THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, August 23, 1860. 
331 
HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
FLORAL COMMITTEE. 
A Meeting of the Floral Committee was held on Thursday 
last at the Rooms, 8, St. Martin’s Place, W.C. Rev. Joshua 
Dix in the chair. 
A Seedling Achimenes, of a line, dwarf, bushy habit, and an 
abundant bloomer, was received from Mr. Deane, Nurseryman, 
Bradford, Yorkshire, the flowers of which were very flat and 
smooth on the edges; but the colour and general appearance 
of the plant were not considered sufficiently distinct from 
many others in cultivation to commend this variety to special 
notice. 
Mr. Thompson, of Ipswich, sent flowers of NemopJiila aio- 
maria oculata, a very pretty new annual. In the centre of the 
flower is a black eye, external to which is a zone of white, and on 
the outside of the white a zone of pale blue. The flowers were 
considerably withered, and, therefore, a correct judgment could 
not be formed of their real beauty. 
Mr. Keynes, of Salisbury, sent a tray of Seedling Carnations 
and Picotees: Carnation Vivid, a scarlet flake, and Garibaldi, 
a rose flake. Picotee Rosabella, light rose edged ; Mount Etna, 
heavy-edged red ; Sylvia, edged light purple. The same gentle¬ 
man also sent three seedling Dahlias : Andrew Dodds, a fine, noble 
flower, with great depth of petal, and full centre. Colour velvety 
maroon, the petals iu the centre tipped with mauve, which gives 
the flower a fine iridescent lustre. This was unanimously 
awarded a First-class Certificate. Purpurea is a bright rosy 
purple, and Minnie a blush white. 
Mr. Dodds, of Salisbury, sent flowers of four seedling Dahlias : 
Mrs. Dodds, a lovely yellow, rich in colour, great depth of flower, 
and beautifully cupped petals ; received a First-class Certifi¬ 
cate. Mrs. Wm. Fawcett, blush white, tipped with rosy purple. 
Mrs. Balfour, primrose, tipped with purple, finely cupped petals, 
aud great depth of flower. Highland Mary, yellow spotted, and 
striped with crimson ; a good flower, but dirty looking. 
Mr. Rawlings, of Bethnal Green, sent a seedling Dahlia, Miss 
Jones, which had not quite acquired its true character. The 
same gentleman also sent a variegated-leaved variety, but the 
marking was not considered sufficiently defined. 
Mr. Kinghorn, of Richmond, sent two seedling Lobelias, one 
of which, named Mars, is in the way of St. Clair. Purple 
Standard is a fine thing of a lovely rosy-purple colour, and 
with broader petals than any of the other varieties of the same 
colour. This was considered a great acquisition, and received 
a First-class Certificate. 
Messrs. E. G. Henderson & Son, of Wellington Road, sent 
branches of a new plant called Fpigynium leucobotrys, a native of 
the Duppla Mountains in North-eastern Bengal. It belongs to 
the natural order Yacciniacese, or Cranberry family, and is a 
hardy greenhouse or conservatory plant. The flowers are pro¬ 
duced in racemes, and are succeeded by clusters of fruit like 
Currants, on long, fleshy pedicels, the fruit and pedicels of a 
delicate snowy whiteness. Each berry is the size of a White 
Currant, with a central black spot surrounded with five small 
black spots. This received a First-class Certificate. 
Messrs. Carter & Co., of Holborn, sent a collection of new 
annuals, among which a pale variety of Saponaria calabrica 
received a Label of Commendation ; the others were hardly in a 
condition to have their merits fully discussed. 
Mr. Whiting, of the Deepdene, sent a very nice double variety 
of the pot Marigold ( Calendula officinalis), which was also 
Commended. 
NOTICE OE NEW BOOKS. 
Uses of Animals.*— The work before us contains the first 
course of lectures delivered at the South Kensington Museum by 
Dr. Lankester. The second course upon kindred subjects will 
be published in the autumn, and most ably and popularly do they 
explain “ the nature and objects of those animal products which 
are employed in the uses of daily life.” 
