March 5, 1892. 
THE GARDENING WORLD 
421 
felt the cold and the breeze intensely the temperature 
being 58° F.—so that an hour afterwards we had to 
send them back with the plants, with the injunction to 
come up again the next day to fetch us down. 
The two of us then had a good stroll, after having 
first made a hearty lunch, and we went first to the 
south, admiring those gigantic and marvellously- 
shaped rocks, or rather mountains, many of immense 
size, forming majestic palaces, churches and for¬ 
tresses. One of the rocks I called the Roman forum ; 
other smaller ones resembled the form of pyramids, 
umbrellas, beetles, and all sorts of objects ; one even 
looked exactly like the statue of a man. Between 
these grotesque big masses of rock were innumerable 
lochs, many joining one another by canals of large 
and smaller sizes, some of the depth of 6ft., but most 
of them so shallow that we 
could walk across. We 
started to have a walk 
round and to reach our 
camping-place from the 
other side,hoping to reach 
there before dark, but the 
sun dropped, and we came 
out quite on another side. 
Then we began to feel 
anxious ; the scenery grew 
wilder, and became of a 
more gigantic character, 
water beingmore plentiful, 
even forming creeks with 
big falls. Not considering 
the danger of climbing in 
all haste up rocks and 
springing down, we went 
on without any certain 
knowledge of our direction 
until it became quite dark, 
when we reached the side 
opposite the Kukenaam, 
north from the ledge of as¬ 
cent. Our eyes got used to 
the darkness, and at last 
we found the camp: it was 
8 o’clock. Then only we 
realised the danger we had 
run. We had done a dis¬ 
tance of sometenmiles over 
rocks,and shrubs, and wa¬ 
ter. We sat down cheer¬ 
fully to a hearty meal, 
and afterwards fell into a 
soundsleep.happilynot too 
much disturbed by cold. 
The temperature at 1 a.m. 
was 48° F. Next morning 
we were up early, took 
photographic views of the 
most interesting-looking 
formations, and made an¬ 
other collection of many 
species of Orchids and 
plants, which all seemed 
new to me, for I never saw 
them anywhere else, not 
even in the swamps below. 
Of animal life, the upper 
top of Roraima is almost 
as good as bare. I noticed 
one black butterfly, a few 
spiders, some small frogs, some small lizards, and 
most extraordinary of all, a small dark-coloured 
mammal, almost certainly a species of kibihee, which 
on our approach gave a sound like a whistle, and 
swiftly crept into a hiding place between the rocks. 
The lakes, which cover a considerable area (one I 
measured was 150 yards in width) are animated by a 
certain kind of black-beetle. 
While I was photographing and my companion 
was collecting, our Indians appeared suddenly at 
10 o’clock, staring at us with the most astonished 
eyes I ever beheld : they did not find us in the camp, 
and thought we were lost. We hastened to complete 
our collections, and began our descent to the valley, 
which we did mostly in a sliding position. The in¬ 
habitants regarded us with wondering eyes ; they 
could not realise that we would return safe and 
sound ; for ourselves, we felt as if we had gained a 
great victory, being the first human beings who had 
spent a night on the top of Roraima. The next day 
Mr. Seyler started with a part of the men on the way 
home, while I followed two days afterwards. The 
privations we suffered on the homeward journey, the 
THE FOOD OF PLANTS. 
In a lecture recently delivered at Slough, under the 
auspices of the local technical education committee, 
Mr. Bernard Dyer, the eminent analytical chemist, 
said that plants, like stock, only grew in virtue of the 
food supplied to them either by nature or by art. 
1 he food on which plants subsisted was made up of a 
variety of substances, and these again were derived 
from various sources. Some of the most important 
were supplied freely by nature, such as water, the 
constituents of which built up a large proportion of 
the solid matter of plants, and such as carbonic acid, 
which was existent in the atmosphere, and which 
was taken into the plants by means of their 
leaves, and contributed, like water, very largely to 
the building up of their solid matter. Such con¬ 
stituents as these were 
supplied quite freely by 
nature, but there were 
other constituents which 
were derived wholly or 
mainly from the soil, such 
as mineral substances and 
nitrogen, and it was to the 
husbanding and to the sup¬ 
plementing of the natural 
supplies of these that a 
great deal of our efforts in 
farming were consciously 
or unconsciously directed. 
