April IS, 1903. 
THE HARDENING WORLD. 
335 
The World of Gardening. 
By F. W. Burbidge, A.M., F.L.S., F.R.H.S. 
In this imper I wish to- write of the subtle and often un¬ 
recognised manner in which the productive plants of the world 
have anticipated some of the most, important and far-reaching 
of the so-called human inventions. It is a fact that there is 
"nothing new under the sun,” and even the sun itself is a 
very old one, slowly burning itself out, as Sir Robert. Ball has 
often said in his inimitable lectures on astronomy. We hear 
much to-day of “ nature study,” but it is only an old war-cry 
revived. Moses and Solomon studied Nature long before Aris¬ 
totle 1 , and yet “old lamps for new” is the modern shibboleth 
all the same. If the present-day meaning is Nature study 
versus book-lore studies, well and good ; the results may be 
beneficial to all concerned. 
The busy bee has long been pitied and patronised and held 
up as an example to old and young, but the plants came into 
existence before the bees, and have been robbed of their stores 
or savings just the same, but. no one pities them. There is no 
national institution for the prevention of cruelty to plants, 
which have been ill-treated and starved for ages, and have ever 
been victims to human appetite and greed. Theologians have 
told us that they were appointed for human service from the 
beginning, and I want to try and tell you what they do for us, 
and, so far as may be, how they do it, and how plants, un¬ 
consciously, perhaps, add to the wealth and happiness of us all. 
We all know that plants are living things, and that their sen¬ 
sations under varying conditions of heat and cold or of drought 
and moisture are clearly expressed- by the way in which they 
behave. I do not say that even the highest orders of living 
plants have consciousness, or that they actually “think to 
themselves,” even, but they sometimes act as though they 
did, as is apparent tons all who work and look with our eyes, 
and, better still, the mind’s eye, in the garden. 
In a sense, we may look on living plants, as dynamos and 
motors, acted on by sun heat, light and moisture. In sun¬ 
shine the green matter, or chlorophyll, of even- green leaf is 
set in motion, or action, as it were. Sun-heat, sunlight and 
energy are absorbed, and the green leaf begins to do useful 
work, and to make in its own interest, primarily, some more or 
less useful materials. Water is drawn up from the sod, and 
carbonic dioxide is absorbed by the leaf, and the result is that 
oxygen is given off in the shape of silvery air bubbles, and the 
carbon is retained as working material by the leaf and the 
plant. If you take any fresh and healthy green leaf and plunge 
it overhead in a jar or bowl of water placed in the full sun¬ 
light, you can see the oxygen appear as silvery or pearly a.ir 
bubbles; and if you bum a plant of any kind, or a bit of one, 
the black substance left a.s charcoal is the carbon attracted 
and absorbed by the leaf-pores, or stomata, from the air. When 
you fully grasp, a. tithe of the whole thing, it really becomes a 
stupendous miracle, and the results are vast and varied in their 
importance from every point of view. 
Now, a step further, and we see that even- dvnamo leaf, 
every sun-motor leaf, belonging to different kinds of plants 
jiave nearly the same action, and yet they possess the power 
F doing different kinds of work and of producing different 
:iDds of products. A Peach-tree makes Peaches, and a Vine 
•lakes Graces, as surely as one loom will weave the finest of 
ossamer fabric, and another only coarse sackcloth or carpets, 
t is the old story—you must employ the proper plants to. r>ro- 
uce the right products. In a word, do not expect Figs from 
histles, nor Muscat Grapes, from a Sweetwater or Black 
famburgh Vine. 
Fverv kind of plant has working qualities or functions of its 
ew own, and even individual plants vary verv much in this 
•pv ; hen^ei, of course, the value of careful selection in gardens 
n’ lolant will produce iuiev fruits of delicious aroma and 
avour. and another vfil bear sour Grapes, or Dead Sea, fruit, 
’meting to the eye, but dust and ashes within. One Solanum. 
>r example, bears the useless Dead Sea fruit or Apples of 
feodum, another gives us the esculent Tomato, and another 
the nutritious Potato, but nobody knows: why or exactly how 
it is done. That protoplasm is sensitive is well known, as also 
that it is made and fed by chlorophyll, but why one leaf pro¬ 
duces fragrance, another luscious, edible fruits or succulent 
vegetables, starchy cereals or sugar, while others secrete 
deadly alkaloids or ruthless poisons, no one at present can say. 
Two of the greatest and most- universal of plant products are 
starch and sugar, and these two things, are, in the plant world, 
mutually interchangeable! Here, again, we meet with an 
apparently simple fact that is stupendous in its real meaning 
and in its far-reaching power. 
Iris bucharica. (See p. 339.) 
Any cook or maltster can change starch into sugar, but no 1 
chemist can turn sugar back again into' starch. This, however, 
is constantly done by the chlorophyll in green leaves as exposed 
to sunlight ; s.o we see that the leaves are chemists, more 
accomplished in a way than, the cleverest of human ones. 
This power of the transmutation of starch to sugar, and 
sugar back again into starch, enables the plants to transmit 
the starch as formed in the leaves to any other portion of the 
plant that acts specially as a, storehouse or savings bank of 
material. Thus, in the Potato' the starch is stored in the 
underground tubers; in cereals and many other plants it is 
transferred to> the fruits or seeds. Solid starch granules, as 
