old roots: these are planted in small pots, and plunged into the ground in an open part of the garden. About midsummer I repot them into large carnation pots, and again plunge them as before. The compost is cow-dung and rich loam, half and half, and occasionally they are watered with dung water. During their growth I use the knife freely, and only allow one bud to remain on a stem, precisely as the fancier treats his prize carnations. In the first week in October I remove the pots into a vinery, where all the air is given by the sashes and ventilators being open; and in my house there is a pit that was built for succession pines, filled with old tan, and upon this I place my chrysanthemums. In the removal from the garden to the house, I take care that the roots that have made their way through the bottom of the pots are not injured, and they again strike into the tan. They are now kept. moist with dung water, and under this treatment the blooms are some of them 5 and 6 inches in diameter. The pots are so arranged, that the colours are agreeably intermixed.

I am under a great obligation to Abel Ingpen, Esq., for furnishing me, in the most handsome manner (being an entire stranger), with some splendid varieties. There is one, in particular, "mirabile," that was as fine and as large as a dahlia. As Mr. Ingpen is, no doubt, a reader of your Magazine, I will just state that, in a few days after I had planted a fine collection of tulips, some villain made his way into the garden at night, and stole roots to the value of 250. Amongst them was a new broken feathered bizarre, whose qualifications placed all others at an immeasurable distance. In fact, twenty years' search and experience, to say nothing of the great expense, have been disorganised to a most discouraging extent. Can you, Mr. Editor, or reader, suggest a mode to guard against a similar calamity?

The Forest, Nottingham, Jan. 13. 1840.

REVIEWS.

ART. I. Dr. Lindley's Theory of Horticulture. (See p. 92.) [ON asking our esteemed correspondent, Mr. Beaton, for his opinion on this work, he sent us the following notice, which we have great pleasure in publishing.]

My opinion of this work must be in a great measure superfluous; there can be but one opinion on the subject by all candid readers. It is Dr. Lindley's masterpiece as far as the garden is concerned. It will soon become as useful and indispensable to the gardener, as the compass is to the mariner. The compass, to be sure, will not teach a man navigation, neither will this book teach a man the gardening art. It is divided into two parts, the first of which "embraces the principal laws and facts

in vegetable physiology, as deduced in the investigations of the botanist; and the second, the application of those laws to practice, as explained by the experience of the horticulturist." In all this nothing of a speculative nature is indulged in; no theory acknowledged but that "which is founded upon direct experiment, and proved by the most satisfactory course of enquiry." In the first book, Dr. Lindley relies chiefly on his own intimate acquaintance with vegetable physiology, yet he never loses sight of the views of the greatest horticultural physiologist that the world has seen, T. A. Knight, Esq., late President of the London Horticultural Society, and he dedicates the work to the memory of that truly great and good man. If Mr. Knight were amongst us now, how delighted he would be to see this work; a work which the combined philosophy of Europe could not produce at the time he began his horticultural experiments. Even now, Dr. Lindley, with all the powers of his extensive mind, could not have been able for the task, had it not been through his connexion with the Hort. Soc. Garden. No, there is not another place in this country where he could make himself so thoroughly acquainted with the gardener's art. It is not philosophy, nor scientific research, only, which could produce such a work as this, but a combination of these with an intimate knowledge of the minutiae and manipulations of the gardener's art, with which the mere man of science can have little acquaintance. If I had met with such a book as this twenty years ago, would not have so many grey hairs in my head now. However, it is gratifying to know that the rising race of gardeners are not destined to go through such ordeal as we of the old school have been subjected to. Yet among our difficulties we had pleasures which must be denied to the rising race. We found out many secrets among plants, and many modes of superior management, which we enjoyed very much, but which are now looked on as mere matters of course. In those days the word principle was as accommodating to us as the word constitution is at this day to our politicians; that is, a something which might be applied to suit any person's views. In this state Dr. Lindley found us when he undertook to write this book for us, as he plainly tells us in the second paragraph of his preface.

