352 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
I October 1 «, use. 
well. Tennis Bill, medium sized, round, and smooth, Ins given 
satisfaction, and the yellow fruited Blenheim Orange has yielded a 
good crop of fine fruit. Scarlet fruits sell the best in London, the 
largest of these realising the highest price ; but it is worthy of 
note that the sweeter yellow fruits, according to the experience 
of Mr. Pearson of Chilwell, command 2d. a pound more than 
the reds in Nottingham market. This Tomato house has proved 
remunerative. 
The collection of Chrysanthemums grown in pots cannot be a 
striking success, and the cost incurred in their culture will take the 
gilt off the Tomato gingerbread. Any experts if they had been 
-consulted would have told the authorities who advocated the cul¬ 
ture of these plants that they were too late in their decision. The 
best plants were gone at the time, and numbers of the newer 
varieties sold out. The plants have been grown as well as it was 
possible to grow them under the circumstances, but these were such 
as to render success as it is measured in these days a sheer impos¬ 
sibility, as every “ Chrysanthemum man ” knew when he saw the 
plants on their arrival in late spring. It is not suggested the dis¬ 
play will be a miserable failure or anything of that kind, but it 
cannot rank wuth the best, and it is nothing but right that the 
cause be recorded. 
NOTES FROM A HERTS GARDEN. 
On October 3rd 7° of frost was registered, 9° on the 5th and 8th. 
Every tender plant is blackened. Almost the only flowers that ! 
remain are the Michaelmas Daisies — namely, Aster ericoides, 
flowers white with yellow centie, which, if small, are numerous 
and one of the most elegant of the genus ; A. novae-angliee, 
rose with orange centres ; A. novaa-angliai rubra, bright magenta ; 
and A. novae-belgiae, wuth bluish-purple flowers in large heads. ' 
Anemone japonica and its var. alba are in fair condition, also 
Tritoma Uvaria and Galtonia candicans, but they are in some¬ 
what sheltered situations, and so also are the perennial Sunflowers. 
The annual Sunflowers are over, though they were extremely gaudy 
before the frosts. What a very useful flower the “ New Miniature ” 
Sunflower is for decoration and cutting purposes. Its small, elegant, 
bright golden yellow single blooms with a dark velvet centre, 
borne abundantly from July to frost, render it peculiarly valuable, 
and its stems are long enough for most purposes, its neat foliage ; 
adding to its attractiveness. I would mention Doronicum planta- 
gineum excelsum as being a very elegant plant with yellow flowers, 
usually solitary and terminal, wdiich attains to a height of 4 to | 
6 feet, flowering in spring and more or less right away to October, i 
But to return to the Sunflowers ; how they have grown this year ! 
They seem to enjoy the gloom and drip. One of the most ; 
graceful, best, and useful decorative autumnal plants is Helianthus ! 
orgyalis, which attains to a height of 6 to 10 feet; stem rigid, 
somewhat sparsely clothed with narrow recurved leaves alternately , 
set; flowers yellow, small and numerous. H. decapetalus has flowers 1 
2 or 3 inches across, solitary or terminal on short twiggy branchlets. 
August to October, height 5 feet. H. multiflorus major is a large 
form like H. decapetalus, the flowers being more numerous and 
larger, and it not infrequently appears as a reversion in plants of 
the double perennial Sunflower (H. multiflorus flore pleno), indeed 
the plants of the latter have during the past two seasons produced 
both forms in the same individuals. The single form is the stronger 
grower, attaining to a height of 5 feet, the double having a height 
of 3 to 4 feet. H. multiflorus maxim us is a magnified form both 
in plant and flower of “ major,” attaining a height of fully 
8 feet ; flowers large, golden yellow, single ; one of the best autumn 
plants. H. rigidus has glistening golden yellow flowers about 
4 inches across, with chocolate disc, good as long as it lasts, its season 
being August. Its flower heads, and sometimes the stems, dry 
up before expansion in a most unaccountable manner. H. atro- 
rubens has scattered heads with a purple disc and yellow rays. It has 
purple stems, attaining a height of 3 feet or more. The Sunflower 
will grow in almost any kind of soil, but prefers a good moisture- 
holding one, and well repays for mulching and watering in dry 
weather. 
One of the other most striking plants of the year has been 
Echinacea purpurea, with reddish-purple heads and a raised dark 
centre, the peduncle long, producing a solitary terminal flower head. 
In a cut state it is very quaint, the ray florets drooping handsomely. 
