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In the evening I used to hide in the osier-beds on the edge of a great water-meadow; for now that the marshes are drained, and the black earth of the fens yields a harvest of yellow corn, the broad level meads which are irrigated to fertilise them are among the chief inland resorts of wild fowl.
That objection to the increase of their comfort, if the word be applicable, will now, I trust, be happily removed. The absence of trees, of which Sir Harry speaks, is believed to have originated from the same cause which occasions a similar want in the prairies of America that is, the native custom of burning down the grass every winter, to fertilise the soil.
He would have seen how wonderfully the worms were constructed for the fulfilment of their apportioned position in the animal kingdom; how, without legs, or the peculiar twist of the snake, they crept swiftly over the ground by means of their many-ringed bodies; and also learned that, by their constant tunnelling of the ground, they prevented the water that sank from the surface from lying stagnant amidst the roots of the trees, and thus rotting them, but enabled it to fertilise larger spaces.
To give an instance: Mirabilis jalapa can easily be fertilised by the pollen of M. longiflora, and the hybrids thus produced are sufficiently fertile; but Kölreuter tried more than two hundred times, during eight following years, to fertilise reciprocally M. longiflora with the pollen of M. jalapa, and utterly failed. Several other equally striking cases could be given.
To restore the disturbed equilibrium of constitution of the soil, to fertilise her fields, England requires an enormous supply of animal excrements, and it must, therefore, excite considerable interest to learn, that she possesses beneath her soil beds of fossil guano, strata of animal excrements, in a state which will probably allow of their being employed as a manure at a very small expense.
There are other cases which are truly extraordinary; there is one, for example, which has been carefully examined, of two kinds of sea-weed, of which the male element of the one, which we may call A, fertilises the female element of the other, B; while the male element of B will not fertilise the female element of A; so that, while the former experiment seems to show us that they are varieties, the latter leads to the conviction that they are species.
I think you will not find me encroach upon you. The overflowings of your kindness, if I know anything of my own heart, will fertilise the land, but will not destroy the landmarks. I do not know whether I most hate or despise the temper which will take an ell where an inch is given.
These jelly-fish are budded and thrown off by them, as glass-like swimming bells, which lead an independent life, seize prey, nourish themselves, and grow to a size varying from that of a sixpence to that of a cart-wheel. These "bells" are commonly known as "jelly-fish." They discharge thousands of egg-cells into the sea and fertilise them with sperms!
Even within the limits of the same genus, we meet with this same difference; for instance, the many species of Nicotiana have been more largely crossed than the species of almost any other genus; but Gartner found that N. acuminata, which is not a particularly distinct species, obstinately failed to fertilise, or to be fertilised by, no less than eight other species of Nicotiana.
The date palm is a handsome ornamental plant, and in the hot and dry Western districts, where it thrives best, it forms a splendid shelter from the sun for both man and beast. So far, very little attention has been given to its growth, few persons knowing how to fertilise the flowers or even taking the trouble to see that they have plants of both sexes.
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