A diaper is T the recent meeting of the British Association, and gardeners have asserted that there is no difference 66 Identity of the Almond and the Peach." The author stated that he had travelled over the mountains of the Caucasus, Armenia, some parts of Persia and Asia Minor, during four years, for the purpose of studying the origin of our fruit trees. Although he could not assert that he had found them perfectly wild or run wild, he nevertheless had collected much interesting material. He believes that our pears and apples, cherries, most prunes, also peaches and apricots, are not natives of Europe. Only certain bad varieties of prunes have their origin from the Prunus insititia, the tree which grows in a wild condition in the woods of Europe. After discussing the wild stock of our cherries and pears, Dr Koch stated that apricots do not grow wild in Oriental countries, but may, perhaps, come from China and Japan, as also the peaches. In the east of Persia, however, a peachshrub grows, which is intermediate between the almond and the peach trees. For some time naturalists merely a variety in which the dry peel of the almond has become fleshy, and where at the same time the stone has acquired a rough surface. Botanists say also that the petioles of the almond tree have at the superior end small glands, which are absent in the peach. But the nectarine, which is but a smoothed peach, exhibits these same glands. The flowers are not readily distinguishable of peach and almond. On the shores of the Rhine a double-flowered variety grows, as to which it is not certainly known whether it is peach or almond. In England and France, also, there is a plant which is well-known as the peach-almond, and which is a constant variety. This plant occasionally produces a branch bearing good peaches, but, as a rule, its fruit is intermediate in character. The property of atavism seems to prove the derivation of the peach from the almond; for occasionally a sound peach-tree will produce a branch bearing almond-like fruit. THE ADULTERATION OF SEEDS. HE following Interim Report to the Council of the Royal Horticultural Society, by the Subcommittee appointed to inquire into the Adulteration of Seeds, contains some valuable information : I. In accordance with your instructions, your committee have taken steps to ascertain whether there is any just foundation for the representations which have been made to the Council regarding the unsatisfactory state of the seed trade and the bad quality of much of the seed sold to the public. 2. It was represented to the Council that, as the business of seedsmen is at present conducted, the purchaser of seeds frequently receives neither the kind nor the quality of the seeds he pays for, and that against this he has no remedy except a doubtful and expensive lawsuit after the mischief has been done. 3. It was also urged that, unlike most other kinds of adulteration or deception in the quality of goods, the injury done in the case of seeds does not terminate with the use of the article purchased, but entails, in addition, the loss of the rent of the ground on which the seed may be sown, and of the labour expended upon it in preparing the soil and tending the cropnot to speak of the disappointment of the reasonable expectations of the cultivator. 4. Having no means of compelling parties to give evidence, your committee's investigation into the alleged adulteration, mixing, or deterioration of seeds has necessarily been confined to making inquiries of those who have the means of knowledge, and on whose statements they could rely. 5. From information so acquired, they believe that the public suffers more or less from the neglect and malpractices of dealers in seeds in at least the following ways: a. Generally by seeds being kept too long and being sold after they have lost their vitality. This is the most injurious of all the causes of depreciation; for it applies equally to the honest and dishonest trader. In adulteration the evil must be done with intent to defraud. Here there may be no inten. tion to defraud, but mere neglect or want of judgment may be as injurious to the purchaser as if there were. b. By the addition of bad seed to good, and mixing old and new. c. By the addition of seed whose vitality has been killed. This is done in the case of varieties of peculiar excellence, when the supply is insufficient to meet the demand. Killed seed of a cheap kind, similar in apps ance to that of a dear kind, is added to increase the quantity without affecting the quality. In this kind of adulteration the purchaser is only deceived in the quantity. What comes up at all, comes true, and the cha-, racter of the dealer for supplying a true article is maintained. d. By manipulating and doctoring the seed so as to make bad seed look like good, as by dying bad clover seed, sulphur-smoking bad grass seed, oil-dressing bad turnip seed, &c. 6. Your committee have been unable to ascertain to what extent these different practices are carried on; but they have reason to think it must be considerable. One of their informants was able, from personal knowledge, to instance one individual whose principal business consisted in destroying the vitality of cheap seeds for the purpose of mixing with sound seed of greater value; and they have reason to believe that this is by no means a solitary case. They are told also that a large number of people obtain a livelihood by the manufacture of bad into apparently good clover seed. 7. Your committee next endeavoured to ascertain how far the various causes, above-mentioned, actually affect the productiveness of seeds sold in the market. They have not, at present, made any tests with the view of determining how far seeds sold as of special quality or kind come true. Their experiments have, in the first instance, been directed solely to the vitality of seeds; and to that alone the present report applies. In a future report they may deal with the quality of the kinds of seeds sold, as well as some other collateral points. 