Coniferous trees are sometimes considered as out of place in park scenery; this, however, does not hold good at Drinkstone, where Mr. Powell has been displayed excellent taste in the way of improving the landscape and creating a really charming effect by so skillfully blending the dressed grounds with the rich greensward of the park that it is not easy to tell where the one terminates or the other commences.
The park, which covers some 200 acres, including a fine lake over eight acres in extent, contains also various large groups or clumps of such species as the Sequoia gigantea, Taxodium sempervirens, Cedres deodora, Picea douglasii, Pinsapo, etc., interspersed with groups of ornamental deciduous trees, producing a warm and very pleasing effect at all seasons of the year. Among species which are conspicuous in the grounds are fine, well-grown examples of Araucaria imbricata, some 30 feet high; Cedrus deodara, 60 feet in height; Abies pinsapo, 40 feet; and fine specimens of Abies grandis, A. nobilis, and A. nordmanniana, etc., together with Abies albertiana or mertensiana, a fine, free-growing species; also Libocedrus gigantea, Thuiopsis borealis, Thuia lobbii, Juniperus recurva, Taxas adpressa, fine plants; with fine golden yews and equally fine examples of the various kinds of variegated hollies, etc.
Particular attention is here paid to early spring flowers. Drinkstone is also celebrated as a fruit growing establishment, more particularly as regards the grape vine; the weight and quality of the crops of grapes which are annually produced here are very remarkable.—The Gardeners' Chronicle.
ON THE CHANGES WHICH TAKE PLACE IN THE CONVERSION OF HAY INTO ENSILAGE.
By FREDK. JAS. LLOYD, F.C.S., Lecturer on Agriculture, King's College.
The recently published number of the Royal Agricultural Society's Journal contains some information upon the subject of silage which appears to me of considerable interest to those chemists who are at present investigating the changes which take place in the conversion of grass into silage. The data[1] are, so far as I know, unique, and though the analytical work is not my own, yet it is that of an agricultural chemist, Mr. A. Smetham, of Liverpool, whose work I know from personal experience to be thoroughly careful and reliable. I have therefore no hesitation in basing my remarks upon it.
We have here for the first time an accurate account of the quantity of grass put into a silo, of the quantity of silage taken out, and of the exact composition both of the grass and resulting silage. I desire merely to place myself in the position of, so to speak, a "chemical accountant."