take one of Wistaria, which is constructed on 
the same principle, only the flowers are in an open 
raceme instead of being crowded into a head, and 
the corolla is not lengthened and consolidated be¬ 
low' into a tube. 
Fig. 1 represents a Wistaria flower. The large 
upper petal turn¬ 
ed back away 
from the rest is 
named the stand¬ 
ard ; the two side- 
petals below are 
the wings; the 
boat-shaped piece 
between the wings 
is called the keel. 
This consists of a 
pair of petals., 
joined together 
along the lower 
side — where the 
keel would be if 
the whole thing 
were a boat, but 
free and a little 
open at the upper 
edge. This keel 
completely en- 
except ore-half of lceel removed.— closes the sta- 
Fig. 3 .—Same with heel depressed by mens anc i pistil. 
the weight of a bee. There are ten 
stamens ; nine with filaments united up to the 
curvature into a sheath split along the upper edge, | 
where lies the separate tenth stamen (figs. 2 and 
3. The pistil is enclosed in the sheath ; the tip of the 
style, and the surmounting stigma, may be seen, on 
close inspection of fig.2andfig.3, among the anthers. 
Fig. 4 is an enlarged representation of the stigma, 
(the little knob at the tip surrounded by a little 
fringe of bristles), the style, and the upper half of 
the ovary or forming pod. The anthers surround 
the stigma • and— 
unless the minute 
fringe has some effect 
—there is nothing to 
prevent the pollen 
from falling upon the 
stigma. Like Clover 
and Baptism it surely 
may self-fertilize, and 
Fig. 4 .—Pistil of same, lacking the the wonder is that it 
lower part of the ovary, enlarged, does not universally 
or generally do so. 
But bees and other flying insects visit all these 
flowers ; and in Wistaria the mode of approach and 
operation is nearly the same as in Baptisia or False 
Indigo, already described. The bee, with head ap¬ 
proaching the center of the flower, to insert its 
tongue down at the junction of the standard and 
keel, alights or partially rests on the latter. Un¬ 
touched, it is in the position of fig. 2, the weight 
depresses it to that of fig. 3, and so lets the abdo¬ 
men of the insect plump down upon the now pro¬ 
truding anthers and stigma. The first flower so 
visited simply deposits a quantity of pollen upon 
the under side of the insect’s body. The next, 
Brushing its stigma over some part of the pollen- 
covered surface, gets fertilization from the pollen 
of the preceding flower, and at the same moment 
gives a fresh supply of pollen, of which the next 
flower visited gets the benefit, and so on. In any 
instance, the stigma may get some own-flower pol¬ 
len, and be self-fertilized ; but it is equally or more 
likely to get the pollen of other blossoms, and so 
be cross-fertilized. We cannot be far wrong in as¬ 
suming that all this is meant for cross-fertilization 
either generally or occasionally. 
In all such flowers the insect does not usually a- 
light or press upon the keel alone, but upon the 
wings and keel together, or upon the wings only 
when these are large in proportion and cover the 
keel. But the two are locked together toward the 
base, so that pressure upon the wings depresses the 
keel all the same, and produces the effect. 
From such papilionaceous flowers in which cross¬ 
fertilization must be frequent, let us pass to those 
of the same family in which it is made sure. There 
are all gradations, and many ways of doing the 
thing, showing an exhaustless fertility of contriv¬ 
ance. Probably not half the ways are known yet 
in this well-known and familiar family of flowers, I 
will here illustrate only two of them, and leave a 
third for a future article. In both the cases now in 
hand, the pollen is transferred to the style under¬ 
neath the stigma as soon as the blossom opens, or 
even earlier—so far in the fashion of the Bell-flow’- 
ers, described in our first article. Peas and Beans 
are our examples. 
Instead of Pea, we take a Locust-blossom, be¬ 
cause it is simpler to represent. There is a compli¬ 
cation and twisting of the style in the common Pea 
which is not quite so easy to show clearly in a wood- 
cut, but the contrivance is the same. Locust-blos- 
Figs. 5 and G .—Flowers of Locust, with all the petals ex¬ 
cept the keel removed. 
soms are so like those of Wistaria, (shown in our 
figure 1,) that there is no need to give a separate 
drawing of a whole one. Figure 5 shows one with 
the standard and wings taken away, the keel only 
remaining. Figure 6, the same when the keel is 
pressed down by the alighting of a bee on the 
wings, which are large and broad. Only the end of 
the style, with the stigma at its tip, projects ; the 
anthers remaiu within. This projecting tip strikes 
