1873.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
263 
Tliis will always be a nuisance. I had heard 
much of the 
Double Lily of the Valley, and at last 
procured a root. Now, after three years con¬ 
sidering the matter, it has bloomed. It has 
only confirmed me in my belief that some flow¬ 
ers are not improved by doubling. Nothing 
can exceed the simple grace of a flower-spike 
of the ordinary Lily of the Valley. This double 
one is a miserable monstrosity, a burlesque 
upon the real thing, and I shall only grow it, as 
I do several other things, to show my friends 
what not to' cultivate. Among the many things 
that dealers abroad praise “ within an inch of 
their lives” it is gratifying to find now and 
then one that meets the expectations these 
descriptions have excited. One case of this 
kind is the 
Double Crimson Thorn. —This, if I mistake 
not, was sent out by Wm. Paul. At all events, 
I procured one five years ago of Elhvauger & 
Barry, who are sure to have all novelties of this 
kind. This is the first year it has consented to 
bloom. And isn’t it a beauty! Imagine a 
handsome shrub eight feet high, and covered 
from top to bottom with clusters of miniature 
roses the size of a split pea, and you will have 
an idea of it. Nothing can be more charmingly 
beautiful. It is worth waiting for not only five 
years, but twenty-five years. You see, a few 
years more or less make but little difference to 
us old fellows if we get a good thing at last, 
and this Double Crimson Thorn is most em¬ 
phatically a good thing. I am sorry they called 
it “crimson,” as it is not, but a most charming 
full rose color. How I wish you could print in 
colors. 
The Aquilegias or Columbines are favor¬ 
ite plants with me, and I have a fair collection 
of them, the queen of which is our Rocky 
Mountain Columbine, Aquilegia mrulea , the 
spurs to the corolla of which are very slender, 
and about two inches long, giving the plant an 
airy grace that none of the others possess. I go 
in early morning to the bed and find it all right; 
I go again at evening and find it all wrong. 
The beautiful slender spurs are broken, beni, 
and bedraggled, and half of the beauty of the 
flowers has departed. Muster Eddie, whose 
young eyes are sharper than my old ones, de¬ 
tected the cause of the mischief. I watched the 
accused, and found the charge sustained. Right 
alongside stand a number of other Columbines, 
the spurs of which aro short. Mr. Bumblebee— 
he is the chap—when he comes to the bed, goes 
directly for the center of the other Columbine 
flowers, but when he comes to the flowers of 
my favorite ccerulea he makes no motion to get 
the honey by way of the natural opening. The 
cunning fellow knows that his tongue, probos¬ 
cis, or whatever his honey-getting organ may 
be, can not reach into the two-inch spurs of my 
favorite, so, in a most business-like manner, 
Mr. Bumblebee goes at once to the outside of 
this, flower, and cuts a hole near the end of the 
spurs from which to extract the honey. Insects 
don’t reason? I don’t believe it. If instinct 
tells that Bumblebee to operate in this way, I 
think it a great pity that some white folks were 
not endowed with instinct. 
Vines and Shrubs still show the effects of 
the past winter, and even trees considered hardy 
are much retarded, and only to be saved by 
severe pruning. In a number of cases, the 
bark has burst and fallen away upon such hardy 
trees as maples and apples. Those things that 
still seem alive I let alone and wait. The havoc 
among the grape-vines is something fearful. 
Those coarse things of Rogers’, that one would 
think proof against a stroke of lightning, are 
badly killed. Indeed, the only entirely un¬ 
harmed vine in my collection of some fifty is 
one of Dr. Wiley’s South Carolina hybrids. 
Garden Plans. 
We do not publish many garden plans, for 
the reason that the plan should be made to suit 
the surroundings, and as these are seldom alike 
in two places—save twin lots—it is best for each 
to work out a plan to meet the particular case. 
A few general hints may not be amiss. What¬ 
ever else there is, let there be a plenty of turf. 
The humblest place can afford an expanse of 
grass, which if large is dignified by the name 
of lawn, and if small is called only a grass- 
plot. This gives an air of neatness if there 
should be no flowers, and if tliero are flowers, 
no matter whether costly or common, their ap¬ 
pearance is many-fold enhanced by the turf- 
setting. Do not strive after anything elaborate 
and complicated. Recollect that the more 
elaborate the pattern, the greater will be the 
care required in keeping. Scroll, chain, and 
other borders look wonderfully well in print, 
especially if they are printed in colors. But 
these plans which are carried out in the favor¬ 
able climate of England only by keeping a 
number of men at them all the time, would ut¬ 
terly fail with us,where one gardener is expected 
to do everything, and where in the majority of 
cases there is no gardener at all. Lay out only 
what can be well cared for from spring until 
frost. Circles, ovals, ellipses, and egg and 
“ palm-leaf” shapes, neatly cut in the turf, are 
much better than anything more complicated. 
