THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, Febbuaey 1, 1859. 
279 
“ The weather continues very mild, with heavy rains, and some 
sunny days, and vegetation is much too far advanced. A few Snow¬ 
drops are in bloom ; Malmaison Rose and General Jacqueminot 
opening; crimson and common Chinas in flower. By the way, 
the General is the best perpetual Rose I have yet seen. I have 
a bed of it, which, from the 15th of June to the 16th of De¬ 
cember, was never without quantities of flower, and on the last 
date one flower was as perfect as any during the whole summer.”— 
J. 0. 
[The bulbs of Lilium Japonicum make offsets very freely, and 
the leaves of these offsets keep green from twelve to thirty 
months, according to size, strength, and the circumstances under 
which tho plant is managed ; but old or established flowering 
bulbs cast their leaves after every flowering, or every year, 
for no bulb flowers more constantly than Lilium Japonicum. 
The part of the country where your garden is, is more favourable 
than most places north of London, as this Lily does little 
good out of doors, northwards. But if you preserve the leaves, 
flower - stalks, and buds from frost, the plant will flower, sure 
enough, for it has no stated time of flowering, under variable 
culture, although from May to August is the more usual time for 
it to be in bloom. 
We are glad to learn that General Jacqueminot is so good a 
bedder. We hoped so from the first day we saw it, and since 
then we have had to fight for it, in order to keep it in the front 
ranks ; but, like many more of them, he is rather light-headed, 
and rather too free, we fear, in beds. Yet, with it all, he is one 
of the very best coloured, and most useful of all the Roses.] 
CULTURE OP INDTAN-RUBBER PLANT. 
“ Please to inform me how the Ficus elastica is propagated ? 
I have one about six feet high, but it has but one long shoot, 
about two feet long. There are three or four small ones on the 
main stem, but they do not seem to increase in size at all. They 
are about an inch long.”—M. P. 
[If you were to pick out the terminal bud of your plant, or 
bend the shoot to one side, you would throw more vigour into 
these little shoots. When they get about three or four inches 
long, let the plant get rather dry for a week, and then slip off a 
couple of the shoots close to the stem, with a sharp knife. Keep 
the plant dry a week or so longer, only preventing flagging, and 
rub powdered chalk into the wound. Lay the ends of the 
cuttings in dry sand, and after a few days insert them in sand and 
charcoal, in a hotbed, and they will soon strike root.] 
ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY’S MEETING. 
The first Meeting of the Entomological Society for the 
present year was held at the Society’s Rooms, in Bedford Row, 
on the 3rd of January, the chair being occupied by the President, 
Dr. J. E. Gray, P.R.S., &c. Amongst the donations to the 
library received since the last Meeting, was a remarkable memoir, 
by Mr. J. Lubbock, on the muscular structure of Caterpillars ; 
and a new volume of the Monograph on the Libellulidce, by M. 
Selys and Dr. Hagen. 
Mr. Samuel Stevens exhibited several very fine and new species 
of Beetles, from the interior of Peru; and Mr. Augustus 
Sheppard, various Coleoptera, from Melbourne, Australia. 
Mr. Waterhouse exhibited specimens of two small Beetles, new 
to the British fauna, one of them belonging to a genus not here¬ 
tofore found in this country—namely, the Symbiotes latus, of 
Redtenbacher, taken at Ryde, Isle of Wight, by sweeping low 
herbage ; also, Tachyusa lata, taken at Highgate. 
Mr. Ianson also exhibited Symbiotes latus, which he had ob¬ 
tained from the nest of Formica Jlava, and under bark. It had 
been described by Mr. Wollaston, under the generic name of 
Microchondrns. lie also exhibited Oxypoda spectabilis, of 
Merkel, taken by Mr. Hislop. 
Mr. Pickard exhibited a new Microlepidopterous insect, from 
Portland. 
