778 



The Weekly Florists^ Review^ 



April 24, 1902. 



lom, upon which he will immediately 

 erect a raiigp of five or six good houses 

 with glass shingles. J. S. Manter. 



PHILADELPHIA. 



The Market. 



The cut flower market holds fairly 

 well, in view of the change to genuine 

 spring weather. Prices have declined a 

 little; the best Beauties are $3 a dozen; 

 tea roses, .$G to $8 a hundred; carnations, 

 $2 to $3 a hundred. There are a few- 

 sales of fancy stock at higher prices 

 than the above. Double violets. Lady 

 Campbell, can still be had at from 50 to 

 75 cents a hunilrod. Single violets and 

 Southern daft'odils are about over. Sweet 

 peas are in demand at 60 to 75 cents a 

 hundred; an example of how well choice 

 stock pays is sliown by the price obtained 

 for some long-stemmed white sweet peas 

 of choice quality — it was $2 a hundred. 

 The quantity of stock coming in is dimin- 

 ishing, but it is amply sufficient to meet 

 the demand. 



Independence Square. 



The display of llowering bulbs in the 

 city squares is at its best this week. The 

 beds in front of the State House are es- 

 pecially showy. The largest has a cen- 

 tral figure I'lirmod of Keizerskroon tu- 

 lips, surrounilcd by a baud of white tu- 

 lips bordered by a band of purple hya- 

 cinths; around this, but divided by a set- 

 ting of gn;ss, is a curved bed of double 

 daliodils winding in and out among 

 smaller beds of various colored hya- 

 cinths; beyond come two great triangles 

 of pink, white and purple liyacinths. and 

 near to the State House are two great 

 ovals of double daffodils bordered by 

 purple hyacintlis. This comb.nation of 

 the royal colors, jmrple and golil, is very 

 rich. The bulbs have jiroduced uniform- 

 ly good flowers, rollocting credi* on City 

 I'oicster Lewis and Seedsman Michell. 

 The only drawback to the general effect 

 is the condition of tlio grass, which is 

 very poor. 



The Seed Houses. 



The seedsmen are in the miiist of a 

 great rush of b\isincss. Tlicy all agree 

 th.'it they are doing more than they ever 

 did before. Henry A. Hreer Co. have 

 noticed an increased demand for the best 

 roses in pots; those selling at 40 cents 

 each are wanted in preference to those 

 at 25 cents each or less; their customers 

 have fired of little plants that take so 

 long to grow. They have also done ex- 

 tremely well with hardy phlox in 3-inch 

 pots; these plants were formerly offered 

 with single stems, 'Mapanese match 

 sticks," so to speak; that stage has now 

 been passed. This season they had 50,000 

 nice stocky threes, with fovir to five 

 shoots eich. The Transvaal daisy has 

 taken well, the stock being practically 

 exhausted, 



Johnson & Stokes have moved a great 

 quantity of small vegetable plants from 

 W, P. Stokes" place at Moorestown, be- 

 smes largely increasing their seed busi- 

 ness. The place of honor in their cata- 

 U.gue is given to Spark's Karlyanna to- 

 mato, considered the most prolific vari- 

 ety in cultivation. It is having a great 

 sale. 



Heniy F. JUchell received very encour- 

 aging accounts of the bulbs he furnished 

 last fall. P. C. Burger, of Baltimore, 

 who was in town this week, savs that the 



display in that city has never been 

 equaled, A feather in H, P. M.'s cap. 



There are some fine specimens of Cine- 

 raria stellata in front of the seed stores. 



Notes. 



Pred Ehret has exjjerienced his best 

 season since entering the commission 

 field about fourteen years ago. He start- 

 ed with two good consignors. Palmer of 

 Langhorne and Hillburn of Newtown, 

 and has steadily increased his field since. 

 His reputation, especially for Brides and 

 ilaids, hns enabled him to get better 

 prices for his best stock this season than 

 ever before. 



\V. A. Leonard is sending in some very 

 fine Kaiserin to S. S. Peunock. 



Kdwin Lonsdale is busily distributing 

 young plants of the new rose, Ivory; one 

 firm alone has taken 23,000 young plants 

 of this variety. 



1 neglected to mention last week that 

 the Germantown Horticultural Society's 

 certuicate of merit was awarded to the 

 American Eose Co. for Ivory. 



A series of entertainments given b.v 

 tnc Kussian officers on board the new 

 battleship culminated in a reception 

 given last week. i'he .ship was hand- 

 somcl.y decorated throughout and each 

 fair guest was presented with a taste- 

 fully arranged bunch of flowers adorned 

 by a ribbon bearing the oattleship's name 

 in Kussian characters. The work was 

 done by H. U. Battles. 



