April 12—Oblionker! my first honker!!! came to our minds when we saw the horse chestnut—Aeseulus hippocastamum-—bursting into leaf yesterday. This tree grows quickly once it com-merices to open its buds, so it should not be long before we are able to record it in flower. The common name is supposed to have originated in Turkey. In that country, the nuts were ground and mixed with food for horses. We noticed that holly trees are now in flower; very inconspicuous little flowers, but they reminded us of the Christmas festive season. Jasminum primulinum, a much more attractive shrub than the early flowering J. nudiflorum, is giving a good show these'days with its double, semi-double and single 4déwers on the same branches. We see that the name Jasminum was derived from the Arabic word Ysmyn. A man died in 1841 who had introduced many plants into Europe from the Far East; one of his in-traductions is now in flower, taking the place of the yellow forsythia which is past its best. The shrub is Kerria japonica and it is easily identified by its light green stems and heavily netted leaves, the flowers on our special
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.