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181 
AMPELOPSIS VEITCHII. 
Mr. Donald G. Mitchell, in a recent essay on 
rural adornment, gives very high and just praise to 
Ampelopsis Veitchii, a lovely new vine which has 
come to us from Japan, and which is by no means 
so well known yet as its merits deserve. It is smaller 
and of finer habit than our own Virginia creeper, cling¬ 
ing with much greater tenacity to either wood, brick, 
or stone, and carrying the greenness of its foliage well 
into November. Even then it yields to the cold with 
great reluctance, its leaves changing through a rich 
brown to a dark maroon, and dropping at last in 
flakes of deepest crimson. Were it only an ever¬ 
green it would, Mr. Mitchell thinks, more than 
match the ivy. The same vigorous creeper is also 
prominent in the plant decoration of Wellesley, near 
Boston. In the latest volume of the Massachusetts 
Horticultural Society it is said that the unique and 
picturesque porter’s lodge, at the entrance gateway 
to that magnificent estate, is completely overrun by 
Ampelopsis Veitchii, and the writer declares that 
“ this hardy vine of rapid growth, fine foliage, and 
wonderfully adhesive power has perhaps no equal.” 
He adds that “ on some of the trees it has mounted 
to the highest branches.” It is also used elsewhere 
on the grounds, and with noteworthy effect, especially 
in the draping of a Druidical 
arch of rude stone with rock- 
work connected. 
much so to those which are inconspicuous as to those 
which are brilliant. For the same weight of honey 
a green surface is as freely visited as a green surface 
with a background of red. 
4. The development of spots and stripes on the 
corolla has no relation to the production of nectar. 
M. Bonnier, who has studied the anatomy and dis¬ 
position of the nectar-secreting organs in a great 
number of plants, points out that these accumula¬ 
tions of saccharine material occur usually in parts 
of the plant where development is going on actively, 
as in young leaves or young ovaries. When the 
RELATIONS OP FLOW¬ 
ERS AND INSECTS. 
For some years past—since 
the publication of Darwin’s re¬ 
searches—we have been accus¬ 
tomed to look on the forms, col¬ 
ors, perfumes, and nectar-like 
secretions of flowers as so many 
adaptations and contrivances to 
secure the visits of insects, and 
the consequent fertilization of the flower. Recently 
however, an observer has been found who is bold 
enough to challenge these opinions of Darwin, Del- 
pino, Mueller, Lubbock, and others. M. Gaston Bon¬ 
nier, after having observed during the last seven years 
some eight hundred, plants in various parts of Eu¬ 
rope, comes to the following conclusions, the details 
upon which he founds them being given in recent 
numbers of the Anna les des Sciences . Naturelles 
and of the Bulletin of the Botanical Society of 
France: 
1. The development of colors in flowers has no 
relation to the development of nectar. In closely- 
allied species of the same genus the most conspicu¬ 
ous flowers are not those which are most visited by 
insects. 
In dioecious flowers provided with nectar the 
insects do not visit first the male and afterwards the 
female flower. 
3. Bees become much accustomed to colors, but as 
from insects and other dangers. Opium, strychnine, 
and belladonna, he said, three of the most deadly 
poisons, were all formed by plants as a means of 
defence to preserve them from cattle, etc. A curious 
use was made of this poisonous property, as recorded 
by Livingstone, who states that at one place in 
South Africa the natives were in the habit of catch¬ 
ing their zebras by mashing up some poison plant in 
their drinking places. Poppies are protected by 
poison from the attacks of goats, and probably of 
other cattle. The strychnine plant was a good 
example of the way in which poison was limited to 
the part of the plant where it was needed. Almonds 
were also protected by poison, cultivators generally 
sowing the bitter kind, as the sweet kind was eaten 
by mice. Other plants were protected, not by 
strong poisons, but by some aromatic substance. 
The fennel, anise, and caraway seeds were examples 
of this, which were not eaten by birds on that ac¬ 
count. The lime, which was protected by this aroma, 
was able to grow wild and hold its own anywhere, 
whereas the orange, the citron, and olive required 
to be carefully preserved and watched. The mint 
was another example of a plant protected against 
cattle by this aromatic principle. Flowers are often 
more aromatic than the leaves of the plant on 
which they grow, and owe to this principle 
their safety from attack, and caterpillars will 
starve to death sooner than eat the flower of a 
plant the leaves of which they readily devour. 
Water plants are unprotected, for the reason 
that water was protection 
enough. The most peculiar 
protection, perhaps, was that 
enjoyed by the common lettuce, 
which, when pricked, even by 
an ant’s foot, spurted up a sticky 
juice and enveloped the in¬ 
truder, who, biting the leaf from 
vexation, drew down upon him¬ 
self a fresh shower of cabbage 
wrath, in which the unfortunate 
ant was drowned. 
Hanging Basket of Ferns. 
emission of liquid ceases, the saccharine matters con¬ 
tained in the nectaries return into the plant, and are 
probably used up by the neighboring parts in the 
course of this development. In fact, the nectaries, 
whether floral or extra floral, whether they excrete 
liquid or not, act as reservoirs of nutriment which is 
in direct relation to the life of the plant. 
HOW PLANTS DEFEND THEMSELVES. 
In a recent lecture Mr. Francis Darwin gave some 
curious instances of the way plants are protected 
A Botanical Usurper.—- 
A curious instance of the in¬ 
vasion of a country by a plant of foreign ori¬ 
gin is seen in the history of the mango in Jamaica. 
In 1782 specimens of the cinnamon, jack-fruit, 
and mango were sent to the Botanic Garden of 
the island. There the cinnamon was carefully 
fostered, but proved to be difficult of culture in 
the island •, while the mango, which was neglect¬ 
ed, became in eleven years as common as the 
orange, spreading over lowlands and mountains, 
from the sea-level to 5,000 feet elevation. On the 
abolition of slavery, immense tracts of land, espe¬ 
cially coffee plantations, relapsed into a state of na¬ 
ture, and the mango being a favorite fruit with the 
blacks, its stones were flung everywhere, giving rise 
to groves along the roadside and around the settle¬ 
ments and the fruit of these again, rolling down 
hill, gave rise to forests in the valleys. The effect 
of this spread of the mango has been to cover hun¬ 
dreds of thousands of acres, and to ameliorate the 
climate of what were dry and barren districts. 
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