January 9, 1886. 
THE GARDENING} WORLD. 
293 
always a pleasant sight in rural England. The more 
orderly the garden is kept, the more pleasurable is the 
effects. 
And there should be something on the 'cottage walls, 
a Rose or two if the soil and situation are favourable, 
and Pyracantha, Jasminum nudiflorum, Clematis, 
Pyrus, Ivy, &c., anything that would relieve the 
nakedness of bare walls. Here then we should have a 
cottage garden coming up nearly to one’s idea of what 
it should he. Have we drawn our picture in too highly 
tinted colours ? We hope not. We are disposed to 
believe that the helpful principle is abroad, and that 
human sympathies ripen into action, and keep of a 
nature to make one more and more hopeful of the real 
improvement we desire to see progressing among 
human kind. 
-—>X-<—- 
THE “GINGER-BEER PLANT” 
UNDER THE MICROSCOPE. 
A fact not generally known is that common ginger- 
beer, as sold in stone bottles, contains alcohol and is 
intoxicating. The powerful and often pathetic elo¬ 
quence of temperance orators is proverbial; the sparkling 
humour, the unbounded gaiety, the exuberant animal 
spirits of teetotalers are well known. No one has ever 
seen a teetotaler with a long pale face, a silent tongue, 
or a melancholy manner of expressing himself. A tem¬ 
perance man, as far as outward appearance goes, is 
generally like a walking bottle of the very best cham¬ 
pagne with the cork just drawn, his sparkling wit 
agreeing well with the effervescing nectar from the 
bottle. The overflowing gaiety and high spirits of the 
temperance man is, we are afraid, too often due to the 
abundant alcohol he imbibes in his daily ginger-beer. 
We have been told that when a man comes home cold, 
and, perhaps, wet through, on a boisterous and rainy 
winter’s night, nothing is better to drink, or more 
certain to raise his spirits and ward-off a cold or a dan¬ 
gerous illness, than a bottle of ginger-beer. Some 
abstainers are said to prefer half cold water ; but we 
never implicitly believe in all w r e hear. 
We are often asked about the “ Ginger-beer Plant,” 
its “regular” name, and the appearance it presents 
under the microscope. The very highest authorities 
have been asked to investigate the nature of this 
“plant.” According to the Proceedings of the Essex 
Field Club, vol. iv., p. 44, one of the botanists at Kew 
had then been long studying this “plant,” and in 
September, 1883, he was then “trying it under various 
conditions.” Whether the “plant” or the botanist 
was being tried “ under various conditions” the report 
does not clearly say, and up to this time we have seen 
no further report. The “various conditions” are, 
perhaps, not yet exhausted, or perhaps the authorities 
at Kew are too busy, and have not at present discovered 
the real native name of the wood of which the niggers 
of Jamaica make sugar-barrels, or that other subject 
even more abstruse and portentious, viz., the name of 
the wood used by Yankees for making walking-sticks. 
When these momentous botanical subjects have been 
elucidated, perhaps the “Ginger-beer Plant” will be 
again taken in hand ; or perhaps a Fellow of the Royal 
Society will read a paper on it, with an illustration to 
match the wonderful picture given with Mr. Plowright's 
paper on Corn Mildew, Proceedings, Royal Society, 
Eov. 15, 1883. This astounding work of art bears no 
artist’s or engraver’s name. The engraver was no 
doubt afraid to give his name, or he would have been 
inundated with all the engraving work in Britain, pos¬ 
sibly go mad, and perhaps poison himself with an 
undiluted “Ginger-beer Plant.” 
The “ Ginger-beer Plant ” is little more than a cheesy 
mass composed of German yeast, or compressed “low ” 
or sedimentary yeast. When placed in water with 
sugar and ginger, it decomposes the sugar, produces 
alcohol, and sets free bubbles of carbonic acid gas. 