8. In entering on the inquiry as to the vitality, your committee attempted to obtain a test for guessing at the age of seed by the percentage which comes up; but this they found impossible, so much depending on the original quality, and the care with which the seed has been afterwards stored. They made, however, some trials of turnip seed with this intent; and it may not be without interest to mention that, in them, they found the percentage which came up from home-grown good seed one year old to be 80, three years old 43, seven years old 32, and the older the seed the lower the rate of germination. 9. It would have been beyond the means at the disposal of your committee to test even a small sample of the goods of all the seedsmen and nurserymen in London; but by going only to the wholesale dealers, from whom the retail dealers of course chiefly obtain their supplies, they thought they could arrive at a fair estimate of the general character of the seeds sold throughout the country. It appears from Dr Hogg's "Horticultural Directory" that there are twenty wholesale dealers in London. From each of these (with the exception of two, who were accidently omitted) the committee purchased samples of five of our commonest garden vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, and white and yellow turnips)-care being taken to prevent the purpose for which they were wanted being known. The samples were numbered, and the names of the dealers from whom they were got were kept secret. One hundred seeds of each package were tested by the Society's officers at Chiswick, and a like sample separated by one of the members of the committee, and the number of seeds which came up were counted. In addition to this test, in a number of instances, especially where, before sowing, the appearance of the seeds was not good, they were mechanically tested by crushing and microscopical examination; and that test was found to correspond with the result of the trial by sowing. The test by floating was also tried, but found of no value, in the kinds of seeds specified. 10. The results of sowing, as shewn by the average of both trials (which, it is right to say, in general corresponded very closely) were as follows: Out of the eighteen packages of 100 cauliflower seeds, the following numbers respectively came up— viz., 86, 70, 66, 60, 56, 54, 54, 52, 51, 51, 50, 44, 44, 44, 43, 39, 36, 24. Out of the eighteen packages of 100 broccoli seeds, the following numbers respectively came up-viz., 86, 83, 70, 68, 65, 62, 60, 59, 56, 55, 50, 46, 42, 42, 39, 35. Out of the eighteen packages of 100 carrot seeds, the following were the numbers which came up—viz., 61, 56, 54, 48, 47, 45, 44, 43, 41, 38, 38, 37, 37, 35, 33, 30, 19, 14. Out of the eighteen packages of 100 white turnip seeds, the following numbers respectively came upviz., 98, 95, 93, 87, 87, 83, 82, 71, 70, 68, 68, 66, 65, 64, 62, 60, 58, 57. Out of the eighteen packages of 100 yellow turnip seeds, the following numbers respectively came upviz., 95, 84, 79, 79, 78, 77, 72, 72, 67, 66, 65, 64, 62, 58, 55, 55, 44, 28. II. It should be added that the quality of different kinds of seeds obtained from the same tradesman was not always uniform, all good or all bad; the cauliflower would sometimes be inferior and the turnip superior, and so on; but, on the whole, a good posi tion in one kind was generally accompanied by a good position in all. It is also to be observed that the general percentage is less on some seeds than on others -a difference probably due to the greater care required in harvesting them, and, in the case of carrots, to the difficulty in separating the good seed from the bad. 12. In seeking for a remedy for the evil, your com mittee recognized the existence of two distinct elements in it, each requiring different treatment :—1. The actual adulteration of seeds; and, 2. The mere keeping them too long and selling them when too old. 13. Actual adulteration is entitled to no mercy. It is a deliberate and intentional fraud, in the suppres sion of which the trade is as much interested as the general public, and ought to be suppressed by the strong hand of the law in the same way as any other fraud. 