THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, February 22, 1839. 
329 
acres. It belongs to Sir Lydetoue Newman, Bart. W'e are 
about halt a mile from the sea of Start Bay, and five miles from 
Kingebridge. A good climato and fine soil.”— John Mitchell. 
[Your account of yourself, your Cyclamens, and your situa¬ 
tion, is, indeed, most interesting. There seem to bo three 
stages in the history of Cyclamens. In the first stage, our 
present Cyclamen Europccum was named heder a folium. The 
next stage brings a rule-of-thumb Ivy-leaved Cyclamen from the 
old gardeners. This making the second heeler ofolium ; and the 
third and last stage brings ou a revision by Teuore, an Italian 
botanist, who knows them well, and his names are now acknow¬ 
ledged as the right ones. As there were three distinct kinds, or 
species, which had the leaves more or less in the way of Ivy 
leaves, and as two of tho kinds went, promiscuously, by- the 
name hederrefoliim, these two were renamed, or rather the older 
hedercefolium, was restored, and the rule-of-thumb hedercefolium 
of the gardeners was named Neapolitanum, The way to make 
out the difference is this:—The Ivy-leaved Cyclamen which 
blooms in the spring, is the true hedercefolium; and the hederce- 
folium which blooms in the autumn is Neapdlilanum , which 
Tenure naiuod after his own place, as a patriot should do. But 
Cyclamen Xeapolitanum is also a native of England, and also of 
Sicily, and the opposite shore of Africa; but grows nowhere so well 
as in central Italy; and Italy seems fo be the cradle of theEuropean 
kinds ; and as they branch off eastward and northwards, they 
assume slight differences, which so far deceived botanists, as to lead 
them to give the kinds distinct specific names, as repandum, in 
the “Flora Grawa,” for the true hedercefolium of Ciusius, as it 
was so much smaller from the mountains of Greece, than on the 
lower ranges of southern Italy. The confusion of plants, also, 
was a stumbling block, as is instanced in Cyclamen Clusii, which 
is the same as Europccum. 
Then, as to Cyclamen vernum, I could find uo home for it in 
all the earth. No one, that I could find, said where it grows 
wild, to be depended on. Then, who can tell us, and say the spot 
where it was found ? The vernum ou which I build my thoughts, 
must have been the same as the one figured by Sweet; for it was 
bought by the late Lady Gordon Camming, at that nursery, and, 
probably, from seeing it in Sweet’s. That plant flowered from 
November till January; and Sweet says, “ it is more robust than 
Coum.” Gordon says “it is over” before the spring comes in; 
and here is Mr. Mitchell, who is a self-taught man, and is of the 
longest practice of us all, says his vernum comes in after Coum, and 
is smaller, in all the parts, than Coum, which blooms with him in 
November. Therefore, there can be no doubt whatever, but Mr. 
Mitchell’s Coum is the hyemale, or winter-flowering kind, and 
that his vernum is our Coum. Can any one of our readers 
authenticate Sweet’s description of the leaves and flowers of 
vernum coming from short, flat stems, instead of from the bulbs P] 
RIBBON-PLANTED BORDERS. 
“ I have a south-east flower-border which I wish planted with 
annuals on the ribbon system,.and shall feel much obliged by a 
list of such kinds as will be suitable. Tho border is about forty j 
feet by four feet, backed by a five-feet wall, to which I have a ! 
few young fruit trees planted. The walks are laid with yellow or 
orange ashes, which we procure at the ironstone works here, being 
the refuse or burnt ‘ blaze’ of the ironstone (a very pretty and 
excellent walk ; and when well rolled, resisting frost and rain, and 
almost as firm as cement), with box edging. I grow good Stocks 
and French Marigolds on the border, but always fail with 
Yerbenas.”—J. Cowan. 
[Out of all the host of annuals wo possess, wc cannot form 
one single satisfactory ribbon, and we do not know anyone who 
can. A ribbon four feet wide would need to have all the lines 
and colours as evenly and as straightly as the lines and colours 
of a clan tartan. The first line should occupy six inches of the 
width of the border, and not one quarter of an inch more or less ; 
it should be a pure white, or a deep blue. The second row should 
be fourteen or fifteen inches wide to exactness. Say twenty 
inches out of tho four feet arc occupied with the first two rows, that 
leaves just fourteen inches each to the next two rows ; but one of 
them may be not more than eight inches, and the other may be 
twenty inches. Their breadth would depend on the colour. But 
say as we say, and then ask tho whole seed trade to supply four 
kinds of seeds to do this, in the true style of height, colour, and 
contrast, and to be in bloom by the first of June, and to keep in 
bloom to the last day of September, and the four kinds we need 
for it, would make any man’s fortune in one year, if he had a 
barn large enough to harvest the four seeds.] 
