71 
October 24. THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
There may be other woods growing in the country which 
may be found superior for casks to any I have noticed. It 
is to be hoped, therefore, that other members will lay before 
the association the result of their individual experience on 
that subject.— James Kino, Irrawang. 
Maitland. —Flour is quoted at the same prices, 28s. to 
30s. per 100 lbs. for fine, aud 20s. to 27s. for seconds; bran 
is in good demand at 20s. per 100 lbs. Wheat has been 
purchased at 0s. 6d., Os. 0d., and 10s. per bushel. Maize 
has been bought at 0s. and 0s. Gd. per bushel. Oaten hay, 
slightly pressed, has been purchased at £16 per ton; and 
i!12 per ton has been offered for good lucerne, in stack. In 
farm produce, bacon is beginning to come in, and has been 
bought at 7d. per lb. wholesale, lard is quoted at Od. to 7d. 
In dairy produce, butter is quoted higher again, fresh, 1 s. Od. 
to 2s. per lb. wholesale, and salt, Is. Gd. Cheese of good 
quality is scarce, and in demand, at about 5d. per lb. or 
more, if prime ; but inferior is difficult of sale, 4d. to 4jd. 
In poultry, fowls are quoted wholesale at 3s. Gd., ducks, 4s., 
geese, 0s. to 10s., and turkeys, 10s. to 12s. per couple. Eggs, 
2s. per dozen. In vegetables, potatoes have brought j£9 10s. 
per ton, and 11s. to 12s. per cwt. wholesale; small onions, 
12s. to 14s. per cwt., large, 11s.; pumpkins, 4s. to 5s. per 
dozen; 'cabbages, 5s. per dozen. In fruit, oranges are 
quoted at 4d. to Gd. per dozen, and lemons Id. to 3d. per 
dozen wholesale. 
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF PLANTS. 
The following is an abstract of a Lecture recently deli¬ 
vered at Worcester, by Edwin Lees, Esq., F.L.S.:— 
“ Originally plants were only valued as furnishing food ; 
and acorns, chesnuts, and beech-mast, had been the first 
aliment of mankind before the cultivation of corn. After 
that golden age, magical and superstitious qualities were 
ascribed to plants, especially if gathered at particular 
times. The Greeks aud Romans considered Pontus, in 
Asia Minor, as a famous place for dire venomous plants, 
that would change the very nature of man ; and the ‘ sacred 
bean,’ the fruit of the Nelumbium speciosum, was supposed 
by the greatest philosophers to possess a mysterious influ¬ 
ence. In our own country the mountain ash and service-tree 
were considered antidotes to witchcraft; and this was the 
reason the elder-tree was seen at every cottage-door, because 
it had been considered to keep out all unnatural intruders. 
Agrimony and mugwort, as well as many others, were con¬ 
sidered ‘plant's of power;’ the former placed under a man’s 
head threw him into a state of torpor, while the latter gave 
him pedestrian powers almost equal to the giant’s seven- 
leagued boots ! After the invention of printing, and the con¬ 
sequent general spread of knowledge, magical herbs began 
to be regarded with incredulity. But now another phase in 
the history of plants occurred. They became ‘speed-wells,’ 
‘wound-worts, and ‘all-heals;’ they were expected to cure 
every disorder in the catalogue of human ills, and every 
garden beeame a little Apothecaries’ Hall. This was the 
belle dame age of medicine, when the old woman doctress 
had much more to do than the apothecary, and worked her 
pestle and mortar to good purpose. About a quarter of a 
century ago, one Mrs. IVelton, was well-known at St. John’s, 
near this city, as a doctress, and a ‘grand compounder’ of 
balsams, syrups, &c., and did a wonderful business in the 
4 yarb ’ way. 
“ ‘ Midst leaves and flowers 
She dwelt, and knew all secrets of their powers.’ 
He now came to geographical botany, for it was to be ob¬ 
served, that plants, being influenced in their development 
by soil, by latitude, temperature, moisture, and elevation, 
the Flora of one country was essentially different from that 
of another, each region of the land and water being occupied 
by distinct groups. As striking instances of diversity in 
vegetation, no rose had ever been found in the southern 
hemisphere; equinoctial Africa had no Laurinicc, and while 
more than 300 species of Erica, or heath, were congregated 
in the territory of the Cape of Good Hope, none belonged to 
America, except it was the common ling in the far north. 
The pines and firs, so abundant in the northern hemis¬ 
phere, were replaced in the south by Araucarias and Cycadete. 