It is a hardy perennial, requiring a deep rich loam, when it grows 
3 to 4 feet high. In fine contrast with the Echinacea is Rudbeekia 
Newmanni or speciosa, the flower heads 3 to 4 inches across, the ray 
florets orange, which contrast well with the black purple disc. It 
is fine as a plant, and the flower-heads are superb in vases, &c., its 
long stalks, 6 to 9 inches, rendering it particularly valuable. 
R. maxima (or speciosa of some) has the ray florets drooping as in 
Echinacea; disc columnar, of a dull brown, flowers solitary. It 
attains to doub’e the height of R. speciosa or Newmanni, and is a 
really handsome plant. Arnica montana ; flower head yellow. 
2 inches across, arranged in a corymb, freely produced during July 
to September. It is a showy species, attaining to a height of 2 feet. 
Senecio pulcher produced its large corymbose flower heads freely., 
ray florets purple (reddish), which are longer than the yellow disc. 
It grew to a height of 3 feet, and was fine when the frosts came, 
and had been for weeks. A strong soil evidently suits this plant. 
Lilies have done badly. Lilium longiflorum Harrisi is the only 
one worth mentioning, but Crinum longiflorum seemed to revel in 
the wet, and flowered in July. The flowers are produced in an 
umbel of six to eight, funnel-shaped, the segments flushed with 
pink in the centre, and the peduncle is about 2 feet long. A bed 
of this superb plant has a graceful appearance ; the flowers are- 
delightfully scented, and it is quite hardy. The season seems not 
to have suited aquatics, yet Bullrushes have thrown more heads 
than usual, and the White Lilies (Nymphsea alba) had foliage and 
flowers of unusual luxuriance. The latter appears to enjoy a good 
deposit of tree leaves which are blown in annually. N. odorata has 
most unaccountably disappeared, but we have good plants of 
N. odorata rosea (Boston Water Lily), and N. flava, yet neither 
flowered. Aponogeton distachyon flowered in June and again in 
September. The Water Flag, like the Nymphaeas, likes a deposit 
of leaf soil. Its sword-like leaves are now grand, and its flowers 
are the showiest of the showy in their early summer season. There 
are few things that sooner get possession of space than Villarsii 
nymphffioides ; its leaves are pretty. Just when the frosts came 
the margin of the ornamental water was aglow with Lobelia 
cardinalis. We obtain a packet of seed, raise the seedlings in 
pans, prick off, and plant out one year, both in the water, on its 
edge, and out of the water, and get the next a flame of scarlet, 
dazzling beyond anything seen in the parterre. 
Nelumbium speciosum out of doors has grown well and spread 
considerably, but there have not been any flowers. We hope for 
better luck next year, also with N. luteum, which, however, does not 
grow so freely as N. speciosum, yet it gains strength with age.— 
Utilitarian. 
THE PROGRESS OF BOTANY. 
VARIATION IN PLANTS. 
(Continued from 2 }a ff e 346. 
Whatever conclusions we arrive at on these points, everyone will 
agree that one result of the Darwinian theory has been to give a great 
impulse to the study of organisms, if I may say so, as “ going concerns.’ T 
Interesting as are the problems which the structure, the functions, the 
affinity, or the geographical distribution of a plant may afford, the living 
plant in itself is even more interesting still. 
Every organ will bear interrogation to trace the meaning and origin 
of its form and the part it plays in the plant’s economy. That there is 
here an immense field for investigation there can be no doubt. Mr. 
Darwin himself set us the example in a series of masterly investigations. 
But the field is well-nigh inexhaustible. The extraordinary variety of 
form which plants exhibit has led to the notion that much of it may 
have arisen from indifferent variation. No doubt, as Mr. Darwin has 
pointed out, when one of a group of structures held together by some 
morphological or physiological nexus varies, the rest will vary correla- 
latively. One variation then may, if advantageous, become adaptive, 
while the rest will be indifferent. But it appears to me that such a 
principle should be applied with the greatest caution; and from what 
I have myself heard fall from Mr. Darwin, I am led to believe that 
in the later years of his life he was disposed to think that every detail 
of plant structure had some adaptive significance, if only the chic 
could be found to it. As regards the forms of flowers an enormous 
body of information has been collected, but the vegetative organs have 
not yielded their secret to anything like the same extent. My own 
impression is that they will be found to be adaptive in innumerable 
ways which at present are not even suspected. At Kew we have 
probably a larger number of species assembled together than are to be 
found anywhere on the earth’s surface. Here, then, is ample material 
for observation and comparison. But the adaptive significance will 
doubtless often be found by no means to lie on the surface. Who, for 
example, could possibly have guessed by inspection the purpose of the 
glandular bodies on the leaves of Acacia sphserocephala, and on the 
pulvinus of Cecropia peltata, which Belt in the one case, and Fritz 
Muller in the other, have shown to serve as food for ants? So far 