Avoid making beds with sharp points and 
acute angles. If one lias only room for a single 
bed, as in a front-yard in town, be will get more 
satisfaction out of plants with striking foliage 
than with flowers. A circle edged with some 
of the silvery-foliaged plants, such as Centau- 
reas, Cinerarias, and Artemisias, then a row of 
Achyranthes Lindeni, and within this a center of 
some of the Golden Coleuses would be bright 
and showy all summer. This is only a sugges¬ 
tion, as the bed may be planted in a great vari¬ 
ety of ways. A group of Cannas would give 
both fine foliage and flowers, and this may he 
edged with a row of Gladiolus with some low- 
growing plant upon the extreme margin. Very 
good effects may be produced with little ex¬ 
pense by the use of annuals, among the most 
popular and best of which is Phlox Drummon- 
dii in its various kinds, from white to deep 
scarlet. 
In laying out beds of any kind, recollect that 
every foot of path and every foot of margin 
implies a promise to keep the one clean and the 
other neatly trimmed. Unless there exist the 
ability and the inclination to do these, the beds 
had better not be laid out but the grass left 
unbroken. 
Destroying Insects—Bellows-Syringe. 
A large share of the time and ingenuity of 
the horticulturist is devoted to the destruction 
of insects, and he is quite sure to give a warm 
welcome to anything that, promises him aid in 
this direction. Showering plants with insect¬ 
killing liquids has long been done by means of 
syringes, pumps, and the common watering- 
pot, but with all these the difficulty is to get the 
liquid so diffused as to touch all parts of the 
plant. When Mr. B. K. Bliss was in Europe a 
few months ago, he came across a SouJJlet Injec- 
teur, which we may call a Bellows-Syringe, 
which seems to us a capital tiling. Probably 
most of our readers know the perfume-sprinkler 
of the drug-stores, and the atomizer or spray- 
producer of the surgeons. The perfume- 
sprinkler is the simplest. Two glass tubes tire 
fixed at right angles in such a manner that a 
stream of air from one will be blown directly 
across the mouth of the other. We all know 
that a strong wind blowing across tiie top of 
the chimney will cause a tremendous upward 
draft in the chimney. This sprinkler operates 
upon the same principle. If we put one of 
these tubes, securely fastened at right-angles, 
into a liquid, and blow into the other and hori¬ 
zontal tube, the blast of air going across the 
end of the upright tube will cause a partial 
vacuum in that, and the liquid will rise. As the 
liquid rises it comes in contact witli the blast 
from the horizontal tube, and is divided into the 
minutest spray, liquid-dust if we may say so; 
or, as the surgeons say, it is atomized, a very 
bad word indeed. Instead of blowing through 
the horizontal tube, an India-rubber band is now 
used, by the successive compression of which 
the stream of spray is easily kept up. 
An ingenious Frenchman, M. Pillon, has 
made this principle ser viceable in horticulture. 
His blast of air comes from a bellows, bis 
“atomizer” is attached to the end of the nozzle, 
and the liquid to be used is contained in a 
globular receptacle lning to the tube of the bel¬ 
lows in such a manner as to allow that to be 
held in any position without spilling the liquid. 
The liquid to he used is put into tiie brass 
globe and the bellows wor ked ; a fine spray is¬ 
sues in such a copious str eam that it is easy to 
reach every part, of the plant and bedew it with 
whatever insect-killing liquid may be desirable. 
One great advantage of this apparatus is its 
economy. In the ordinary methods of treating 
plants with liquid insecticides a very large share 
is wasted, while with this only so much as is 
needed to just moisten the leaves and stems 
need lie used. Carbolic soap and other prepa¬ 
rations of carbolic acid, whale-oil soap, tobacco 
water, infusions of Quassia, Chamomile, and 
Pyrethrmn (Persian Insect Powder), and solu¬ 
tions of salt, carbonate of ammonia, and aloes, 
or whatever may be found useful against any 
particular insect, may he employed. The in¬ 
ventor makes one very good suggestion, which 
is that these liquids should be sweetened with 
sugar or molasses, probably, although he does 
not say so, to cause their adhesion to the plant, 
and greater persistence. The engraving upon 
the next page shows the apparatus. The bel¬ 
lows is smaller than those used in kitchens, 
and tiie ball is about four incites in diameter. 
The Climbing' Buckwheat. 
The Climbing Buckwheat, or, more properly, 
False Buckwheat, is sent to us so frequently for 
determination that we give an engraving of it. 
In some localities it is very abundant, but it can 
hardly be classed among the troublesome weeds. 
It inhabits low grounds, and is most abundant 
in localities too wet for cultivation. We always 
supposed it to be an annual, and never exam¬ 
ined the root, but find the authorities divided 
upon this point. Its botanical name is Poly¬ 
gonum dumetorum —tiie Bush or Thicket Poly¬ 
gonum. The various Smart-weeds and Water- 
peppers belong to this genus, and Buckwheat 
and Pock are closely related to it. From the 
resemblance of our plant in both flower and 
