824 
AMERICAN AG-RICULTURIST, 
fSEPTEMBEB, 
should be delayed. Covering the ground, how¬ 
ever, around the bushes with three or four 
inches of straw or leaves, to prevent the earth 
from being frozen, should be done a month 
earlier; this little precaution will allow of 
excavation at the time of covering with the 
sod. The time here given for the operation 
(the middle of December) is that best suited for 
the latitude of New York; sections to the North 
or South must be varied accordingly. Perhaps 
the best rule that can be given is, to delay the 
operation until the ground can no longer be 
plowed or dug with the spade. The covering of 
sod may be removed as soon as vegetation fair¬ 
ly starts in spring—-for this section, say the mid¬ 
dle of April—the plants raised to the upright 
position and closely pruned. It will be under¬ 
stood that in the process of bending down, the 
roots are only disturbed slightly on the side that 
has been excavated, consequently they have 
nearly the full vigor of an undisturbed root, 
and the plants will grow in a way that will 
amply repay the little trouble given them. 
Every plant saved over in this way has a value 
four-fold of any thing that can be planted in 
spring, for the obvious reason that it has not had 
its roots disturbed by removal. This plan is a 
great improvement on that sometimes practised 
of digging them up and burying them in the 
fall, to be unearthed and again replanted in 
spring, for this cannot be done without mutila¬ 
tion of the root, and consequently diminished 
growth the next season. Plants of different kinds 
vary much in their ability to recuperate, after 
planting, and few suffer more than the Eose, 
hence the necessity of practising the method 
recommended, in preference to that of digging 
them up. But a still worse plan is, for amateurs 
in gardening to lift their Hose plants and pot 
them in fall and attempt to keep them in the 
house or cellar in winter; in nine cases out of 
ten they never live to spring, and if they do, 
only linger out a miserable and diseased exist¬ 
ence. Roses are often expensive, and always 
valued plants, and we can well imagine how 
natural it is on the approach of cold weather 
to lift and pot them, and place them in the 
window of a warm sitting room or parlor ; but 
this kindness is killing to them, for they are not 
a kind of plant that desires heat at this season, 
or in this condition of their growth. It is still 
more delusive to think that they can be lifted 
from the ground in fall and potted so that tliey 
will bloom during winter; perhaps by such 
treatment as can be given in a cool green¬ 
house or frame, they may be got to bloom by 
February or March, but they should never he 
forced into bloom earlier, unless they have been 
grown in pots during the summer previous. 
Striking Cuttings in Sand. 
A correspondent writes: “In the June Agri¬ 
culturist, (p. 237,) you gave a process of rooting 
cuttings in sand as practised by Mr. Henderson 
and others with success. The following plan, 
which I adopted some years since, answers the 
purpose in a small way. I had some tin basins 
made in the following manner: three inches in 
depth, ten inches in diameter at the bottom, 
and eight inches at the top. These were paint¬ 
ed black and varnished, filled with fine sand, 
and kept constantly wet. The cuttings were 
from three to four inches in length, and placed 
in the sand about half an inch apart. They 
were placed in a sheltered spot where the sun 
could shine on them all day. At night they 
were removed to the house. The sides being 
sloping and black, the sun acted with powerful 
effect upon them, and kept the sand quite 
warm, and I found that I could grow anything 
which could be grown from a cutting in any 
propagating house. They were very useful, 
simple, and cheap.” 
Insects and Plant Fertilization. 
FOURTH ARTICLE, 
We described in our last article the ways in 
which insects are made to fertilize two or three 
of our wild Orchids, taken as specimens of the 
whole tribe. Orchids exhibit the greatest diver¬ 
sities and the strangest forms in tropical coun¬ 
tries, and the contrivances by which some of 
these are fertilized are, if possible, still more 
wonderful than those which we have attempted 
to describe. Take, for example, the case of 
Coryantlies, a large-flowered Orchid of Trini¬ 
dad. We can not describe it more briefly and 
graphically than in the following abstract by 
Mr. Darwin: 
Hg. 1.—A flower of Kalmia laUfolia; the stamens of 
which are out of their sockets, liaving done their work. 
“ This Orchid has its labellum or lower lip hol¬ 
lowed out into a great bucket, into which drops 
of almost pure water, not nectar, continually 
fall from two secreting horns which stand above 
it; and when the bucket is half full, the water 
overflows by a spout on one side. The basal 
part of the labellum curves over the bucket, 
and is itself hollowed out into a sort of cham¬ 
ber with two lateral entrances, within which 
and outside there are some curious fleshy ridges. 
The most ingenious man, if he had not witness¬ 
ed what takes place, could never have imagined 
what purpose all these parts served. But Dr. 