Mr. A. White exhibited a drawing of a very remarkable crusta- 
ceous animal, belonging to the Isopodous family, Sphccromidce, 
or Marine Woodlice, having an elongated horn on the front of 
the head, a character not hitherto noticed in any species of the 
family. It had been taken in Bass’s Straits, during the voyage 
of the Herald. Mr. White proposed to call it Cephaloniscus 
Grayianus, in honour of the President. He also pointed out an 
| analogous instance in the fossil trilobites, occurring in the genus 
Enerinurus. 
Mr. F. Walker exhibited a vegetable gall, from Sierra Leone, 
said to have been formed by a species of tlirips, being the first 
instance in which such habits had been attributed to these very 
troublesome insects. The galls on the Lime-tree leaves, noticed 
at a former Meeting, were produced by Sarcoptes Tilice, of 
Turpin, a species of mite, an account of which had been pub¬ 
lished in the Memoires de Vlnstitut for 1835. 
Mr. F. Smith read an extended notice of the various species of 
Ilymenopterous insects, which he had observed to have been 
| infested with the remarkable parasites forming the family Stylo- 
| pidae. In addition to the genera of bees, Halictus and Andrena 
! (every specimen which he had met with of Andrena convexiuscula 
having been infested), he mentioned several species of Ammophita, 
or Sand Wasps, from Sicily, Tunis, and Gambia; several species 
of Sphex from Brazil, Chili, and Aim ; an Eumenes, from India ; 
an Odynerus, from Brazil; and several Polybii and Polistes. 
The exuviae of the parasite from one of the species of the last- 
named genus was so large, that Mr. Smith supposed the sty lops 
would measure at least two-thirds of an inch. 
Mr. Waterhouse read an extended memoir, containing de¬ 
scriptions of the British species of Corticaria and Latridius, two 
genera of minute Beetles, with observations on the synonymy of 
the species. 
The President announced that a new part of the Transactions 
of the Society, completing the fourth part of the second series, 
was ready for distribution. He also gave notice of the alterations 
in the Council and officers, intended to be proposed at the next 
anniversary Meeting. 
PORTABLE HOTHOUSES. 
Whethee they are hot, or cold, or merely with the 
chill off, all plant-houses, for use or ornament, are called 
hothouses, in common garden language. The fruit of the 
inquiry about portable structures of this kind is now ripe. 
Therefore, my task is easy enough—only to hand out 
the fruit. 
I think I have already thanked everyone who has 
helped to bring in the crop ; but, to make quite sure, I 
do hereby thank them all over again. They made it 
quite plain and easy, for the next generation, and for the 
rising part of the present, to have a better, and more 
convenient class of hothouses, in all their varieties, than 
we of the grey locks and spectacles could boast of,— 
much cheaper, much better, much stronger, and much 
more easily and better ventilated houses, than anything 
we have had in command before now. To get rid of 
rafters entirely, and for ever, is a vast improvement, to 
begin with, as we gain so much more light by the change, 
and at the same time render the roof more secure and 
much stronger. To be able to have every pane of glass 
fixed, and so as to have no glass to slide up or down, or 
sideways, and yet have the whole house as portable as a 
bedstead, is altogether such as none of us ever yet dreamt 
of. But every description of hothouse, from tho Crystal 
Palace downwards, can be so had, if wo choose to have 
them so. 
Some people may urge, that so much luxury, and such 
ease, will spoil the next generation of gardeners, and 
render them less capable of acting on the spur of the 
moment; and I must concede the point to them, for I 
know very well that when a man has no need of having 
all his wits about him, some of them will get lost, and 
surely some of them will get out of order. But, then, I 
must' urge the very reasonable supposition, that, under 
a reformed system of hothouses, a gardener will have 
no reason to jump to a conclusion all at once, or act on 
the spur of the moment, in anything which relates to 
hothouses. 
I said that I would give a section of the Messrs. Jack- 
son’s new house. Since then, however, I learned from 
Mr. Macrostie that he had put up some portable green¬ 
houses, on purpose to be removed after awhile ; and that 
being just the kind for which I was so much urged to 
