Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/628

 For the propagation of barberries gardeners often take advantage of those adventitious shoots or "suckers" before mentioned which spring from near or beneath the surface of the ground. These, separated from the parent and planted in suitable soil, strike root after the manner of a willow twig and develop into a shrub. With wild barberries, if the main part of the shrub happens to be fatally injured, suckers proceeding from parts of the root even remote from the stem may continue to live and thus perpetuate the stock in the same locality.

In Nature, however, it is upon seedlings that the chief dependence is placed for the continuance and spread of the species. Having now considered, as fully as present limits will permit, the phenomena connected with the barberries' vegetative life, we will next turn our attention to the special peculiarities of flower and fruit which contribute more or less directly to the production and care of offspring.

[To be concluded.]



S many of the readers of The Popular Science Monthly are aware, there is a great engineering project on foot at Niagara Falls, looking to the development of a part of the water power at present running to waste over the gigantic cataract. A company, or rather an association of companies, working for a common end, is at present occupied at the falls with the object in view of utilizing the power commercially.

That this situation is the finest in the world for developing mechanical power has long been realized, but the local demands at Niagara were comparatively trifling, and only lately have our facilities for transmitting power over distances become sufficiently developed to warrant such an undertaking as is now in hand. The power company does not, however, look entirely to distant points for consumers of their output; on the contrary, a very large amount will be used almost on the spot by manufactures which are now moving to Niagara. The variety of purposes to which this power will be put may be gathered from the 