We will confine our quotations and notes to the lecture 
“On Waste”—a common but very erroneously employed term, 
except when applied to man’s lavish expenditure. There is no 
“ waste” in Nature; the vilest refuse has its part and office to 
fill in creation—the very excrements of animals are a portion of 
* Uses of Animals in Relation to the Industry of Man. Silk; Wool; 
Leather; Bone; Soap; Waste. By E. Lankester, M.D., F.E.S. London: 
R. Hardwiekc. 
| the food of plants—the Medlar and many other fruits, “ luscious 
in decay,” are portions of the sustenance of man and other 
animals. “Waste” and “Weeds” and “Dirt” are all terms 
relative to the situation in which they happen to be—they are 
no longer “Waste” and “Weeds” and “ Dirt ” when they are 
in their appropriate places. “Waste,” moreover, is altogether a 
false term, if intended to express anything as useless. Nothing 
in the world is useless. Every leaf waving healthily in the sun¬ 
shine pours out the life gas of animals, and when that leaf decays 
it becomes a source of heat to the gardener, and, like all other 
vegetable refuse, a manure for his plants. Every animal, from 
I the minutest revealed by the microscope to the largest denizens 
of the forest and the ocean, emit gases and excretions on which 
I plants depend for their growth and existence. 
Let us turn to our own households, and see what is the value of 
their “ Waste.” The very sweepings of our rooms are a manure ; 
the ashes of our fireplaces are mingled with clay to form bricks; 
the soot of our chimnies is an admirable top dressing for our 
cultivated soils; and the sewage of our sinks and watercloseDs 
is the most fertilising of liquid manures. 
If we turn to our workshops we shall find no “ waste ” there. 
Paper-shavings are again sent to the mill; the fragments and 
rags of the tailor, draper, and old-clothesman form the very best 
manure for our Hops ; and it is curious to reflect that a cast-off' 
coat may be decomposed into the aroma arising from a future 
tankard of ale on our sideboard ! “ When,” says Dr. Lankester, 
“the workman is at work on the diamond, he suffers not a grain 
of its dust to be lost or wasted, but hoards it up for future use. 
So with the workman in gold and silver. We find that the 
particles of dust that escape in various directions are carefully 
collected ;—and it is not less true with regard to vegetable pro¬ 
ducts. We see the shavings and sawdust of the carpenter and 
cabinet-maker carefully collected together for other purposes and 
uses in the arts and manufacturing operations ; and it ought to 
be no less so in the animal kingdom, in the use of the animal 
products.” 
Commerce, too, aids in this profitable avoidance of “waste.” 
Forcibly was this enforced upon our attention in what has so 
wrongly been styled “that ivaste of waters, the Atlantic.” We 
there fell in with a little vessel, and when hailed as to her where¬ 
from, where-to, and purpose, the reply was, “ From Miramichi 
to Belfast with buffalo tips!” The world was circumnavigated 
that the tips of horns might be converted into handles,' and their 
shavings would be mingled with the manure-heap. 
The hides of those buffaloes are imported for conversion into 
leather; the clippings of those hides are boiled down into glue; 
and their bones have been imported to form superphosphate of 
lime for the fertilising of our corn fields ; and even the bones of 
men and horses from our battle-fields have been imported thus 
to enrich the country for whose safety they died. 
Thus might wo range over every region of our earth without 
failing in a single instance to show that there is no such thing 
as “waste” in existence; but we must close our note-book, yet 
we will not refrain from one more extract from the lecture 
before us. 
“ I was asked the other day whether I had ever seen the 
colouring matter produced from an insect ( Cimex lectularius) 
uncommonly disliked in this country. Some one in Australia, 
it was stated, had taken out a patent for procuring a beautiful 
colouring substance from this little creature. And if this should 
be the ease, there is no doubt that they would run the hazard of 
extermination. I do not know whether this process has suc¬ 
ceeded, but it illustrates the fact that there are hundreds of common 
things around ns which may be made useful by the application 
of industry and intelligence. 
“ Speaking of insects and their products, I must here remind 
you that to the insect tribe we are indebted for chloroform one 
of the most powerful agents in alleviating human pain.. The 
little ant contains a substance called formic acid, about which old 
John Ray and Martin Lister corresponded a century ago; and 
they found that it contained an acid, and so it got into books as 
formic acid. It wa 3 found to be composed of a compound 
radical, formyle, and three atoms of oxygen. Dumas substituted 
chlorine for the oxygen, and thus obtained terchloride of formyle, 
which is chloroform. Then the Americans found that ether w as 
capable of taking away all sensation from the human body; and 
Dr. Simpson, of Edinburgh, found that terchloride of formyle was 
more thoroughly adapted'for this purpose than even ether. All 
this has arisen from the study of the habits of insects. There i3 
no telling but that every insect has some use in relation to man. 
