Page:Hardwicke's Science-Gossip - Volume 1.pdf/59

]

town of Almora, in Kumaon, India, is said to have been so named from the abundance of Ulmoreh, or wild sorrel (Rumex hastatus), which grows in its vicinity.

.—In the notice about plants rooting in the soil (p. 18) they are said to go down about fix or six feet. I know of a case where the roots of wheat were traced fourteen feet deep.—E. J. S.

.—These flowers are being extensively cultivated, near Nuremberg, for the sake of the colouring matter they contain, and which is said to be chiefly exported to England for printing and dyeing fabrics.—La Belgique Horticole.

.—M. Crepin recommends that roses should be collected between the hours of eight and eleven in the morning; after that time the pollen is removed and scattered by bees, &c., and if such be the case the petals will detach during drying, whatever pains may be taken to prevent it.

.—To disentangle the stems of Weissia verticillata and other fragile mosses, Mr. Wilson recommends that they should be immersed for a time in diluted nitric acid, which dissolves the earthy water. By this means, he adds, the brittle species of Chara may also be preserved.

, on the plan of the "Cybele Britannica," is in course of preparation. At first, on account of the deficiency of information regarding the midland provinces, it will appear as "Contributions towards a Cybele Hibernica," under the editorship of Dr. Moore, of Glasnevin, and Mr. A. G. More.

.—In April, 1863, I noticed the following forms:—1, the sexes in different plants; 2, the sexes in different spikes on the same plant; 3, the sexes in different flowers of the same spike. These forms were in Sunninghill Bog, Berkshire. I could not find any hermaphrodite flowers there.—G. H. Sawyer, in Gardener's Chronicle.

?—Professor Parlatore is engaged on a monograph of the species of cotton (Gossypium) of which he considers there are but five. Professor Todaro is performing a similar task, and enumerates thirty-four. Dr. Hooker, it is stated, has faith only in three, whilst Dr. Seemann recognizes upwards of thirty. Dr. Royle thought that there were but four, and some other authors believe in forty. Who shall decide when doctors disagree?

.—A friend of mine had a small plot of ground (about half an acre) planted with turnips for seed. At the proper time the seed was pulled, dried, and thrashed. Immediately after the crop was carried away the ground was trenched "a spit deep;" and in the autumn planted with filbert trees. It continued as a filbert orchard for twenty-one years, when the trees were grubbed up, and the ground trenched as before, after which it was soon covered with a luxuriant crop of turnips, doubtlessly from the shaken seed when it grew the crop of turnip-seed twenty-one years before.—J. Ranson, York.

a recent meeting of the Natural History Society of Dublin, Mr. F. J. Foot read a very useful paper, entitled "Botanical Notes in the Midland Counties."

.—The yew occasionally presents itself in very curious positions, from its berries having been carried off and dropped or hidden by birds. I have more than once seen it as an epiphyte upon the willow, and one of considerable bulk is now growing within an oak, near Ribbesford, Worcestershire; and from its size and the wrenching power it has exerted upon the broken trunk of its sustainer, has evidently grown there for a period exceeding a century. The intertwining of the contrasting foliage of the two trees has a most remarkable effect. The ordnance surveyors have even recorded the circumstance, and "the yew-in-the-oak" appears marked in their map.—Edwin Lees' Botanical Looker-out.

.—We have one plant in our gardens, a native of North America, than which none can be more cruelly destructive of insect life, the dogsbane (Apocynum androsæmifolium) which is generally conducive to the death of every fly that settles upon it. Allured by the honey on the nectary of the expanded blossom, the instant the trunk is protruded to feed on it, the filaments close, and, catching the fly by the extremity of its proboscis, detain the poor prisoner writhing in protracted struggles till released by death, a death apparently occasioned by exhaustion alone; the filaments then relax, and the body falls to the ground. The plant will at times be dusky from the numbers of imprisoned wretches.—Knapp's Journal of a Naturalist.

.—For a great number of years M. Klose of Berlin has operated on a large scale on the horse-chestnut, and obtained the following products:—

1. From the burnt pericarp an alkaline ley.

2. From the skin or husk (episperm) a very fine charcoal, which forms the base of different printing inks.

3. From the amylaceous portion is extracted the fecula, which can be transformed into dextrine, glucose (sugar), alcohol, or vinegar, and which are all adapted to industrial use.

4. The fatty matter extracted serves to make a kind of soap, and to render certain mineral colours more fixed and solid.

5. A yellow colouring matter which serves for different purposes.

The use of the horse chestnut was commenced on a large scale in France in 1855, by M. de Callias, and is still continued. He operates on more than forty millions of pounds annually.—The Technologist.

.—To learn how to distinguish plants, and to identify those we have seen before, and to qualify ourselves to give the reasons how and why we know them again, and are sure about them, is the first thing, accordingly, that we have to do when we would become botanists. It is not enough to remember a plant by its general aspect, or to say of a lily, for instance, that it is white, and smells sweet. A hundred other flowers, which are not lilies, are white and fragrant, so that the description goes for nothing unless we can follow it up with an intelligible account of the shape and structure of the plant, which will not only be correct in regard to the lily, and apply to nothing else, but convey a fair notion of the lily to a person