Criiger saw crowds of large humble-bees visit¬ 
ing the gigantic flowers of this Orchid in the 
early morning, and they came, not to suck nec¬ 
tar, but to gnaw off the I’idges above the buck¬ 
et; in doing this they frequently pushed each 
other into the bucket, and thus their wings were 
wetted, so that they could not fl_v out, but had 
to crawl out through the passage formed by the 
spout or overflow. Dr. Criiger has seen a ‘con¬ 
tinual procession ’ of bees thus crawling out of 
their involuntary bath. The passage is narrow, 
and is roofed over by the column, so that a bee, 
in forcing its way out, first rubs its back against 
the viscid stigma, and then against the viscid 
glands of the pollen-masses. The pollen mass¬ 
es are thus glued to the back of the bee which 
first happened to crawl through the passage of 
a lately expanded flower, and are thus carried 
away. Df. Criiger sent me a flower in spirits 
of wine, with a bee which he bad killed before 
it had quite crawled out of the passage with a 
pollen-mass fastened to its back. When the 
bee flius provided, flies to another flower, or to 
the same "flower a second time, and is pushed 
by its comrades into the bucket and then crawls 
out by the passage, the pollen-mass necessarily 
comes first into contact with the viscid stigma, 
and adheres to it, and the flower is fertilized. 
Now at last we see the full use of the water-se¬ 
creting horns, of the bucket with its spout, and 
of the shape of every part of the flower.” 
Fact is here stranger than fancy; for no one 
would have beforehand imagined such an ar¬ 
rangement. Catasetum, another large-flowered 
Orchid of the same region, is equally visited by 
bees, for the purpose of feeding on the sub¬ 
stance of the labellum or sac of the flower. 
“In doing this they inevitably touch a long, 
tapering, sensitive projection, or, as I have call¬ 
ed it, antenna. The antenna being touched, 
causes a certain membrane to rupture through 
its own irritability, and this sets free a spring 
by which the pollen-mass is shot forth, like an 
arrow, in the right direction, and adheres by its 
viscid extremity to the back of the bee. The 
pollen-mass is thus carried to another flower, 
where it is brought into contact with the stigma, 
which is viscid enough to break certain elastic 
threads, and to retain the pollen-mass which 
then performs its office of fertilization.” 
This brings to mind the flower of Barberry. 
Every one knows that the six stamens around 
the pistil stand, bent a little backwards, one un¬ 
der each of the over-arching petals; and that 
when the base of the filament is touched on the 
inner side, it starts forward by a sudden move-, 
ment of irritation. With our vision now en¬ 
lightened we can see the use of this to the plant. 
The anther opens, in an unusual way, by a sort 
of trap door, one on eacli side, binged at the 
top; these doors when the blossom is open 
stand ajar, or are at length uplifted; so that 
when the stamen springs forward at a touch, 
the pollen rattles out into the bottom of the 
flower. Now as the flowers are visited bj’’ small 
winged insects which seek for nectar at the bot¬ 
tom of the flower, we may be confident they will 
touch the sensitive base of the filaments, and 
consequently get powdered with some of the 
discharged pollen; they will carry this pol¬ 
len to the next flower they visit, and as they 
enter it they can hardly fliil to rub some of it 
on the button-shaped stigma. We have not 
watched the operation in the case of the Bar¬ 
berry, but we hope some of our readers will do 
so next year, and report the result. We have, 
however, admiringly seen the thing done in a 
somewhat similar way, although by a different 
mechanism, in the flowers of our common Kal¬ 
mia, or American Laurel. Here, in all the spe¬ 
cies, there is an ingenious contrivance, in which 
elasticity is made to do the work which in the 
Barberry is done by a vital irritability. 
Fig. 1, represents a 
flower of Kalmia la- 
tifolia, our larger 
Kalmia, with the 10 
stamens spreading 
around the single 
style, which is tipped 
with a small stigma. 
These stamens are a 
little shorter than the 
style, and the saucer¬ 
shaped blossom 
stands upright. The 
pollen has no chance 
to fall upon the stig¬ 
ma. Besides, in this, 
as in most plants of 
the Heath Family, 
Fig. 2.—Section of a flower- pollen is not like- 
bud of Kalmia latifolia. ly to fall out of the 
anther at all; for, instead of splitting open from 
top to bottom, in the common fashion, or opening 
by trap-doors, as in the Barberry, each of the two 
anther-cells here opens only by a little hole at 
the top. How then is the pollen to get out, and 
how is it ever to reach the stigma of the same, 
or of any other flower ? Most people, who are 
accustomed to look at flowers, know that the 
corolla has 10 pouches or pockets, and that an 
anther is stuck into each. Pig. 2, is a section of 