I

"There must be a great want of sound knowledge of this subject, when we find an author, who has made himself distinguished in the history of English gardening, giving it as his opinion, that the weak drawn state of forced asparagus in London is occasioned by the action of the dung immediately upon its roots!" (Pref., p, vi,)

It is obvious to all the world the doctor means you in this paragraph.* He surely cannot mean Glenny; and really, after all the

* We thought so too, when we first read the paragraph; and it is quite

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papers we sent you on forcing asparagus and all other plants, if you cannot force asparagus without" drawing them up," you deserve hard hitting. He very properly accounts for this by referring to the want of some short guide to the horticultural application of vegetable physiology." Such a safe guide is now no longer wanting; neither is it filled with any thing which a gardener may not prove for himself; but here the author kindly cautions him not to apply these rules, "except in a limited manner, and by way of safe experiment, until he fully understood them." This is exceeding good advice.

As the work must soon come into universal use among gardeners, and the patrons of gardening, it is needless to quote from it in this place: let us therefore content ourselves by looking over the different chapters, and see how far our old views correspond with the real correct views of the case. The young reader here must be put in mind of the convenient principle to which many of the old gardeners are so much inured; viz. that principles laid down by the finger of science must in many instances be thrown away on us, and I fear some of us must die in our obstinacy. The young beginner must rigidly guard against this, and endeavour to prove for himself any doubtful cases which may arise in our progress. Dr. Lindley begins with the seed, and follows it till it complete the circle of its existence, and produces seeds" after its kind." Many kinds of plants do not verify this adage, especially the cultivated varieties of fruit

trees.

"But while it will with certainty become the same species as that in which it originated, it does not possess the power of reproducing any peculiarities which may have existed in its parent. For instance, the seed of a Green Gage plum will grow into a new individual of the plum species, but it will not produce the peculiar variety called the Green Gage. This latter property is confined to leaf-buds, and seems to be owing to the seed not being specially organised after the exact plan of the branch on which it grew, but merely possessing the first elements of such an organisation, together with an invariable tendency towards a particular kind of developement."

There is a disposition in all plants to deviate from their original types, and the farther they are removed from their original nature, their tendency to this variation increases. This has hitherto baffled all scientific research; but the author, as far as science can penetrate, explains all the collateral circumstances connected with every stage of the existence of a plant; and

likely that we may have quoted this opinion, and adopted it in some of our works. However, having looked over the Encyc. of Gard., and not been able to find such a passage, we applied to the doctor, who informed us that the sentence does not apply to us, but to a paper by Mr. Sabine, in one of the early volumes of the Horticultural Transactions. Notwithstanding this, we by no means pretend that we are not guilty, or rather that we are not liable to have similar opinions imputed to us. Cond.

surely no one can contemplate such wonderful mechanism as is here laid bare before us, without being struck with astonishment. The spongioles and youngest parts of roots imbibe moisture from the soil, and are found to be rich in nitrogen, a gas, a supply of which is "indispensable to their healthy condition." Roots have not the power of refusing deleterious substances, and may be poisoned in the same manner as animals. In the growth of the stem, Dr. Lindley makes a nice distinction between the cellular tissue and woody fibres; the former being the only portion of a plant which grows laterally. He proposes, for the sake of simplicity, to call it the horizontal system; this latter, which increases by the addition of new tubes, he calls the perpendicular system. On the same principle he would confine the word hybridising to the admixture of species, and crossing or cross breeding, to that of varieties. A uniform adherence to this improvement in nomenclature is certainly desirable. Mr. Herbert suggested another improvement, bearing on this subject, which has been overlooked by Dr. Lindley and others, yet the present confusion in the naming of hybrid productions demands serious attention to it. Mr. Herbert says, "It would very much tend to preclude confusion, if all substantive genitive cases were abandoned to cultivators for the distinction of their varieties, and the names of all species confined to adjectives."*

