77 
ish government and private individuals to obtain home-grown corn 
m Iceland, and the success with which these endeavors were at- 
tended gives additional importance to the systematic undertaking 
which has been set on foot by Dr. Schubeler and others within the 
last three years for the introduction into the island of the hardier 
cereals, vegetables and fruits. As many as 382 samples of seeds of 
ornamental and useful plants most of which were collected from the 
neighborhood of Christiania, are now being cultivated at Reykjavik 
under the special direction of the local government doctor, Herr 
Schierbeck, who succeeded, in 1883, in cutting barley ninety-eight 
days after the sowing of the seed, which had come from Alten (70^ 
N. Lat.). And here it may be observed that this seems the polar 
limit in Norway for anything like good barley crops. The seed is 
generally sown at the end of May, and in favorable seasons it may 
be cut at the end of August ; the growth of the stalk being often 2^ 
niches in twenty-four hours. North of 60° or 61^ barley cannot be 
successfully grown in Norway at more than from 1,800 to 2,000 feet 
above the sea-level. In Sweden, the polar limit is about 68'' or 66°, 
but even there, as in Finland, night frosts prove very destructive to 
the young barley. 
In some of the field valleys of Norway, on the other hand, barley 
niay, in favorable seasons, be cut eight or nine weeks after its sow- 
ing, and thus two crops maybe reaped in one summer. According 
even to a tradition current in Thelemarken, a farm there owes its 
name, Triset, to the three crops reaped in the land in one year ! 
Rye early came into use as a breadstuff in Scandinavia, and in 
1490 the Norwegian Council of State issued an ordinance making it 
obligatory on every peasant to lay down a certain proportion of his 
land in rye. In Norway the polar limit of summer rye is about 69°, 
and that of winter rye about dx" ; but in Sweden it has been carried 
along the coast as far north as 65°. The summer rye crops are gen- 
erally sown and fit for cutting about the same time as barley, although 
occasionally, in Southern Norway, less than ninety days are required 
for their full maturity. — Nature, 
The Prickly Pear, — In some recently published Consular reports 
of the United States the following paragraph on the nopal, or 
prickly pear {Opuntia cochinillifei'a) occurs : — '* The plant abounds 
in the whole territory of Mexico, Texas, New Mexico, Ari- 
zona and California, and extends much farther north. It has flat 
oval leaves, about six inches long and nearly half an inch thick, 
covered by long sharp thorns, and bears a fruit of a purple color re- 
sembling a pear, filled with numerous small seeds. The plant grows 
from three to six feet high. Its fruit is eaten freely by cattle, and 
the leaves, after having been burnt in a fire to get rid of the thorns, 
are thrown by the cartmen in place of fodder to their oxen by means 
of a long, sharp-pointed stick, especially when on a road where there 
IS no grass. It also makes an excellent hedge, and once planted will 
last forever. There is another species of nopal called nopal de cas- 
^illa, which has no thorns, and Avhich is cultivated for the sake of its 
fruit. This nopal has much larger leaves than the wild species, and 
grows to the height of ten and twenty feet, and the fruit is much 
