April 5, 188^. J 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
279 
- Crickets ix Geeexhouse. —“ W. C.” writes to know if any 
reader of the Journal can recommend anything to destroy crickets and 
cockroaches, 
- Royal Parks and Gardens.—A return recently presented to 
Parliament gives the following particulars of the Royal Parks, Ac. 
Battersea Park covers an area of 199 acres, and is devoted to the public, 
except about two acres reserved for frame ground to propagate plants. 
Bushy Park contains 99-1 acres, but from a large portion of this the 
public are excluded. No less than 104 acres are kept as meadow land 
for hay, and fifty-five acres timber, and these 159 acres produce £91 per 
annum. Then there is a reservation of seventy-five acres for the Royal 
paddocks, thirty-six acres for enclosures for deer, and the total reserva¬ 
tion amounts to about 320 acres. Greenwich Park contains 185 acres, 
almost all devoted to the public ; and Hampton Court Park, with an 
area of 752 acres, is wholly unreserved, and the same may be said of 
Hampton Court Green (seventeen acres), and Hampton Court Enclosure 
Gardens (forty-two acres). Hyde Park, with 300 acres, is also practi¬ 
cally unreserved, and the public h.ave equal freedom in Kennington 
Park (nineteen acres), Kensington Gardens (274 acres), Kew Gardens 
(248 acres), and Regent’s Park (472 acres), the largest reservation in 
Regent’s Park being thirty-one acres for the Zoological Gardens. Other 
portions also are let, bringing in a total revenue of £2344 18s. lOd., to 
which £358 Os. 9d. is contributed by the Zoological Society. There are 
also four contributions to the revenue—Baptist College and grounds, 
£213 8s. 9d. ; St. Dunstan’s Villa and grounds, £250 IGs. 7d. ; St John’s 
Lodge and grounds, £234 2s. 3d.; Botanical Society's Gardens, £3G0 ; 
and South Villa and grounds, £333. There are also some smaller 
tenancies, which make up the total. Richmond Old Deer Park, contain¬ 
ing 363 acres, is not open to the public, and produces a revenue of £972. 
Richmond and Petersham Parks cover 2470 acres, and from these the 
following reservations are made ;—Plantations, 142 acres ; mowing 
grounds, 104 acres ; deer paildocks, 137 acres ; ranger’s meadow, twenty 
acres ; arable and for growing roots for deer, eighteen acres. There are 
several minor areas from which the public are excluded, and the revenue 
per annum is set down at £400 for the sale of timber, and £100 for feeding 
cattle. St. James’s Park (ninety-three acres) and Victoria Park (212 
acres) are unreserved, but from Windsor Green Park, which covers 
5300 acres, 1395 acres must be deducted from which the public are 
excluded. The revenue of this park is also nil. Windsor Home 
Park consists of seventy-three acres, with no restrictions to the 
public. Other parks in the kingdom are mentioned, the largest being 
Phoenix Park, Dublin, which covers 1752 acres, and of which area 
421 acres are reserved for the Viceregal Lodge and other Government 
purposes. 
- Mr. W. J. Murphy, Clonmel, -writes : -“Would some of your 
readers -who succeed with the Double Daffodil, Alba 1’lena 
Odokata, kindly say with what method of culture and under what 
circumstances, such as indoors or planted out, position, soil, &c. ? I have 
tried and been disappointed with it repeatedly. Dutch bulbs, seemingly 
sound and planted in pots in a cold frame last September, are only in 
several cases now commencing gro-wth. In other years they did 
similarly, or decayed. Those planted in a warm south border never 
flowered either. One bulb this year in a pot promised to be an excep¬ 
tion, but has turned out a monstrosity—seemingly a dwarf form of the 
great double yellow Spanish Daffodil. It is only 8 inches high, with 
blooms very large and reflexed. I am sending it to Mr. F. W. Bur- 
bidge to examine.” 
- The same correspondent observes “ I should like to ask how 
those beautiful and useful plants Anemone coeonaeia have fared 
with your readers so far. Here excellent strains, produced by a rigid 
process of selection of seeds, -were grown in specially prepared beds in 
numbers of gardens. I have seen many others lately, and all seem, like 
the lines in my own borders, badly ‘ burned and battered.’ I was very 
proud of two beds filled with plants raised from the cclcbrate.l ‘ St. Brigid ’ 
itrain ; but though they have fairly borne the alternate frost.s, tha-ivs, 
and sunshine, I blame the snow for doing most mischief amongst them. 
"Cold does not seem to do as much injury to either blooms or foliage as 
thawing snow or sleet, -with sunshine. At present the temperature of the 
soil seems lower than last January. To make certain of a profusion of 
blooms in the autumn I intend remaking two beds, using fresh loam 
from the farm, and sowing a selected strain of Anemone seed mixed 
with the ‘ St. Brigid’ strain. Some half moist sand rubbcil with the 
woolly seed hastens vegetation. I never transplant seedlings.” 
