320 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ October 9, 1890. 
fixed in position. In this respect lucky are those that are not troubled 
with wet stokeholes, and those that are not have drawbacks in other 
ways to contend with. Damp or wet stokeholes are directly opposed to 
economical heating, and equally opposed are they to getting up a sharp 
brisk heat, for where the stokehole is damp the boiler and flues will be 
proportionately so, as no fire can burn freely or economically that first 
has to dispose of superfluous moisture such as this. I have in mind 
several localities where the making of a good stokehole is a rather ex¬ 
pensive item, on account of the gravelly subsoil and the land water in 
winter time coming so near the surface, and I have known as much as 
a hundred pounds spent on a stokehole with a view to keep the water 
■out, but which has ended in a complete failure, owing to some little 
whim having been very carefully carried out ; but the pressure of land 
water is rather great in some districts in winter time, and will admit 
no whims or fancies being adopted, and nothing short of solid, honest 
work can stand against it. 
Some six years ago in this neighbourhood (West Middlesex) a stoke¬ 
hole was constructed at nearly the cost just named, and by the adoption 
of a little fad has never kept the water out, with the result that it has 
proved necessary to put down three new boilers this season, one of the 
old ones (if a six-year-old may be termed such) having given way. 
Apart, too, from so sudden and serious an expense is the fact that the 
stokehole has been a great trouble in winter time to keep the water out, 
and in case of heavy rains could only be left four hours day or night 
without pumping, in order to keep the fires from being put out. 
Such a state of things all wise and prudent gardeners will endeavour to 
avoid, though at times even experienced men are deceived. A change 
of situation may and frequently does involve a variety of new ex¬ 
periences, and in this w T ay I have known nurserymen driven by 
degrees from London to the suburbs to do battle with foes which to 
them did not exist because unseen. Many have taken out the hole for 
their boilers, and finding the base dry have never provided for the 
contrary. But let me advise all who sink stokeholes in gravelly 
districts never to trust to anything but a thoroughly watertight founda¬ 
tion, for no soils are more treacherous, and when the water comes in you 
have no further control in the matter. 
The whole of the stokeholes which are sunk in this neighbourhood 
have to be made in strong cement concrete— i.e., if they are to 
remain perfectly dry, and it is no unusual thing for 3 tons of best 
Portland cement to be used in one of them. The usual way they are 
constructed is this: In excavating, the soil is removed about 1 foot 
deeper than that required for the boiler and connections, and the 
bottom being perfectly dry a concrete is formed of four parts clean 
rough stones to one of cement, and being well mixed is placed at the 
bottom of the hole to the depth of 1 foot or thereabouts, leaving the 
surface level. This is allowed to settle for a couple of days, by which 
time it is quite hard, when it is surfaced over with clean sharp sand 
(river grit is the best that can be used) and cement, the proportion 
being much the same as that used for the concrete. Of this from 1 to 
2 inches thick is floated over the surface, and again allowed time for 
setting. Such is the material, then, that invariably constitutes the 
stokehole bottom in this district, and while giving every satisfaction 
in keeping the water back, affords an excellent foundation for the boiler 
itself to rest upon. In constructing the side and end walls, cement and 
mortar are generally U3ed together, the strength about six to one. With 
such a foundation below no footing course is employed, but as a pre¬ 
cautionary measure against water forcing its way in at a weak point 
the first course of bricks is generally bedded on with neat cement ; 
the bricks all being soaked in water as the work proceeds prevents a too 
rapid absorption ensuing. The walls are then carried up with rough 
joints, inserting on the reverse side a 9-inch pier here and there for 
strength. After the walls are completed they must be faced with sharp 
sand and cement to a thickness of three-quarters of an inch, composed 
of about four and one—some prefer to employ it at six and one—and 
finally skim over with neat cement. The former, however, makes an 
excellent job. 
It is in such stokeholes as these that boilers are enabled to do their 
work and give satisfaction ; not so, however, when handicapped as they 
undoubtedly are in damp or wet stokeholes ; for in these they rust away 
at more than double the rate of fair wear and tear, particularly is this 
the case where the water is also allowed to remain in the boiler when 
not in use. Many hundreds of people have no alternative but to allow 
the water to iremain in the boiler, simply because to empty the 
boiler would mean also to empty the pipes, a serious item where the 
water for refilling has to be carried in. Much of this may be avoided 
by inserting an extra pair of screw-down valves in the main near the 
boilers, for then the boilers alone could be emptied without interfering 
with the general run of piping ; it adds but a trifle to the original cost, 
while the advantages accruing from such an arrangement are consider¬ 
able—J. H. E. 
FALLING LEAVES. 
The falling leaf has been from time immemorial a theme of the poet 
and sentimentalist. Nor can any, save the colour blind, be coldly 
callous to the warm tints of beauty which diffuse themselves in autumn 
through the vegetable world. Nature’s blush, as she puts off her robe 
of living green to doff her winter garb of poverty, merits our most 
respectful regard. Vet the notion that autumn is a time of general 
decay adds but another to the myriad popular fallacies which it is the 
function of science to dispel. The fall of the leaf, in fact, despite all 
the tender moods of poetry and the sighs of the love-lorn, is a token and 
a result—not of death, but of life. The vital processes involved in the 
forming of the reddish-brown heaps that rustle and crackle around our 
feet in an October walk are as definite and wonderful as they are oft 
entirely overlooked. 
