article of food offered for sale, he is first fined, and then made publicly to confess his fault, by means of a large placard in his window, setting forth the exact nature of the trick he has played upon his customers. Imagine some of our leading tradesmen obliged to sit in sackcloth and ashes, and suffer this moral pillory! One or two rogues thus exposed, would have a marvellous effect in keeping the sand out of the sugar, and the burnt beans out of the coffee, &c., &c.”
“Now then, old fellow, as you have worked yourself round into a good humour again, take a weed?”
“Not the slightest objection in life, for it’s the only thing to be got unsophisticated—there is plenty of bad tobacco, it is true—but we know it is tobacco. There are many tales going, about the fine qualities of British tobacco grown in the Camberwell cabbage-beds—but it’s all fudge.”
“Come,” said I. “Let’s take a constitutional in the fresh air after this lecture?”
“Fresh air, indeed,” all our old friend’s savageness was evidently reviving. “Fresh air with every gully hole sending forth streams of sulphuretted hydrogen, and sulphuric acid, impregnating all the water—where on earth do you find your fresh air?”
Where he would have ended there is no telling, had not Bob slily tempted him with a thumping principe, on which his mouth closed with immense satisfaction to all parties concerned.
THE LACE-LEAF PLANT AT KEW.
Few of the residents in London able to command occasionally a leisure hour for recreation and enjoyment are strangers to the National Garden at Kew, and few from the provinces make a visit of any duration to London without devoting at least one day to this most agreeable place of public resort; while to many intelligent and scientific foreigners it constitutes one of the attractions by which they are drawn to our shores. The rich and extensive herbarium of Kew; the number and value of the specimens, arranged in admirable order in its museum of economic botany; its magnificent and well-filled palm-house, containing some of the most gorgeous trees of tropical climates; and its smaller, but scarcely less valuable, houses filled with tropical ferns, succulents, aloes, and aquatic plants; all these, not to mention others, amply repay a visit at any season of the year; while the excellent arrangements of the present Director of the Garden are such as to afford to the visitor every possible gratification.
The attraction of the garden is increased by the addition of rare and valuable plants which it is constantly receiving from every quarter of the globe. Many of the most choice and beautiful specimens from foreign countries found in English and even continental collections were first acclimated here, as in the instance of the superb Victoria regia, one of the most magnificent of modern additions to our stove aquaria. To this class of plants has also more recently been added a smaller but equally rare and singularly curious plant, which Sir W. J. Hooker designated, on account of the delicate and beautiful open-work structure of its leaves, the Lace-leaf; or Ouvirandra fenestralis, from Madagascar.
This singular vegetable production, which Sir W. J. Hooker speaks of as “one of the most wonderful and curious of plants,” has not, for some years past, been unknown to botanists: dried and other specimens had been brought to Europe, and there was a splendid plant preserved in spirits in the museum of the Jardin des Plantes at Paris; but the living plant had not been seen in Europe till Mr. Ellis, on his return from Madagascar, in 1855, brought a number of plants to England. Dr. Lindley had pointed out the plant to Mr. Ellis previous to his visit to the country in which it had been found. A drawing of the plant, made at Mauritius, being shown to the natives of Madagascar, one of them at length recognised in the drawing a plant with the habitat of which he was acquainted, went in search of it, and, after two or three days’ absence, returned, having discovered the objects of his search, but failed to procure any of them on account, as he stated, of his apprehensions of the crocodiles, by which the stream was infested, and who it was supposed could scarcely be expected to forego a meal for “the advancement of science.” At length the native brought back a lot of nice green healthy-looking plants, which (being deposited in a tub with some of the mud from the bed of the stream) were placed in the ship’s hold, where—after narrowly escaping the infliction of the sentence of an ignorant and ill-natured skipper, who had ordered the cook of the ship to pour boiling water upon them—they reached Mauritius in safety. Here a broad-based tub being provided, they were planted in earth, and covered with water, the tub being fitted with a glazed lid, admitting light and excluding sea-water, but opening by means of a hinge to allow fresh water from the shore to be given to the plants at the Cape, St. Helena, and Ascension. Thus carefully treated, they reached England safely in the spring of 1855.
When Sir W. J. Hooker heard of the arrival of a living plant in England, his concern for its preservation scarcely allowed him to feel sure of its safe custody until it should be actually in the aquarium at Kew, where a plant in flower was very soon afterwards placed. Plants were also presented to the Gardens of the Horticultural Society at Chiswick, to the Botanic Gardens at the Regent’s Park, and to the Crystal Palace. The Lace-leaf plant has since been added to several collections in England, and has been sent to the Continent and to North America. It is also stated in some of the public journals to have been adopted as a pattern for the manufacture of artificial flowers, of which, it is added, large quantities have been made.
The cultivation of the plant has not hitherto been generally successful in England, owing, apparently, to attempts to grow it in water kept at too low a temperature, as it seems to thrive best in water kept at about 80°. The plant at the Regent’s Park has been sent back to Mr. Ellis for the recovery of its health, and is understood to be promising well.
Sir W. J. Hooker published a scientific descrip-