4G3 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ June 23, 1892. 
propagite ia future from the barren plants, because the runners 
which they produce are both earlier and finer than those which 
come from plants that have to bear fruit. It is true that the experi¬ 
ment has been made with only this kind, but I am this season 
doing the same with other sorts.” This is news to me, as doubtless 
it will be to other readers of the Journal. Perhaps Strawberry 
growers will record their experiences in this mattei*.— Nomad. 
CULTURE VERSUS NATURE. 
(Mr Burbidge’s Paper, Continued from page 44 S ) 
Good culture hinges on many things, but especially on a good 
start from seed or other kinds of increase, or propagation. As a 
rule all hardy seeds— i.e., the seeds of hardy ornamental plants— 
should be sown as soon as they ripen ; but where artificial food, 
crops, &c., are required at particular times and seasons, it follows 
that seeds must be sown at different times—spring, summer, or 
autumn, as the case may be. Any particular strain of vegetable or 
flower seeds can only be kept true by isolation, so as to preclude 
inter crossing, but novelties, on the other hand, are often gained by 
selection after hybridism or cross-fertilisation. As a rule both 
special selections or strains, and hybrids alike, die out unless they 
are specially cultivated and protected, and in this way garden 
hybrids are far less stable than are Nature’s hybrids, many of 
which are comparatively permanent, and in some cases are dignified 
and disguised by specific names. 
The Oxlip, or Polyanthus Primrose, is an instance of this fact. 
It is the result of inter-crossing between the Cowslip (Piimula 
weris) and the Primrose (P. acaulis), and is itself called P. elatior. 
'So again Narcissus incomparabilis got a specific name from Miller, 
-which it still retains, although well known to be a hybrid between 
N. poeticus and the Daffodil (N. pseudo-Narcissus). 
All so-called species of plants are now known to be mutable. 
In a state of Nature plants rest unchanged only when their 
surroundings are the same. On the other hand, in the forest 
or jungle “change or die” is often Nature’s fiat, and conditions 
are rare in which some slow series of changes are not in progress 
before our eyes. In the garden sudden changes of external or 
internal conditions take place far more quickly, but are, as we have 
said garden variations are, far less well fitted for a casual existence ; 
hence, if we ever come across a desolate garden that was once well 
stocked, we find that most hybrids and selected seedling plants will 
either have gone back or reverted to their parental stage, or they 
will have died away entirely. 
Chemistry has helped us much as to the due knowledge of, and 
the true economy of, nitrogenous plant food or manures ; but 
there is yet much to be done in the profitable application of 
chemical principles. Especially should the cultivator take note of 
the modern observations as to the storage or fixation of atmo¬ 
spheric nitrogen by bacteria that inhabit the root nodules of many 
leguminose plants, such as Peas, Lupins, Clover, &c., for we may 
some day grow our own nitrogen far cheaper than we can buy it 
from Colonel North or the vendor of manures. 
The chemist tells us that his manures are better than farmyard 
manure, of which 80 per cent, consists of water, but he neglects to 
note the physical action of fresh farmyard manure on the soil, and 
the real truth here, as often elsewhere, no doubt lies between 
the two extremes, farmyard manure being the best bulky basis to 
be enriched with pure chemical manures for special crops. Thus for 
Grape Vines, or Potatoes, or leguminose plants, the dominant ferti¬ 
liser added should be potash ; for Wheat, Beet, &c., nitrates are best, 
and superphosphates for Turnips and most of the Cabbage family. 
The manures especially to be used for any one crop depend in a 
great measure on the chemical elements in the soil on which it is 
grown. This is readily known by a fair analysis, our object being 
to supply the nitrates, or superphosphates, or lime, or potash salts 
'lacking, or not in sufficient quantities in the natural soil. 
The chemist can tell us the food elements that gain access to 
the plant, and after the crop is harvested his resultant analysis 
flhows what has been stored up or developed ; but that which 
actually takes place inside the living plants—the vital chemistry, 
T may call it—is for the most part a mystery still. Hence, one of 
the mysteries of Nature is this, and it is one no chemist has as yet 
-explained—viz., why and how the vegetable products of the earth 
vary so enormously in character. From the same earth and the 
same atmospheric elements, and the same water, we obtain the 
most delicious of food or flavouring stuffs, the most potent of 
medicines, or the most fatal of poisons, and the magical labora¬ 
tories are the living plants themselves, Peach or Pear, Grass or 
Grape Vine, Atropa, or Aconite, or Digitalis, Eucalyptus or 
C nchona, as the case may be. 
