About the 20th of January last, during a period of the coldest weather we ever fired through, the gas pipes on our street were broken, and as the ground was frozen hard at the time, so that the gas could not escape through it to the surface, it found its way into the brick street sewer.

A six-inch vitrified sewer pipe runs under one of my houses and connects my coal cellar with the sewer in the street; and as the pipe was laid simply to carry off the drainage from my greenhouses, the joints were not cemented; but the pipe was trapped at the inner end. The illuminating gas found its way into this pipe, and escaping between the joints, rose through five feet of soil, and very seriously damaged the plants in five of my houses. Two large beds of roses in full bloom were entirely stripped of foliage, and all carnation flowers or buds beginning to open, were spoiled; looking, after a day or two, as if they had been dipped in boiling water.

Geraniums, callas, begonias, violets, fuchsias, coleus, stocks, euphorbias, roses in pots, hyacinths, heliotropes, oranges and many other things suffered severely, many losing all their leaves. Phyllan-thus and cactus were the first to show injury; one of the latter, having a stem as thick as my arm, being completely dismembered. A fine lot of al-ternanthera were almost totally destroyed, and all lily of the valley, either in bloom or in bud, were spoiled. About two thousand cuttings in one bench, mostly roses and geraniums, were ruined, and some of my most valuable orchids lost all their leaves. Oleanders, lilium candidum, and some other plants seem to be gas proof, and our verbenas, smilax and Chinese primrose show no injury from it. Our standard roses were cut back, and have broken into bud nicely, and apparently will soon be all right again. I discovered what was doing the damage late at night, and dug down to our sewer outside of the house, and at two o'clock in the morning broke out a joint of the pipe, and stopped the gas from coming in. The loss to me was a serious one, and as many other florists may be liable to injury from the same cause, without suspecting it, I thought it best to warn them of their danger.

I would advise that whenever it can be avoided, there should be no connection made; between the dwelling or greenhouse and a common sewer; and to anticipate the suggestion that a trap at the street would have kept the gas out, I will state that my neighbor across the street has four traps on his branch sewer, two outside and two inside, and it passed all of them, and nearly drove his family out of the house.