Secretary's Budget. ' 303 



PROMISED XOYELTIES. 



Among roses we are promised a crimson La France and a white 

 Catherine Mermet. The owners assure me that these are decided 

 in color. We can all imagine what acceptable desiderata two such 

 roses would be. Among lilies there will be a white Superbum. I 

 have seen this in bloom. It is not a piire white, but by far the 

 whitest form I have ever seen. The Eed-flowering Dogwood will 

 soon be ready for the market. It is a red-blooming variety of 

 Cornus Florida, and as vigorous as the normal form. I have two 

 plants of it, and they grow strongly. Their foliage is darker- 

 tinted than that of the white-blooming one. Prunus Pissardii is a 

 shrub with colored leaves in the way of the Purple-leaved, Bar- 

 berry, Beech or Filbert ; but its leaves hold their color throughoui. 

 the summer better than do those of any of the Japanese Maples or 

 above plants. It is hardy here. 



The golden-leaved Pinus Massoniana, of which we have the 

 two parent plants, will be distributed as soon as propagators cai; 

 get up a stock of it. Our plants are two and a half feet high and 

 three and a half feet across, and very dense, notwithstanding the 

 fact that we have given 100 scions for grafting. It is the most 

 beautiful golden-leaved conifer that I know of, perfectly hardy 

 here, and survives year after year unprotected and without a 

 blemish, while its relative, the sun-ray pine, growing right along- 

 side of it, is sometimes injured by the winter. It is in winter that 

 it is most beautiful and golden ; in summer it assumes a greenish 

 hue — Willimii Falconer. 



[This golden-leaved pine has proven hardy at the Rural 

 grounds. Our plants were set tive years ago. — Eds. Rural Ke^v 

 Yorker.'\ 



NOTES Oif GERANIUMS. 



If we except Begonia rubra there is nothing scarcely so contin- 

 uously in bloom as the geranium. They are always with us, and 

 cheap, while orchids are dear, and only bloom a few weeks. We 

 hijd Calinthe vistita and Dendrobium nobile by way of variety in 

 our little plant room this winter. These are easily grown and not 

 very expensive. I wanted a Disa grandiflora that was $4. Mr. 

 Saul showed me a "wee bit" of an orchid, grown for its fine foliage, 

 that cost him four guineas. I didn't want that. Any one cais 

 grow the Epiphyllun truncatum, and one with fifty perfect flowert? 

 beats many orchids. So if you have half a dozen pots of Amaryllis 

 in the cellar to be brought out in succession, you can have thein 

 three months, but these things are not always with you like tlit- 