Nitrogen was the most 
valuable constituent in 
many senses that plants 
derived through their 
roots from the soil, and the 
quantity of available nitro¬ 
gen naturally existing in 
soils was,as a rule,meagre. 
The nitrogen in soils was 
contained in the form 
mainly of decayed organic 
matter, and generally the 
quantity of this was not 
large. It decayed slowly, 
and was slowly converted 
into nitrates by means of 
microscopically minute 
organisms which worked 
in the soil, and gradually 
supplied the nitrates 
yielded. 
In any soil there was tb e 
greatest fertility where the 
nitrates were greatest, and 
if theywere to take a virgin 
soil, such as that to be 
found in many of our 
colonies, the quantity of 
nitrates_formed in the soil 
was so great that they 
might be able to obtain 
maximum crops without 
the introduction of any 
artificial fertilisers. But 
in the case of land which 
had been under cultiva¬ 
tion for generations, as in 
England, the nitrogen was 
naturally insufficient, and 
we had to supplement 
it. They knew now — they had learned during 
the last few years — that there was an outside 
source from which the soil nitrogen was gradually- 
recruited. Most of them knew that free nitrogen 
existed in large quantities in the air, and that plants 
as a rule had no power to make use of this. They 
had, however, learnt during the last few years that 
leguminous crops, such as Clover, Beans, Peas, 
through the agency of microscopic organisms which 
were found in the little warts or nodules to be found 
at their roots, made use of this atmospheric nitrogen ' 
and converted it into plant substance, and so gradu¬ 
ally supplied the farm with nitrogen. Then there 
were mineral substances—phosphate, potash, lime, 
and other substances—which a plant had to take from 
the soil, and unless they put these back in some form 
or other it was clear the resources of the soil in them 
would be in course of time exhausted, because they 
were not renewed by natural means. 
T he Carnation : its History, Properties, and Management 
with a descriptive list of the best varieties in cultivation. By 
E. S. Dodwell. Third edition, with supplementary chapter on 
the yellow ground. London: Gardening World office, r, 
Clement's Inn, Strand, W.C. is. 6 d .; post tree,is. yd.— [Advt.1 
serious misfortunes met with, and the difficulty of 
obtaining Indians were numerous, but the worst of all 
was the continual rain which lasted from the ist of 
December to the 25th, without ceasing for more than 
a few hours. The Savannahs became lakes, and the 
creeks became streams. We left our old landing- 
place on Curabung on Christmas day, called on the 
way at Mr. Barnard’s place for provisions, which he 
most kindly gave us, and we reached Bartika Grove 
on the ist of January. The whole expedition took 
us 106 days.— E. Kromer, in the Demerara Argosy. 
AMYGDALUS DAVIDIANA 
ALBA. 
The beauty of the common Almond in spring is 
well known, but even under favourable conditions as 
Amygdalus Davidiana Alb'. 
to weather it does not come into bloom till March, 
and in cold springs it may be April before it attains 
perfection. The advantage of the new plant under 
notice is that it comes into bloom during the early 
part of February, even in the open ground in winters 
like what the present has been. Some small plants 
of it in full bloom were exhibited at the last meeting 
of the Royal Horticultural Society, on the 9th inst., 
by Messrs. J. Veitch & Sons, Chelsea. The flowers 
are of large size, pure white, and freely produced 
along the wood of last year’s growth. There is a 
pale rose variety, under the name of A. Davidiana 
rubra, which flowers at the same time as the white 
one, and differs in no other particular except colour. 
The plants were taken from the open ground, thus 
affording evidence of their hardiness, and early, free- 
flowering habit. Our illustration accompanying this 
will serve to give an idea of its appearance in mid¬ 
winter. Those who grow collections of the flower¬ 
ing Almonds will find in this new variety a valuable 
addition to the same; and those who have not an 
Almond in their grounds will be delighted with it as 
a hardy and ornamental winter-flowering shrub. 