Islands in the wide ocean had generally a peculiar vegeta¬ 
tion ; the Canaries had 510 species, and St. Helena nearly 
60, that had never been seen elsewhere. So the plants of 
South America were restricted to that continent, and out of 
4,100 indigenous to Australia, only 1G6 belonged to Europe, 
many of these, too, accidently introduced by settlers. Even 
marine vegetation was distinct in its character, that of the 
Mediterranean and Red Sea being entirely different. Refer¬ 
ence was then made to many local British plants only found 
in particular spots, as the Helianlhemum Breweri, on the 
rocks at Holyhead ; the white rock cinquefoil (Patent ilia 
rupestris), on Craig Breiddin, in Wales, <fcc.; and thus a zest 
was given to the zeal of the exploring botanist in searching 
out the rare plants thus circumstanced. Heat and moisture 
were the great instigators of plantal vitality, aud where these 
preponderated, as in equatorial regions, the largest flowers 
appeared, as the Victoria lily and the monstrous Rafflesia 
whose corolla was a yard across. Here, too, palms and 
banannas abounded, as also in the tropical zone, distin¬ 
guished by its cocoa-nuts and tree-ferns. The earth might, 
then, be divided into zones of vegetation, in parallelism with 
zones of temperature, till progressing towards the pole, trees 
became utterly stunted, every trace of verdure disappeared, 
and a few solitary lichens, amongst pyramids of ice, or a 
stain of crimson amid wastes of snow, alone testified to 
the all but extinguished spark of phytological existence. 
These zones of vegetation were repeated upon the moun¬ 
tains, with their increasing height, in exact correspondence 
between the decrement of heat from the equator to the 
poles. On the Alps and Pyrenees, at the elevation of 8,780 
feet, it was as cold as the region of the poles at the level of 
the sea, and though the snow-line was higher at the equator, 
even there all vegetation ceased at an elevation of 15,200 
feet. The size of plants was much diminished on the sides 
of mountains, but the beauty of natural Alpine gardens, 
among black ravines and broken crags, was so exciting, that 
any one who once trod upon such an oasis of beauty long 
remembered it amid the dusty scenes of every day life. 
Though the distribution of plants on the earth was clearly 
governed by temperature, the ‘‘ Isothermal lines ” of mean 
annual heat did not progress uniformly, and thus the 
eastern countries of Europe, Asia, and America had much 
lower temperature than the western, aud plants were affected 
accordingly. In Norway, the silver fir, black alder, and 
others, grew under the polar circle, while eastern Siberia 
and the vast extent of Labrador, north of GO deg., was quite 
treeless. The limitation of the cultivated plants was next 
noticed :—Nutmegs, coffee, cocoa, and the finest spices, 
were limited to inter-tropical regions; cotton, rice, and 
olives, grew in lat. 45 deg.; the vine, to 50 deg.; while in 
the west of Europe the cultivation of wheat, flax, and 
tobacco, ceased at 60 deg.; hut hemp, oats, barley, rye, and 
potatoes, progressed into the polar circle. The southern 
hemisphere, from the greater accumulation of ice at the 
poles, was colder than the northern. This was well shown 
by a comparison of the indigenous flowering plants of our 
little channel islands, Guernsey, Jersey, &c., with the larger 
Kerguelen’s group in the same parallel of latitude south. 
The former isles possessed 840 species, but Kerguelen’s 
only 32. The physiognomy of vegetation was next adverted 
to, those peculiar features of associated plants that, the eye 
at once seized upon, in any country, and connected with 
early recollection as ‘the vegetable forms of our father-land,’ 
seas, mountain chains, by their intervention formed pro¬ 
vinces of plants, and thus the greatest diversity prevailed in 
the clothing of the earth’s surface. As striking examples, 
the forests of Australia and Van Diemen’s Land were com¬ 
posed of evergreen Eucalypti; tree-ferns abounded in New 
Zealand ; the singular tribe of cacti in Mexico ; acacias and 
aloes in Southern Africa; and the Himalayan Mountains 
were the grand capital of the rhododendrons. Fir-forests 
extended in Norway and Russia for hundreds of miles; 
while in North America cypresses formed enormous woods 
and vast dismal swamps. These assemblages of plants 
fixed the natural physiognomy of countries by their beauty, 
singularity, or imposing size. The greatest natural families 
of plants were next detailed in order, but an instance or two 
of these must suffice. The grasses, of which there were 
4,000 species, was a most remarkable group. These form¬ 
ing vast natural meadows, extending for GO,000 square 
leagues in South America, rose in magnitude according to 
climate ; in Brazil, the grasses were 12 feet high, and a reefl 