The sugar, ginger, and yeast is all that is required for 
ginger-beer. The “Ginger-beer Plant” is probably 
prepared with syrup, after the occasional manner of 
preparing the common yeast of brewers. In this con¬ 
dition it does not readily turn putrid, but will keep 
good for several weeks. It will be seen from the above 
remarks that the “ Ginger-beer Plant ” saves nothing, 
for the housewife has to buy everything necessary for 
ginger-beer except the yeast, and the “plant” is a 
mere simple ferment and a “plant” in more senses 
than one. 
Herewith we append an illustration of a very small 
fragment of a “Ginger-beer Plant” enlarged 1000 
diameters ; this high magnification is quite necessary, 
as the constituent parts of the “plant” arc oxtemely 
minute. The oval bodies at A. are cells of German or 
low sedimentary yeast (the Saccharomyces cerevisi® of 
botanists) ; B, C, and D, are different forms of the 
“ mould ” found on fermenting fluids as beer and ginger- 
beer (the Saccharomyces Mycoderma of botanists) ; D 
is the tubular form of the mould, the latter fungus, 
unlike the first, does not excite alcoholic fermentation ; 
it is a pure surface and not a submerged growth. E, is 
Bacillus ulna ; F, is Bacillus subtilis. These two 
fungi are much alike, and intermediate forms occur. 
They both grow in various infusions, as white of egg, 
&c., and they have the power of sailing about in fluids 
by means of their fine thin tails or flagellcc. The two 
Bacilli, E and F, are not injured by a moderate amount 
of boiling. A short boiling, indeed, appears to do them 
good, they enjoy the bath, and come out fresher than 
they go in. They, however, cannot stand too much 
boiling, two hours is sufficient to either make them feel 
very seriously indisposed, or to cause them to die 
altogether. The bodies seen in the “Ginger-beer Plant” 
entirely belong to yeast and fermenting solutions. 
Some temperance advocates keep watery solutions of 
ginger and sugar in large stone bottles, and into these 
bottles they now and then drop a fragment of the 
“Ginger-beer Plant.” This of course excites a modest 
fermentation. A good deal of this variety of ginger- 
beer (?) has been (alas) produced about here this 
The “Ginger-Beer Plant” under the 
microscope. 
Christmas, and has been brought round the Christmas 
fires in wine glasses, in place of brimming tumblers of 
hot Elder wine and toast, or strong port wine negus, or 
stiff Scotch whiskey and water, with a slice of lemon, 
and rusks. Some people prefer the flat and cold home 
made ginger-beer at Christmas time, not so the writer, 
for the material gets into his head and causes delusions 
and strong mental excitement. It is to be hoped that 
friend “ W. M.” (The Gardening World, Dec. 19th, 
1885), will not again say that there is no fun left in 
fungology.— JVorthington G. Smith, Dunstable. 
-->3=<-- 
LIBERTON MAINS NURSERY. 
Nowhere better than when scanning the glorious 
landscape from the Queen’s Drive, just beyond 
Samson’s Ribs, is the visitor reminded how recent 
municipal extension has brought more prominently 
into notice historic localities far apart from the erst 
single street and surrounding closes of old Edinburgh, 
but inseparable links in its civic history. Craigmillar 
Castle and Blackford Hill, despite modem villas built 
around them, will always speak of a Queen Mary or 
King James. Citizens’ trim lodges are massed close in 
the valley towards the New City Park, which will soon 
be thus environed ; and, indeed, the pedestrian must 
all too soon have to travel another mile south ere he 
skirt the country ; Liberton appears to stand even now 
on one of the hills constituting the special beauty for 
situation of the northern metropolis. Yet, amidst all 
this building extension, sylviculture has contributed a 
living leafy testimony of the past, once thought by old 
Edinburgh residenters to be amongst their buried 
memories associated with Craigmillar Castle. Queen 
Mary’s Sycamore, as well as her Thom, have dis¬ 
appeared during the last forty years. But young 
seedlings from the Sycamore now thrive in Liberton 
Mains Nursery, on the slope of that hill, close 
to where, on its summit, stand the old Castle 
ruins. 
