44 
THE PELARGONIUM GARDEN. 
32 F R. These experiments were made at the suggestion of Professor Lehmann, who thought he had 
formerly noticed an increase of temperature to occur in the flowers of Nymphcea alba during their 
development.— Hooker's Journal of Botany. 
The Chinese Rice-paper plant, of which so much has been conjectured, and so little hitherto known 
by Europeans, proves to he a tree of the Araliaceous family, and has been named Aralia (?) papyrifera 
by Sir W. J. Hooker, in the Journal of Botany. It is a “good sized'’ tree, occurring apparently only 
in swampy ground, in the northern parts of the Island of Formosa. The pith, which occupies a very 
large space, and is beautifully white, is the part from which the rice-paper is cut in thin sheets. The 
leaves of the plant are very large, palmate, not unlike those of a Sycamore, and clothed beneath with 
brownish stellate tomentum. It would appear that a living plant, sent many years ago by J. Reeves, 
Esq., of Clapham, to the Horticultural Society, arrived alive, but soon died. An attempt recently 
made by Mrs. Layton, to introduce a living plant for Sir. W. Hooker, has also failed, but the remains 
have sufficed for the determination of the real nature and affinities of the species, which before 
were entirely problematical to European naturalists. 
THE PELARGONIUM GARDEN. 
]^tOR the preparation of the annexed plan I am indebted to my tasteful friend, M. H. Seitz, 
A of Chatsworth. There is apparent in this garden a judicious blending of gravel and grass, 
productive of a light and airy elegance that garden artists of greater celebrity would not do amiss to 
profit by. Unfortunately for good taste, gardens of this kind in general exhibit such a crowding 
clumsiness and incongruity of disposition in the several figures, as to render the tout ensemble, in good 
perspective, the very reverse of elegant, comprehensive, and dignified. Too many figures in a plan, or 
the separate parts of the latter too widely spread asunder, when the entirety should rather be expressive 
of nicety in design, can but result in deformity and dissatisfaction when displayed in practice on 
the ground, however well suited the same arrangement might previously have appeared, on paper, 
to the uninitiated in such matters. 