14. It is different with the selling of old seed. The seeds produced in different years, like different vintages, vary in their quality and in their power of retaining their vitality. It thus sometimes happens that two years' old seed is better than one year's old. There is thus a special difficulty in dealing with it; but it is clear that the public are entitled to get what they pay for; and if it is necessary to secure this that the dealer should test the quality of his seeds each year, it is his duty to do so. 15. It seems a right and proper thing that Government should bestow some pains in protecting the very large numbers of ignorant and uneducated people who have to purchase seeds. In Prussia, Sachverstandi gen, or, as we should call them, experts, are appointed by Government, whose duty it is, for a certain fee, to test the quality of the seeds of such merchants who apply to them, and to publish the results; and in some districts (Saxony and Wurtemberg, for example) there are officials paid by the Government or district, whose business it is to look after the culture of fruit trees and to give gratuitous advice to all who apply to them for it. 16. But, independently of the action of Government, your committee are disposed to think that the Council of the Royal Horticultural Society might itself do much to encourage the sale of good seeds, if not to prevent the sale of bad. How it can most effectually exert its influence for this purpose, is a question on which the Council might probably obtain useful suggestions from the respectable members of the seed trade; and your committee recommend that a number of them be invited to meet the Council and give their views as to the best steps to be taken to remedy the evil. TH EFFECTS OF MANURE ON HERBAGE. HE following is the substance of an interesting Report drawn up by Dr Voelcker, and made by the Chemical Sub-Committee to the Scientific Committee of the Royal Horticultural Society, on the effects of different Manures on Herbage. Dr Gilbert, at a previous meeting, had referred to some very striking experiments conducted for many years at Rothamstead Park by Mr Lawes and himself on permanent pasture, which has been under grass probably for eenturies. Under ordinary management this herbage yielded about fifty species of graminaceous, leguminous, and other plants usually found in permanent meadows. The number of species of plants was but little changed on those experimental plats in the park to which a complex but purely mineral manure was applied, consisting of salts of potash, soda, magnesia, and sulphate and phosphate of lime. On the other hand, salts of ammonia, nitrate of soda, applied by themselves, or the addition of nitrogenous manures to mineral fertilizing matters, greatly diminished the number of species in the herbage. According to the particular kind of nitrogenous manure used, and the quantity and combination with other fertilizing matters in which nitrogenous manures were employed, the diminution in the number of species varied, but in all cases it was strikingly apparent, and in some instances amounted to about onehalf of the species in the herbage from the unmanured part of the park, or those parts dressed with purely mineral manures. Attention was further directed to the fact, that not only the weight of the produce reaped per acre was much influenced by the description of the manures which were put on the different experimental plats, but that likewise the relative proportions of gramina ceous and of leguminous and miscellaneous plants in the produce were found to vary considerably with the manures employed. Thus, to cite only a few examples, the weight of the graminaceous plants in the produce from the unmanured plats, and those dressed with purely mineral manures, in round numbers amounted to about 60 per cent. of the whole produce. Dressed with salts of ammonia or nitrate of soda, and other purely nitrogen. ous manures, the herbage yielded from 70 to 80 per cent. of the whole weight of produce in graminaceous plants, and in some instances in which an abundance of both nitrogenous and mineral manures were employed together, the weight of the graminaceous plants in the whole produce amounted to nearly 95 per cent. The effect of nitrogenous manures in encouraging the growth of true grasses, and raising the weight of graminaceous produce and the corresponding diminution of the weight of the leguminous and miscellaneous plants in the produce, was strikingly exemplified in these experiments. On the other hand, it was found that purely mineral manures, such as salts of potash and phosphate of lime, favoured materially the growth of the clover tribes, and greatly increased the percentage by weight of the leguminous plants in the whole produce of the permanent pasture. At a subsequent committee meeting it was agreed to call together the Chemical Sub-Committee, who, regarding the co-operation of botanists and others interested in vegetable physiology, were joined by Dr Masters, Dr Hogg, Mr Murray, Major Trevor Clarke, and Mr Miers. The Sub-Committee fully discussed the manner in which manuring experiments on graminaceous and other plants occurring in pastures might will vantage be instituted, and considered it advisable to investigate rather the more strictly scientific physiological questions, which no doubt will suggest themselves in the course of the experiments, than to bear in mind the purely agricultural and economic points) of interest which they may present. manured with a purely mineral mixture; 3, one box manured with ammonia only; 4, one box manured with nitrate of soda only; 5, one box manured with ammonia and mineral manures; 6, one box manured with nitrate of soda and mineral manures. The following manures and quantities are recommended : Oz. 1.47 carbonate of lime .15 chloride of sodium. 1.47 bone ash treated with I. 10 sulphuric acid per acre. 1000 . Instead of growing together a number of plants, such as are common in pastures, it was deemed desirable to study the influence of various manures on par- Box 2. 