-Replying to Jlr. T. Winkworth’s inquiries respecting Lache- 
NALIAS, “ T. H.” remarks :—“ I am unable to give him the information 
required, as I have never grown all of the varieties mentioned on 
page 233. Although I have frequently met with them in other gardens, 
I never thought them worthy of recommendation, as they generally 
throw up wcalvly floiver spikes, and it is very rare for some of them to 
flower at all. The foliage is very pretty in some of the varieties, but 
not sufllcicutly to render them -worth growing. I only recommend thofe 
varieties I was -well acquainto.I wnth and that were easy to grow, and 
anyone following t’.ie simple instructions given could not possi’oly fail, 
I was pleased to see your corre.spon lent en loi’se all t’nat was said in 
favour of tho.se plants, and I appreciate the compliment.” 
EOYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
March 27th. 
Scientific Committee. —The meeting wa.s held on this occasion 
in the committee-room of the Drill Hall—a room not very convenient 
of access, and suffering from the very groat objection that the library 
is in another liuilding. When the large room at Victoria Street is com- 
])leted doubtless the meetings will be hold therein. The difficulty then 
will consist in the necessity of removing the plants from the Drill Hall 
for the purpose of examination, and, moreover, at a time -ivhen it is par¬ 
ticularly desirable to link together, rather than dissociate the several 
Committees. It is unfortunate that they should have to meet in 
separate buildings, but wlicn there is a choice of evils tlie least must 
be the one selected. On the present occasion the Committee was 
represented by Sir Joseph D. Hooker, K.C.S.I., Chairman; Mes.srs. 
McLachlan, P.R.S., James O’Brien, Professor Church, Mr. F. Pascoe, 
Dr. Lowe, Mr. Albert Michael, G. F. Wilson, F.R.S., H. N. Ridley, 
British Museum ; Professor Scott, School of Science ; Professor Boulger, 
Dr. Masters, F.R.S., and Rev. George Henslow, Secretary. 
The, Blue Baixy .—Dr. Masters reporte 1 tliat the plant exhibited 
from Tangier at a previous meeting by Dr. Lo'we w'as Beilis annua. 
Sir Joseph Hooker mentioned that it was common in the neighliourhood 
of Tangier, and that it was different from the plant found on the Atlas 
Mountain (Beilis coerulcscens). 
BUpersal of the S'‘ed in Pimm inxlgnm .—Dr. Masters, alluding to 
the great differences that exist in the species of Pinus, as to the time at 
-ivhich the constituent scales of the cone separate in oi'der to liberate the 
seed, showed a series of cones of Pinus insignis, the oldest of which bore 
the date 18G4. In this all the scales were widely separate. The most 
recent cones dated from 1877, and in them the scales were not at all 
separated. Bet-iveen these two extremes cones were showm exhibiting 
almost every intermediate stage of separation. It is to be remarked 
that the separation begins generally just above the centre of the pen¬ 
dulous cone on the side furthest aw.ay from the branch, at the place 
where the obliquity of the cone, due to the free exposure to light and 
air, and the absence of olistacles afford d by the branch was greatest, 
and that it follows a spiral course towards the base of the cone. The 
scales sep.arate in successive spiral co Is, till, at length, all except a few 
at the base and apex respectively, and which are probably sterile, are 
separated one from the other. 
Senii-douhle and other Orchids.—T)r. Masters referrel to various 
specimens submitted to him for examin.ation. Among them were the 
following :— 
Semi-double flo-vvers of Ccelogyne flaccida.—These were obtained 
from M. Sallier, through the courtesy of M. Schneiiler. The conditions 
varied slightly in different flow'ers, but the mo.st noteworthy case was 
one in which there evere three sepals, three equal petals resembling t’.ie 
sepals in form, a column and two lips; these latter organs, therefore, 
representing two stamens of the outer whorl. 
Cattleya Trianm.—Thi-ee flower.s were brought to the Committee at a 
former meeting by Mr. O’Brien. 
In (1) the two lateral sepals -ivere present and also two petals, one 
median, occupying the place of the absent sepal, and one opposite to it 
forming the lip. 
This flower, then, afforded an illusti-at’on of a tendency towards a 
dimerous and decussate arrangement of the parts of the flower, such as 
is frequently seen in malformed Orchids. 
In (2) the dorsal or median sepal was also wanting, its place being 
occupied as in No. 1 by a petal, so tliat of the two lateral petals one 
was dislocated from a lateral to a median position, wh-le the other was 
adherent to the column. The other pai-ts wore normal. It would 
appear in this ca.se as if, for some reason or other, that the median sep.il 
was not developed ; 2, that the axis of the flower underwent .a twist of 
45°. so as to displace the petal and transpose it into the position of the 
sepal; 3, at the same time that this unusual growth was taking place 
on one side of the flower development was partially arrested on the 
other (the concavity of the helix), so that the petal remained in union 
with the column. 
The third flower was normal in- all respects, except that the median 
scjial had the aiipearaiice of a lateral pct..l. The case wa.s one, there¬ 
fore, of pctalo'ly of the sepal. 