"Very great confusion is produced by the nurserymen giving a Latin name to every garden seedling, and men of science should set their faces decidedly against the practice, which M. DeCandolle very inauspiciously sanctioned with respect to hybrid plants. Where garden varieties are much multiplied, florist's names ought to be used, as with hyacinths, tulips, &c. Hybrid plants which are found of spontaneous growth in the wild abodes of their parents, should rank as species marked Hyb. Sp., or spontaneous hybrid; those of complicated or uncertain intermixtures in our gardens should be marked as Variety Garden Hybrid. It would very much tend to preclude confusion, if all substantive genitive cases were abandoned to cultivators for the distinction of their varieties, and the names of all species, and permanent local varieties, confined to adjectives. With this view I venture to alter all the proper names adopted in this order to an adjective form, writing Caldasiana for Caldasi ; and I earnestly press the convenience of this arrangement on the consideration of botanists, by which it may be understood at once that B. Caldasiana must be a species, or permanent local variety, and that B. Caldasi would designate a seminal or hybrid variety; and, as it will be vain to urge nurserymen not to dignify their productions with Latin names, I wish to request them to confine themselves to genitive cases of proper names, names of romance or heathen deities, or of substances, as flammæ instead of flammeus, eboris instead of eburneus; and, if the botanical editors of popular periodical works will attend to this suggestion, we shall get rid of the overwhelming confusion which garden productions are creating. At present, in our best botanical catalogues, every seedling Camellia japonica, or Hippeastrum, is dignified with a Latin adjective name; and the endless garden intermixtures of calceolarias are named like the natives of South America, very much to the disadvantage of science Cultivators will have an ample fund of names if all genitives are given up to them; and the change of the few genitives that have been used in the scientific

Nothing can be more simple than this; I would earnestly press it on the consideration of all those concerned. I hope you will attend to it in the next edition of the Hort. Brit., and in this Magazine, as most of these great botanists are quite as tenacious of their antiquated lore as the lawyers. What, for instance, can be more absurd than the terms inferior and superior fruit, as applied by botanists? Yet if one were to supply proper terms for these, botanists would think the world was to be turned upside down!

But to return to our subject. Let us see how the sap is going up and down through all the ramifications of a young healthy tree. There is nothing in the unanimated creation more beautiful than this. Nothing so worthy the attention of the philosopher. The principle which guides it was not understood till very recently, and some people say we do not even now thoroughly understand it.

"It must have been remarked by all intelligent observers, that in the majority of works upon horticultural subjects, the numerous directions given in any particular ramification into which the art is susceptible of being divided are held together by no bond of union, and that there is no explanation of their connexion with general principles, by which alone the soundness of this or that rule of practice may be tested; the reader is therefore usually obliged to take the excellence of one mode of cultivation and the badness of another, upon the good faith of gardening authors, without being put into possession of any laws by which they may be judged of beforehand. Horticulture is, by these means, rendered a very complicated subject, so that none but practised gardeners can hope to pursue it successfully; and, like all empirical things, it is degraded into a code of peremptory precepts."

Many of us old gardeners never could understand the circulation of the vegetable fluid till the appearance of the hot-water system, and here we had a complete solution of the theory at once. Wherever the fire-heat had most effect, which of course was at the bottom of the boiler, there circulation first commenced. It is just so in trees. The heat of the sun has most power on the tenderest parts of the tree, which are the tender points of the shoots, and there the sap first flows; in both cases the vacant space left by the circulation is immediately filled up by the next particles, and this goes on in beautiful harmony as long as the stimulus is applied. The leaves let off the lighter portion of the sap, as the cistern at the end of the pipes lets off the fine vapour of the water so essential to healthy vegetation. As the lighter portion of the sap escapes by the leaves, the rest gets more dense, and is returning back to form wood and all the other appendages of a tree; just as the water in the cistern gets denser by cooling, and returns to the boiler, leaving its sediment along the bottom pipe. The bottom of the boiler has no power, like the roots of a tree, to discharge the final sediment; and this

nomenclature into the form of an adjective, will produce no inconvenience." (Herb. Amaryl., p. 33.)