In a word, land culture, or rather plant culture, actually creates 
wealth, whereas all other industiies merely modify and make it 
more conveniently useful to our requirements. England is not 
quite sure of her practical monopoly in coal and iron, but she is 
sure of her soil, the plant wealth or produce of which may be 
almost indefinitely increased fer all time. 
Plants are really self-acting chemical laboratories, and may be 
economically considered as producing machines. The plant pro¬ 
duces food and clothing for us unceasingly, and all we have to do 
is to start it going, and it works while we are sleeping. 
One of the most remarkable of all physiological facts observable 
in a garden is, the variable powers possessed by different plants in 
the absorption and assimilation of nitrogenous manures. This power 
varies immensely in different individuals of the same species. 
Thus, if you sow all the grains in the same ear of Wheat, or all the 
Peas out of the same pod, it by no means follows that their 
behaviour in this respect is identical or even nearly the same. The 
old simile, “as like as two Peas in a pod,” is not true. For some 
reason, at present not explainable, one or more of the Wheat 
grains, or of the Peas, will be more or less luxuriant than its 
neighbours, it will grow faster, and it will prove more fertile, and 
as a rule this is owing to its enhanced powers of feeding and 
assimilation, that is to say, in some occult manner it makes a better 
use of its environment than its relations, and so becomes what the 
gardener calls a better variety both as a grower and producer. It 
is the observation of this variability that has led to “ selection ” as 
one of the most potent phases of improvement by cultivation. 
We have all heard the story of the gardener who inquired of 
the philosopher “ Why the weeds grew more rampant in his garden 
than the flowers.” “ You see,” said the wise man, “ Nature is 
mother to the weeds, but she is only stepmother to the flowers.” 
Even this view is not ever and always right, because we know now' 
(as Her’oert told us long ago) that certain species of plants are not 
always happiest— i.e., most luxuriant and reproductive in their 
native habitats. For example, we can take the Scotch Thistle or 
the English Sweet Briar, both great nuisances to the Australian 
settlers ; or the South European Cardoon, which has completely 
overrun some of the great Pampas or plains of South America, to 
the exclusion of their native vegetation. 
Observation proves to us that some plants have a'very wide 
range of climatic adaptability, such as the examples to which we 
have just alluded ; while on the other hand we have plants that 
rarely do well except in their native places, such as the Durian 
(Durio zebethinus) and the Mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana). 
Again we have the Chinese Orchid (Phaius grandifolius) that is 
naturalised as if wild in Jamaica, and the matted and luxuriant 
Reed Orchid of Singapore (Bromheadia palustris), or the lovely 
Lycopodium cernuum that practically defies cultivation. 
Gardening is essentially an art of trying experiments, and this 
is so in part because our physical knowledge of plants is so poor. 
In a word, we have not yet learned that the laws of a plant’s 
physical structure, formed as they are by climate, &c., must 
necessarily govern, to a great extent, its cultural requirements. 
Broadly speaking, gardeners know that a thickened epidermis (as 
in Cacti and succulent plants generally), means that they thrive in 
a dry atmosphere, and in sunshine rather than in shade. The same 
is true of plants with thick woolly, or hairy or powdered foliage. 
On the other hand. Ferns of a thin translucent texture, or delicate¬ 
leaved plants with a thin epiderm full of stomata, require a 
moisture-laden atmosphere, and more or less shade ; but there are 
thousands of cases where we can a priori know nothing of a plant’s 
powers of resisting heat or cold, sun or shade, moisture or drought, 
except by actual experiment. You may collect two plants from a 
mountain-side, 10,000 feet or so in altitude, near the equator, and 
one will be perfectly hardy in northern Europe, and the other will 
die at the first touch of frost. Why this is we do not fully know ; 
but we may at least keep the question in our minds, and hope some 
day to solve the problem. 
I have said, that d priori we can never be perfectly certain of 
the temperatures or soils most suitable for any one plant unless we 
are carefully told how it exists in a state of Nature. Even when 
this information is given, it by no means follows that our imitation 
of native conditions will prove to be best suited to the plant. As 
we have said, native conditions are not invariably those best for 
some plants, inasmuch as they have thriven and increased better 
when introduced elsewhere. A good gardener is in an analogous 
position to a good physician, and will prescribe for a plant quite as 
reasonablyas does the physician for a patient totally unknown to him. 
It was until quite recently thought that unless a substance 
was in a soluble state, i.e., soluble in water in the soil, it could not 
be utilised by the plant. This view is now modified, since it has 
been found that roots themselves, and especially their growing 
points, secrete or rather exude an acid ferment that renders soluble 
or permeable many substances not actually soluble or dissolvable 
in water alone. In this way I have seen the underground stolons 