To appreciate these we must learn, as science would ever teach us, to 
look beneath the surface of mere seeming into the heart of Nature’s 
realities. Nor does the beauty of the distant landscape suffer any loss 
at all from our knowledge of the biological history of leaves and flowers 
close at hand, or of the grass beneath our feet. The case before us is 
one especially concerned with that constant struggle for existence, 
which our eyes are now opened to see going on wherever life is known. 
The acknowledged uncertainty of our climate detracts nothing from the 
general certainty of a definite and abiding difference in temperature 
between summer and winter. We who live in these “temperate” 
zones must accustom ourselves to variations and extremes of season 
changes which are wholly unknown in tropical regions ; and the vege¬ 
table world, no less than the animal, has to learn to face these realities 
—in fact, plants are said to be even more sensitive to variations in 
temperature than animals. 
Thus, from the rustle of the drying leaves, even before they fall, we 
hear once more the old story of that adaptation to environment ■which 
characterises all life. Trees, as well as men, must find how to endure 
through winter if they would luxuriate in summer. Spring’s apparently 
new created vigour, and the seeming decay of autumn are, after all, 
only the natural steps whereby the transition from one adapted con¬ 
dition to another is gently broken. Plants are, moreover, in a some¬ 
what worse case than animals, seeing that they have no power to 
transport themselves from one region to another. The genus, or even 
the species, may gradually migrate to pastures fresh through the kindly 
free porterage of seed by wind or insects ; but the individual plant or 
tree must live or die where it stands rooted in the soil. Without a root 
there is for it no life, but with the root no travelling. 
In these days we know happily how easy animal locomotion permits 
the debilitated city merchant and the weary brain worker to seek 
bracing air by the seaside. The consumptive patient can prolong life by 
removing his bodily apparatus to Grand Canary or Madeira. Not so the 
plant. It must remain in situ. The tonic or preservative of change of 
clime cannot enter into its pharmacopeia. Whatever comes or goes it 
must face all in patience. It must adapt itself to environment or cease 
to be. This brief biological preamble is really necessary to our present 
study, for it conveys the essential principle of that whole phenomenon 
before us which most people so easily ascribe to death and. gravitation. 
As a matter of fact the latter has next to nothing, and the former quite 
nothing to do with it. The falling is a mere trifle in the matter, and 
the process is entirely a vital one, the decay of the separated leaf being 
but a following accident, which may here be left out of account. Before 
the separation it is so genuine a case of euthanasia as to refuse to be 
worthily called death. There are, at least, three distinct vital processes 
concerned in falling leaves, and these are based upon a definite principle 
which is nowhere in nature more wonderfully and instructively 
exhibited. 
The principle is one of economy. The processes are those which 
effect (1) the avoidance of loss of valuable material ; (2) the actual 
removal of an organ no longer profitable to the tree ; (3) the protection 
of the tree from injury at the points of removal. 
We will glance briefly at these, concerning ourselves now only, of 
course, with trees that we know are “ deciduous.” Everyone under¬ 
stands to-day how entirely the vegetable world is dependent upon 
chlorophyll. Thanks to the modern diffusion of scientific knowledge 
there are but few who have no idea of this fact. Not everyone, how¬ 
ever, apprehends in this connection the supreme importance of leaves 
to the trees that bear them. That they are the true functional repre¬ 
sentatives of both lungs and stomach, is a fact only dimly grasped by 
very many of those who are “fond of flowers.” Nor would they pro¬ 
bably be disposed at first to admit that the leaf is a more highly organised 
structure than the flower, and of much more value to the parent 
organism. Yet so it is, though here we must assume rather than stay to 
prove. Now we are almost all aware that a certain temperature must 
be maintained in the animal stomach if digestion is to take place 
happily. The exception is apparently found in the case of those who 
flood themselves inside with cold water by way of commencing dinner. 
A better prescription for the sure acquisition of dyspepsia could hardly 
be invented. And the harm is not, as is sometimes thought, in the 
“ dilution of the gastric juice,” but in the reduction of the temperature. 
Thus Dr. Beaumont observed that the introduction of a single gill of 
water at 50° Fahr. into the stomach lowered its temperature upwards of 
30°, and its natural heat was not restored for more than half an hour. 
And when a bottle containing food and gastric juice—easily digested at 
100° Fahr.—was exposed to cold air, scarcely any digestion at all took 
place. So much for the practice—as sensible as any other item of 
fashion—of taking ice and iced cold water with a meal. 
To return to chlorophyll. It is found that its important functions 
can only be discharged at a temperature varying between 6°—10° C., 
or 40°—90° Fahr. This manifestly requires direct sunlight, and an 
absence of cold winds, frost, &e. Now wh itever doubts we may have 
concerning to-morrow’s weather, we Inow well that between any 
autumn and the following spring we shall 1 ave more or less of the latter, 
with a great deal less of the former. Hen:e, very little, if any, 
assimilation could be carried on in the leaves by the chlorophyll, even 
if they hung on all the winter through. The tree, therefore, is very 
