HORTICULTURAL JOTTINGS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9039, 27 April 1888, Page 6

HORTICULTURAL JOTTINGS.

A STRIKING CONTRAST.

Agricultural Science says that Germany has thirty-three horticultural schools, of which the principal are at Potsdam, established in 1824 ; Pro.-kau, 1868; Geisenheim, 1872; and the Flora, at Cologne, in 1872. Besides these, there are the Pomological Institutes and Forest Schools. In Belgium there are two well-equipped schools, that of Ghent and of Vilvorde, the model of which, it will be remembered, formed so remarkable an exhibit at the Health Exhibition. France has a school of horticulture at Versailles, with a president and nine professors and forty scholars, who have free instruction for three years. Denmark educates her gardeners highly, as she has done her dairy farmers, with a result that much too large a proportion of the butter trade of England is in the hands of the little Scandinavian kingdom, while Ireland and the English grazing countries are falling behind ; and, to revert to horticulture proper, we have not (says a horticultural journal), ■even the ghost of a school of horticulture ; and Chiswick —poor Chiswick — the only public establishment where even the semblance of an experimental garden is maintained. "Oh ! but," it is said, " the educated gardeners are not practical is no work in them," Perhaps not in particular individuals ; but is it not true that the Germans are practical enough to be able to oust us in practical and commercial matters simply from their superior brain-power—no, we will not say power, for that would not be true—but from more careful braindevelopment, just as in military matters they overcame the French in 1870? THE LACE-BARK TREE. In Jamaica and Central America a tree grows called the lace-bark tree, botanical ■name Lagetto lintearia. Among the poorer classes this tree supplies the place of manufactured cloth, which they cannot afford to buy. Even the wealthier people do not ecorn the use of this tree for ornamental use. Some time ago, St. Nicholas gave the following interesting account of the manufacture of lace from the bark of Lagetto lintearia : —About two hundred years ago the Governor of the Island of Jamaica, Sir Thomas Lynch, sent to King Charles 11. of England a vegetable necktie, and a very good necktie it was, although it had grown on a tree, and had not been altered since it was taken from the tree. A gentleman who witnessed two natives manufacturing this lace thus describes it— A tree about twenty feet high and six inches in diameter, with a bark looking much like that of a birch tree, was cut down. Three strips of bark, each about six inches wide and eight feet long, were taken from the trunk, and thrown into a stream of water. Then each man took a strip while it was still in the water, and with the point of his knife separated a thin layer of the inner bark from one end of the strip. This layer was then taken in the fingers and gently pulled, whereupon it came away in an even sheet of the entire width and length of the strip of bark. Twelve sheets were thus taken from each Btrip of bark, and thrown into the water. The men were not through yet, however, for when each strip of bark had yielded its twelve sheets, each sheet was taken from the water, and gradually stretched sidewise. The spectator could hardly believe his eyes. The sheet broadened and broadened until, from a close piece of material six inches wide, it became a filmy cloud of delicate lace over three feet in width. The astonished gentleman was forced to confess that no human-made loom ever turned out lace which could surpass in snowy whiteness and gossamer-like delicacy that product of nature. The natural lace is not so regular in formation as the material called illusion, go much worn by ladies in summer ; but i is as soft and white, and will bear washing, which is not true of illusion.