1.47 sulphate of potash, or at the rate of 1000 ticular species, grown separately in wooden boxes 2 feet square and 18 inches deep, filled with poor soil, such as is found in unmanured and rather exhausted soils of our fields, and not with good garden mould. It is suggested that experiments be carried out in the Society's gardens, at Chiswick, and also at Rothamstead, by Mr Lawes and Dr Gilbert, as well as by any gentleman who feels disposed to undertake them. In each set of experiments the same kind of soil should be employed, but as the nature of the unmanured soil must exercise its due influence on the growth of the plants submitted to experiments, it will be desirable, if possible, to try one series of experiments on rather light sandy soil, and another on more heavy clayey soil. Dr Voelcker will willingly undertake the chemical analysis of any soils that may be employed for the experiments. "After due deliberation the Chemical Committee have selected the following plants for experiments :Dactylis glomerata; Anthoxanthum odoratum'; Lolium perenne; Poa pratensis; Poa trivialis; Bromus mollis; Trifolium pratense (perenne) red clover; Lotus corniculatus; Trifolium repens (perenne) white or Dutch clover; Plantago lanceolata; Achillea millefolium; Bunium flexuosum; or, failing any of these, such other plant of the same natural order of plants as may be preferred by the Chemical Committee. It will be seen that of the dozen plants recommended for experiment, six are true grasses, three clovers, and three common weeds in pastures. For each of the preceding plants six boxes, each 2 feet each wide and 18 inches deep, are recommended. 1. One box to be left unmanured; 2, one box Box 3. Box 4. Box 6. 59 sulphate of ammonia .59 chloride of ammonia 1.62 nitrate of soda The manures used in 2 and 3. 2 and 4. 100 1000 750 400 400 1100 The amount of nitrogen in the preceding quantity of nitrate of soda recommended for box 4, it may be observed, is the same as that in the sulphate of ammonia and chloride of ammonia, employed in box 3. Dr Gilbert has kindly promised to furnish the preceding manures, which should be intimately incorporated with the whole of the soil in the several boxes. When necessary, the plants under experiments should be watered with soft pure water, and otherwise attended, and their progress be watched and recorded. A sample of water to be retained for examination when distilled water can be used. The preceding experiments cannot be undertaken without a good deal of trouble, but it is confidently expected that they will throw light on the conditions most conducive to the rapid development of various orders or species of plants, as regards some of the more characteristic manuring elements present in complex manures, and they may lead to a more sys tematic and certain mode of treatment of not only these but also of other plants as regards manuring. Some of the manures recommended in the foregoing scheme are known to favour early maturity; it is therefore likely that the experiments will suggest others which may be of much value to fruit growers. T GARDEN ARCHITECTURE. V. SHADES FOR GARDEN SEATS. Agave two page 92 of the present volume we gave two designs for shades for garden seats of a very ingenious construction, the invention of Mr Scowan. We give now a third design differing in form from the others. For the mode of construction, the reader is referred to the previous article. VI. DESIGN FOR A GARDEN KIOSK. The visitor to the Paris Exhibition of 1867, and to that which is but recently closed at Havre, must have noticed the peculiarity in the wood work of the various departments stalls, divisions, &c.; that peculiarity being the elaborate way in which it was ornamented with cut out portions. This mode of ornamenting timber work is almost entirely confined to continental works, it being rarely seen with us. Take, for example, the eaves of houses, or even of common sheds, as railway sheds, &c., with us, we content ourselves by giving a plain fascia board without any attempt at decorative effect; whereas, on the Continent, the outer edge is cut up into elegant curves, with perforations in keeping, the result of which is exceedingly pleasing to is the eye. This kind of work is quite a specialty amongst the continental workmen, theut us in the case of panels, going by the name of "bois decoupée," and carved out as in the case of panels, &c., to a high degree of elaboration. The Exhibition we have above referred to abounded in specimens of this elegant species of work, much of which attracted great attention. It is applicable, as the reader may suppose, to a vast variety of structures; "but it is specially so in the various departments of garden architecture, with which this article specially concerns itself. Evidence of this was met with in the beautiful summer-houses in the parks in the Exhibition already referred to. These are called "Kiosks" by our lively neighbours; and some idea of the elaborate work put upon them in the way of "bois decoupée" decoration, may be gathered from the fact that one exhibited at Havre, of comparatively small size, was valued at 4500 francs. On the occasion of our visits to Paris and Havre, we filled our sketch-book with a goodly number of designs in every department of timber, some of which we shall |