DECEMBER 22. ISSS. 



The Weekly Florists^ Review* 



83 



A Florist on Snow. 



Syringe lightly every bright day just 

 enough to wet the stems and leaves, 

 without adding any more moisture to 

 the soil. Paint the heating pipes with 

 a mixture of one-half sulphur and one- 

 half lime, to kill mildew. About Feb- 

 ruary 1 I would cut out all weak 

 growth and cut back all stronger 

 growth, much as you would prune a 

 hybrid rose, but not quite so severely. 

 Clean off all diseased leaves. Give 

 the beds a top dressing of well rotted 

 barnyard manure, spread evenly over 

 the surface of the soil to the depth of 

 half an inch. The beds will now stand 

 a good watering, and from this time 

 on the plants may be syringed lightly 

 twice each day, to induce the eyes to 

 swell. Night temperature may be in- 

 creased to 50 degrees for the first ten 

 days; after this a night temperature 

 of 55 degrees should be steadily main- 

 tained. Day temperature should be 65 

 to SO, according to the weather. 



We would advise leaving chemical 

 manures alone for the present. Thoy 

 are costly experiments in the hands of 

 one unfamiliar with their uses. 



S. A B. 



BEAUTIFUL SNOW. 



It is beautiful in some places. It 

 covers our herbaceous plants with 

 nature's overcoat. It gives us the 

 pleasure of a sleigh ride, in which a 

 large part of your physical self is cov- 

 ered with the hide of the almost ex- 



tinct American bison; at your side a 

 companion who helps to keep you 

 warm, and whose race there is little 

 fear of becoming extinct. Just a word 

 about the noble animal, the bison. As 

 late as twenty-five years ago, I can re- 

 member parties of young men return- 

 ing from northern Texas and telling us 

 of the hundreds of buffalo they had 

 slaughtered. They were thoughtless 

 fellows and not to be blamed for such 

 wanton waste of life, but the law 

 should not have allowed the whole- 

 sale destruction of the noblest animal 

 on the continent of North America. 

 It is going to take 50,000 United States 

 soldiers to protect the liberated Cu- 

 bans. Quite as well in my opinion had 

 the same amount of men and money 

 been employed years ago to save and 

 protect the birds and beasts that na- 

 ture gave us. The majestic pine tree, 

 the shaggy buffalo and poor Lo, with 

 his "untutored mind," will soon be a 

 thing of the past. And our collector 

 of internal revenue at Iloilo, what will 

 he care for the pine trees, the Buffalo 

 or the "last of the Mohicans," "Slop- 

 py Weather" or "Young man not 

 Afraid of his Horses." There is an- 

 other race of savages to be dealt with; 

 Mr. Lo is practically gone. 



But I have wandered; I meant to 

 get into a snowdrift but have strayed 

 to the tropics. Not for twenty years 

 has western New York been visited by 

 so sudden and great a fall of snow and 



what makes it still more exasperating 

 is when Mr. Thompson, of Joliet. 111., 

 walks into your office and says, with 

 an amiable smile, "You have lots of 

 snow here, we haven't any in Chicago." 

 Innocent as Mr. Thompson may be of 

 any offense, you feel that you would 

 like to fill his mouth so full of snow 

 that he could not say Chicago in a 

 week, let alone the accent on the 

 "Kah." While in this city it has not 

 been much more than to afford good 

 sleighing, you have only to go ten 

 miles north, south or east to realize 

 what a nuisance is an over-supply of 

 the beautiful. In one village in which 

 I am interested, the street commission- 

 er, or road master, issued orders to 

 the natives to clear their sidewalks, 

 which they did by pushing aside 6 in- 

 ches of snow and then walking on 

 three feet of it. It was four feet on 

 the level. As one of the old residents 

 remarked, "I have seen the roadways 

 as full of snow, but there was some- 

 where to pitch it away, now there is 

 none." 



If this were expected, we would cer- 

 tainly have to alter our style of green- 

 house architecture. The houses with 

 low walls, as violet houses, have been 

 much harder to clear of snow than the 

 more lofty ones. Supposing the side of 

 your house was 4 feet 6 inches high, 

 the snow was well up to that and for 

 several days there was no place for the 

 snow to slide off. We had to dig a 

 passage way round the houses 4 or b 

 feet wide and pull off the wintry cov- 

 ering. Houses that were detached 

 were about as bad as the attached, but 

 with labor you could remove it. In 

 the valleys between attached houses it 

 has been very bad and difficult to re- 

 move without lots of broken glass. It 

 slowly melts, 'tis true, but when it 

 falls as fast and drifts as well to the 

 depth of 2 feet on the glass, it will 

 melt away for an inch or two from the 

 glass, but the great bulk of it will re- 

 main till we get a thaw. I have heard, 

 I think, of a steam pipe being run 

 along the gutter. It seems to me that 

 it would be an excellent plan and lit- 

 tle expense, but you should not expect 

 to carry steam in ice water over 50 

 feet and it would be little trouble to 

 supply the steam from your pipes in 

 the house every 50. Most modern 

 houses are built detached with consid- 

 erable space between, still there are 

 the short-span-to-the-south faddists 

 who build their houses connected. I 

 would rather have houses connected 

 than divided by only a small space, 

 say six feet, for that is a regular trap 

 for snow in such an experience as we 

 have just had. ' 



One thing more about gutters. If it 

 suits to have them, the conductor pipe 

 should never be at the end of a house 

 for that is where freezing takes place. 

 The whole length of the gutter may be 

 thawing, but the last foot is frozen 

 tight. In a gutter 100 feet long you 

 should have at least two 3-inch con- 

 ductor pipes and no one should be 



