NEW TOMATO, GENERAL GRANT.

I RECEIVED last spring, through the kindness of a gentleman of this city, a small package of the seed of this new tomato for trial; too late, however (May 15), to fairly test its merits on the score of earliness, but still in season to satisfy me that it combines more valuable qualities, aside from earliness, than any other variety with which I am acquainted. If, upon further trial, it should also prove early, it will become, as it will deserve, the most valuable variety yet introduced.

It originated, I am informed, with an amateur; a gentleman who has for a long time taken great interest in the cultivation and improvement of this popular vegetable. During the past five or six years, he has cultivated this variety, in connection with the leading sorts, both new and old, for the purpose of testing the comparative merits of each as to quality and earliness; and, in every case, this variety was found to be superior to all others.

The fruit is above medium size, measuring from three to four inches in diameter, and grows in clusters; form round, slightly flattened, very regular, symmetrical, and rarely ribbed or wrinkled; color brilliant glossy crimson; flesh unusually firm, solid, and free from water, more so than any variety

—

with which I am familiar; skin remarkably fine, smooth, and shining; productive, and well flavored; bears carriage well, and keeps in good condition a long time after being gathered.

Specimens of this tomato were on exhibition at the last Annual Exhibition of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, and received the first prize for the best single dish.

of which

If, after another year's trial, it should prove a superior variety, the gentleman who has control of the entire stock of

I have little doubt,

seed will introduce it to the public.

C. N. B.

[We saw on exhibition the specimens referred to by our esteemed correspondent, and, so far as appearance goes, can fully confirm all he has said. The specimens were by far the handsomest and most perfect ones we ever saw. They were greatly admired by all. ED.]

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THE BARBERRY.

THIS plant makes a very fine hedge when well kept; and it seems to be growing into favor for this purpose. Its beautiful light-green leaves in early summer, with the pretty yellow blossoms scattered here and there over the well-trimmed surface, render it an attractive object. We have seen hedges of barberry used to great advantage to cover up old walls beside highways. It is also quite ornamental when grown in groups and clusters, both on account of its flowers and fruit; and useful too, for the fruit makes good preserve or jelly. It is easily propagated by seed, layers, or off-shoots or suckers. Those produced by the first two methods would be the best, for they would not be likely to throw up suckers so badly as those raised from suckers; and, where fruit is desired, are better, for those from suckers are less fruitful. There is a seedless variety that makes a much better preserve, because free from the large seeds that render the fruit of the common sort somewhat objectionable. We like and recommend the barberry for hedges; though it has one fault, that of throwing up suckers, and spreading like the lilac: but these can easily be grubbed up, and the hedge kept within proper limits.

THE ELEMENTS OF A FLOWER.

IN "The Horticultural Journal " for October, I tried to enable my readers to refer every plant, herb, shrub, or tree, to one of four divisions, flowerless, endogen, gymnosperm, and exogen. Although the last must be subdivided, we cannot well carry classification farther without resorting to words that are not used in common conversation, or not used in the definite technical sense which botanists find necessary. For, when a child speaks of a leaf from a rose, he may mean either of five different things to which science gives five different names, leaves, leaflets, stipules, sepals, and petals. A person who had painted roses enough would have as definite. ideas of each without the names as with them; but he could not as conveniently talk about them, nor write of them. To know any number of unusual words would not be to know botany; but it would be inconvenient to learn much of botany without mastering very many of them.

And then, in a certain sense, names are things. You cannot think without the use of names, nor think accurately without their accurate use. It is no reproach to science, then, that it teaches a man to name his tools. A man might, indeed, know the name of every instrument used in surgery, and of every subdivision of the human body, and still be no surgeon; but it is certain that a man who would become a surgeon must and will learn these names. So every child that handles flowers ought to know the technical names by which all their parts are indicated by the use of one single word for each; for in this way only is learned that accurate observation of flowers without which no one will ever become a botanist. It is my object now to explain these terms so clearly, that any little child who reads them with a flower in hand can understand them.

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- the

Take a flower of which the outer part is green, and there are inner leaves which are not. Be sure that you do not take one of the composites, order to which the sunflower, aster, daisy, and dandelion belong. These are a tenth of all our flowering-plants, and perhaps a half of those that blossom in the fall. Nothing else will come amiss except the four-o'clock. We will take, if we can, a single rose.