Mr. Gladstone added fame to the system of market 
gardening pursued on the farm, when exhorting dis¬ 
tressed agriculturists to begin strawberry culture. 
And now it has to be entered in the notabilia of the 
arboriculturist during an Edinburgh visit, as the site 
of a new point of departure in the progressive practice 
of the art, by a firm dating previously to 1770. 
Messrs. Dickson & Co. have added this new 'establish¬ 
ment to their other nurseries at Redbraes, Logie Green, 
and Bonnington Farm. They have thus enhanced 
their old reputation as educational horticulturists. 
For Loudon worked in their old Leith Walk Nurseries. 
And despite the non-establishment of the Scottish 
Forest School, young arborists will find at Liberton 
what is practically an experimental station, where, like 
young engineers, ere cared for by University professors, 
they may learn by practical example. 
Liberton Mains comprises nearly 400 acres, only part 
of which are occupied by the nursery. But this cheap 
rent and large area allow features of arboricultural 
practice being expressed in a larger and more effective 
manner than, say, at Bonnington, where Edinburgh 
nurseries most do segregate. Seed-testing, usually 
confined to a few yards, is here done in plots of several 
acres. One such compartment of cabbages had in 
summer the appearance of a large field of healthy 
stock, but so carefully had plants for true seed been 
selected that not one-tenth remained at the time of our 
visit. 
Further, the firm find here scope and verge enough 
for the system so long practised in their Pilrig and 
other Edinburgh nurseries, of planting new breaks 
of forest trees and other seedlings on land which has 
been first under some cereal or other green crop, and 
never previously under trees. Liberton Mains is at 
least 300 ft. higher in altitude than the nurseries in 
the Leith Walk district of Edinburgh, and its tem¬ 
perature is at least 3° to 4° more extreme. But Arthur 
Seat and the other monuments of the Cyclopaean earth- 
throes, which originated the hills on which Edinburgh 
is built, and scarped the romantic landscape which 
roused Scott’s poetic fire, act as protecting walls against 
those east and north winds, the 'bane both of (delicate 
plants and invalids in Edinburgh. The site has thus 
been found specially suitable for rearing Roses whose 
stocks could only previously be obtained from England 
and Ireland. The Apples raised on it were exhibited 
at the late Edinburgh Congress, and indicated 
an amount of sunshine which compared favourably 
with the fruit grown in the south of England and 
Ireland. 
In time the arboriculturist may rely on plant growth 
prognostications just in the way the sanitarian consults 
the vital statistics of our great cities. Such records, 
in their connection twith w r eather changes, have been 
diligently studied at more than one centre on the 
northern slopes of Edinburgh ; but scientists appear 
only to agree on the unreliability of the yet imperfect 
observations in forecasting plant growth. It may 
suffice, meanw'hile, to note that while the Glory Pea 
(Clianthus puniceus) sickens around Bonnington, it 
luxuriates at Liberton. The clear air of the latter 
locality carries no stratum of city smoke, which is all 
too evident in scanning the northern horizon of 
Edinburgh. Its high exposed situation and sharp 
sandy soil satisfy the conditions postulated some years 
ago to the Botanical Society by the late William Gorrie 
as necessities for the healthy growth of forest conifers. 
So this nursery presents the two unique features of a 
training place for orchard trees, or fruit-bearing hedge¬ 
rows, as well as future tree covers of highland 
mountains. 
The fruit tree and forest tree departments of the 
nursery constitute its two divisions, apparently affording 
attractions to distinct classes of purchasers. But a 
thorough inspection of both demonstrates closer bonds. 
Thus the perfecting of a market garden system of agri¬ 
culture must always interest foresters w'ho are usually 
estate improvers. Then seed growing true to stock 
must always be a burning question in such a connection. 
And what more pressing question than improved 
hedgerows, at once affording shelter, profit, and beauty ? 
