i 56 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
October 27. 
“ Three plants of each of the following sent 
Common Oak 
Common Ash 
Judas Tree 
Horsechesnut 
Birch 
Beech, Common 
Beech, Purple 
Hornbean 
Lime 
Mountain Ash 
Scotch Laburnum 
Common Elm 
Black Italian Poplar 
Lombardy Poplar 
Balsam Poplar 
Sycamore 
Tulip tree 
Alder 
Larch 
Acacia 
Wild Cherry 
Gleditschia 
Catalpa 
Maiden Hair Tree 
Foxglove Tree 
Plane Tree 
Golden Willow 
Hawthorns 
Walnut 
Evergreen Oaks 
Common Yews 
Common Holly 
Tree Box 
Common Juniper 
Sweet Bay 
Magnolia grandiliora 
Common Laurel 
Portugal Laurel 
Laurestinus 
Privet 
Chinese Privet 
Irish Ivy 
Perriwinklo 
Pyrus japonica 
Chorchorus japonica 
Cimonanthus fragrans 
Mezereons 
Ilibes sanguinea 
Guelder Rose 
Deutzia scabra 
Lilac, Purple 
Lilac, White 
Hydrangeas 
Common Jasmine 
Sweet Clematis 
Common Honeysuckle 
Bignonia radicans 
Aristolochia sipho 
Ayrshire Roses 
Macarteny Roses 
Banksian Roses, White 
Banksian Roses, Yellow 
Greville Rose 
BIoss Rose 
Cabbage Rose 
Cabbage Rose, White 
Wistaria sinensis 
Common Berberis 
Southern Wood 
Pceonies 
Lavender 
Ceanothus 
Berberis dulcis 
Buxus ballarica 
Deutzia gracilis 
I Escallonia organensis 
Euonymus japonica 
Forsythia viridissima 
Garrya eliptica 
Jasminum ochroleucum 
Jasminum Wallichianum 
Pernettya phyllenefolia 
j Ribes sanguinea pleno 
Spirea Douglassii 
Rosemary 
In a familiar illustration of the literal meaning of the 
word “infection,” we have alluded to a figure of speech 
which explains, in the first place, a common law of the 
diffusion of certain diseases; and likewise points out 
the way to get rid of them altogether by a very large, 
rapid, and continuous dilution. We have classical 
authority for asserting contagion aud infection to mean 
just one and the same thing. In the sense of being 
“ tinged,” we find this very term contagion applied to 
honey, salt, saffron; and we think it is much better to 
try to make out that “ contagion” originally meant 
nothing more than “ infection,” in its limited sense, 
than to fall into the grave mistake of supposing that 
infection means all that we now consider the word 
contagion to carry along with it. 
Lucretius uses the word contagion in what we take to 
be its original sense. “The contagion” says he, “seized 
men one after another:” “for (he adds) those who 
avoided visiting the sick, through love of life and fear of 
death, paid the penalty of this neglect in a bad and 
shameful end, unaided and alone.”* Here the sense of 
the passage would be lost if we took contagion to mean 
personal contact, aud not rather a general contamination 
of the air. 
Desperate efforts have been made to get rid of this 
vulgar notion, that contagion implies, a danger from 
immediate contact with a propinquity to the person, 
* Lucretius on the Nature of Things—Book vi., lines 1234 to 1239. 
This author speaks of the jaundiced eye painting all objects sallow by 
its contagion—iv. 337 : and of the blind discriminating, by touch, things 
which had not the contagion of colour—xi. 71 0 . lie also promises to 
! throw a contagious pleasantry over a very dry subject, as the physician, 
! when he administers wormwood to a child, besmears his mouth, and the 
| edge of the cup, with the yellow, sweet contagion of honey—iv. 8 to 13. 
and not a mere mediate contamination or taint in the 
air. 
Some gentleman at the Registrar-General's Office, 
lias invented a wholly new term, zymotic, to supply the 
place of the old ones. The idea is taken from the 
process of leavening ( zyma , leaven) whereby we are 
given to understand that a certain (or an uncertain, and 
somewhat hypothetical) morbid element, when added to 
a suitable mass, will, uuder favouring circumstances, 
stir up a ferment therein. 
An eminent medical writer lately put the literal 
accuracy of the zymotic theory to the test, by contending 
for the actual existence in cholera of a minute parasitic 
growth of the same nature as many funguses and 
vegetable moulds, the combined results of confined damp, 
warmth, putrefaction, &c. The very partial success of 
this assumption is sufficient to show that the new term, 
now in general use, is not generally understood in its 
literal sense. 
The imperfection of language compels us every day 
to say what this thing or that is like, only, while we 
might struggle for ages in a vain attempt to define what 
it really is. How to describe tho indescribable, is the 
grand difficulty. Metaphorical or symbolic forms of 
speech, rightly apprehended, are expressive enough, and 
highly suggestive; and true enough, when we bear in 
mind that painters’ and poets’ truth is not truth itself, 
but a faithful resemblance only. 
It may not be uninteresting to inquire to what extent 
the resemblance holds good between contagions, in¬ 
fections, zymotics, and the natural phenomena with 
which they are in so many words compared. Thus we 
have seen how the notion of infecting (tainting, or 
dyeing), teaches us the rapidity with which either the 
one kind of taint or the other may bo diffused in a 
confined, or dissipated altogether in an unconfincd, 
medium. 
There is a marked analogy between the views, which 
we do not quite despair of imparting to our readers, and 
a whole host of useful observations, on the laws of 
healthy and diseased growth recorded in our columns. 
The study of blights and vegetable diseases—diseases of 
cattle and poultry—and epidemics, or diseases of com¬ 
munities—may be pursued with advantage from a com¬ 
mon point, and to a certain extent, we could put the 
whole thing into the form of a treatise on tho cultivation 
of the cholera crop, which would be so plain that “ even 
ladies might understand it,” to borrow a glorious anti¬ 
climax of poor Dr. Buckland. Such a recipe we re¬ 
member, for making ninety-five out of a hundred healthy 
young persons consumptive, by twolveinonths of judi¬ 
cious management. Such a recipo an ex-Wcst Indian 
army surgeon has favoured the martinets with, for 
causing yellow fever among fresh recruits on foreign 
stations. Not very unlike was Linmcus’s recipe for 
raising pearls by provoking a disease among shell-fish ; 
or Kitchener’s, (but the less said about that tho better) 
for giving a wretched goose an enlarged liver. 
Tho slight forco of reaction attending the use of a 
broken limb, or a railway accident, or gunshot wound, 