Even the flower-stem has a name different from a leaf-stem. It is called

a PEDUNCLE.

fore.

The peduncle dies or falls when the fruit ripens, if not be

The stem of an apple is a peduncle. The peduncle of a dandelion is hollow. When a peduncle has more than one flower on it, the little stem of each is a PEDICEL. The stem of a red currant is a pedicel.

The leafy part of the flower is named the PERIANTH. Flowers that have no perianth, as those of the oak, nut, and willow, are called achlamydeous. The outer part of the perianth is the CALYX. Rarely it is some other color than green, as in the prince's-feather. The calyx is made up of leaves called sepals. In exogens, they are apt to be five in number.

If there be within the calyx another row of more delicate leaves, they are the COROL. The corol consists of PETALS. Exogenous flowers have mostly five petals. If the petals have a narrow part or stem, as in pinks, the stem is a CLAW. The broader part is the LIMB. If the petals be united into one, as in the phlox, the narrow part is the TUBE; the broad, the limb. Those plants which have a calyx, but no corol, are called apetalous or monochlamydeous.

Within the perianth are usually two classes of reproductive organs. The outer are called male organs, or ANDRŒCIUM. The androecium consists of Each has a vessel, mostly two-celled, called the ANTHER, generally mounted on a stem, the FILAMENT. In exogens, the stamens are often five or ten in number.

STAMENS.

It

The other organs, the innermost, when present, are the GYNOECIUM. consists of CARPELS, each of which has normally, at the base, a cavity for seeds, the OVARY; above it, a slender part, the STYLE; and at or near the summit, a moist spot, the STIGMA. The ovaries are frequently united into a mass called a GERM, and the whole gynoecium is called a PISTIL. Each carpel, if distinct, is often called a pistil. If the gynoecium stands on a stem within the flower, that stem is a GYNOPHORE. Gynandrous plants (orchids) have the gynoecium and the androecium united into one mass. If a flower have only one set of reproductive organs, it is called monoclinous; if both, diclinous. If it have an andrœcium only, it is called

male, or staminate; if a gynoecium only, female, or pistillate. If it contain both, it is perfect. If the staminate and pistillate flowers are found on the same plant, as in oak, maize, melons, and squashes, the plant is called monacious; if on different plants, as the hop, hemp, elm, willow, and poplar, it is diœcious. All our weeping-willows are pistillate only.

We have now been over a very complete set of names. They are all that can possibly be employed in the description of any ordinary flower, except of grasses, composites, and a few other orders. None of them can be conveniently avoided when the parts they indicate are present; but some are not much used, as perianth, androecium, gynoecium, and gynophore. As in all lessons where very much is compressed into a very few words, it has been inevitably a dull one.

For the sake of practice, "airing our vocabulary," let us now see the accidents that may befall a flower, or the things wherein the flowers of one plant can differ from those of another. They are simply four: the organs may be diminished, suppressed, connate, or adnate.

Diminution is seen in the pea, in which the upper petals are smaller than the lower one; and in the violet, where the lower ones are smaller than the upper. Such flowers are called irregular.

Suppression is seen in the horse-chestnut, where the lower petal and the three lower stamens are commonly wanting. Such flowers are unsymmetrical.

Flowers which are neither irregular nor unsymmetrical are regular. Suppression in the gynæcium, reducing the carpels to three or one, is common even in flowers called regular. Irregular flowers with a corol of two lips are labiate. Connate organs are united into one piece with others of the same kind; connate carpels are found in the tomato; the stamens are connate by their filaments into a tube in the mallow tribe, and by their anthers in the composites; five petals are connate in the morning-glory and the pumpkin, and five sepals in sage and pink. Organs which are not connate are distinct. Flowers with connate petals are called monopetalous.

Adnate organs grow to organs of a different kind from themselves. In the orchids, the filaments and styles are adnate; in the cherry, the bases of all the stamens, petals, and sepals, are adnate; in those plants where the fruit seems to form below the flower, as in the apple, squash, and currant, the bases of all the organs are adnate into one mass. Organs that are not adnate are free.

Not only have I clearly and accurately defined forty-two botanical terms, but all the while I have kept in view another thing. I am now prepared to finish in a single sentence the classification that I left incomplete in Octo