THE SCIENCE OF GARDENING-. 
(Continued from page 315.) 
We have never been able to discover that light lias any 
injurious influence over germination ; and in those experiments 
apparently proving the contrary, due care was not taken to 
prevent the seed being exposed to a greater degree of dryness 
as well as to light. If seed be placed on the surface of a soil, 
and other seed just below that surface, and care bo taken to keep 
the former constantly moist, it will germinate just as speedily 
as the buried seed ; and if exposed to the blue rays only of the 
spectrum, by being kept under a glass of that colour, even more 
rapidly. 
M. Saussure found that when the direct rays of tho suu were 
intercepted, though light was admitted, seeds germinated as fast 
as when kept in the dark.— (Recite relies sur la Vegetation, 23). 
This was confirmed by Messrs. Lawson, at the Meeting of the 
Association of Science in 1853. Therefore, the object of sowing 
the seed below the surface, seems to be for the purposes of 
keeping it in a state of equable and salutary moisture, a3 well as 
to place the radicle in the medium necessary for its growth into 
a root, immediately it emerges from the integument of the seed. 
We are aware that Mr. Hunt arrived at a different conclusion 
from his experiments ; but it is very evident, from his own state¬ 
ment of his experiments, that ho did not secure an equal supply 
of moisture, nor an equal amount of temperature to each sowiug. 
Therefore, it was not the light only which influenced the results. 
The seeds were sown in boxes of earth, and all similarly exposed 
to the sun. Those covered with ruby-coloured glass had an 
average temperature of 87° ; those with red glass, of 83° ; those 
with orange, 101°; thoso with yellow, 88°; those with blue, 94° ; 
and those with green, 74°. 
Mr. Hunt thus narrates the results of his experiments :— 
“Numerous experiments have been tried with the seeds of 
Mignonette, many varieties of the flowering Pea, the common 
Parsley, and Cresses. The seeds germinated, in general, the most 
rapidly under the red glass, in the spring of tho year; but when the 
heat of summer has advanced, tho temperature of the red light 
has been too great, and germination has boon prevented. Except 
under the blue glass, these plants have all been marked by the 
extraordinary length to which the stems of the cotyledons have 
grown, and by the entire absence of the ptumula. No true leaves 
forming, the cotyledons soon perish, and the plant dies. Under 
the green glass the process of germination has been exceedingly 
slow, and the plants, particularly the Cresses and Mignonette, 
have speedily died. 
“ Under the blue glass alone lias the process gone on health¬ 
fully to the end ; and, although there were a few instances of a 
perfect plant under the yellow glass, it on no occasion endured 
to the formation of a flower; excepting the plants under the 
yellow and blue glasses, all have been more or loss blanched. 
“ These experiments sufficiently prove, that the process of 
germination is obstructed by the influence ot light on the surface 
of the soil, although the seeds have been buried some depth 
beneath it. The effects of heat, as exhibited by the red rays, 
are not to be regarded as destructive in themselves, as plants 
have been found to grow under the influence of these rays when 
they have been supplied with an extraordinary quantity of water, 
to supply that drawn off by continued evaporation; whereas, 
although tlio evaporation, which has been equally rapid under 
the yellow media, has been met in the same manner as under tho 
red, it has produced no beneficial results.” 
We draw very different conclusions from these researches. In 
the first place, these experiments can prove no more than that only 
one ray of this spectrum is, by itself, injurious to germination; 
but we knoiv, from actual experiment, that when seeds are buried 
at the usual depth proper for their cultivation, duly supplied 
with moisture, and kept at similar temperatures, germination 
took place nearly equally under every coloured glass employed. 
So soon as germination was completed, then the coloured glasses 
varied extremely in tlicir effects upon the seedlings ; but were • 
most injurious, as stated by Mr. Hunt. The influence possessed 
by the interposition of coloured glasses, so far as mere germina¬ 
tion is concerned^ arises, we think, chiefly from their modifying 
the temperature and the moisture; but the interception ot the 