The Bowlers' League banquet arranged 

 for this week has been changed to a base- 

 ball game and planked shad dinner at 

 ?;ssington the second week in May. 



Phil. 



BUFFALO. 



It's a long time, ilr. Kditor, since your 

 correspondent sent you any news of this 

 rural town. The water is still flowing 

 over Niagara's cliff to the north of us, 

 and the steel jdant a few miles to the 

 south has added fifteen millions more 

 to its capital, making a forty million 

 dollar plant. So being between these nat- 

 ural and human-ma<le wonders we are 

 doing fairly well, 



Winter lingered long in the lap of 

 spring and it is only for a week past 

 that we have had decent weather, with 

 frosty sidewalks every morning. And 

 millions of icebergs of various dimen- 

 sions from Duluth and other towns pass- 

 ing our doors day and night for weeks 

 past, how can we be warm? In fact the 

 lumps of ice going down Niagara River 

 have so impeded ferryboat navigation be- 

 tween Buffalo and Port Erie, D. C, that 

 no important prize fights have been 

 scheduled for any dates of late. This is 

 lamentable, yet it has not affected the 

 general business of Ontario or Erie 

 county. 



AVe are entirely satisfied with business 

 since Easter; to compare if with last 

 year wouhl not be fair, for it was Pan- 

 .\mericau of happy memory, but we are 

 snre that this spring is much in advance 

 of all other years. There is a groat 

 awakening here among our people who 

 have comfortable homes — and nearly all 

 who can have detachcil residences with 

 more or less garden and lawn — to embel- 

 lish their surroundings with trees and 

 shrubs and vines and herbaceous liorders. 

 There are lots of openings and opportuni- 

 ties for men who will cater to these 

 wants, but it takes nuire thought and 

 knowlcilge and intelligence than it does 



to make a wreath of flowers or plant a 

 bed of geraniums or even grow good car- 

 nations or roses, and the profit is cor- 

 respondingly greater. We have a great 

 army of .young florists in this country who 

 are experts either behind the counter or 

 in the greenhouse, but not many garden- 

 ers. You will say trees, shrubs and 

 herbaceous plants is the nurseryman's 

 business. So it is, to raise them, but 

 few nurserymen want to bother with the 

 retail business, nor can they send com- 

 petent men to plant the goods they have 

 sold, and the tree peddler, the nursery- 

 man's agent, has no object but to sell, 

 and the people know it and will always 

 turn to the local man if he can give in- 

 telligent advice and deliver the goods. 



There has been no surplus of flowers 

 of any kind of late. Even carnations, 

 usually so abundant about this time, are 

 always cleaned up, and both roses and 

 carnations have commanded a good price, 

 particularly when you have to buy them, 

 and incidentally Billy Kasting is get- 

 ting fat, 



1 can't think of all the illustrious peo- 

 ple who have called lately. There was 

 the classical George Pancourt and ro- 

 tundant Peter Crowe, on their return 

 from the Canadian growers. Peter shook 

 his sides with jokes and George was so 

 loftily eloquent in quoting the sayings of 

 "Lady Deadlock'' from "Bleak House" 

 that I could glean but little from them 

 of what they saw, but they both gasped 

 and took another when they said, "You 

 ought to see the latest addition to the 

 Dale place; four houses, each 800 by 30, 

 with no partitions; a field of roses and 

 grand." Mr. Creighton, representing 

 Henry A. Drcer, Was here. "He's all 

 right," a first-class representative of a 

 first-class house. 



While we were ruminating how to rid 

 a jdot of ground of supcrlluous stones 

 a stranger walked up and introduced him- 

 self as Mr. Sievers, of San Francisco. 

 We consider it a great honor that he 

 should travel some 50 miles out of his 

 way just to have an hour's chat, and we 

 appreciate it. Mr. Sievers rai-sed Ethel 

 Crocker, Carl and several later varieties, 

 which he grows to an immense size. I 

 hope some of them we can grow as he 

 does. It is a great pleasure to talk to 

 such a traveled man, and young men in 

 your teens and a little older, if you don't 

 realize that we are moving along, just 

 think of the remark of Jlr, Sievers while 

 we were discussing a leg of mutton. "I 

 went to California in '57 and have never 

 been east since, though I have been to 

 the Philippine and Hawaiian Islands, 

 South America and Mexico. I was 180 

 days going from Bremen to San Fran- 

 cisco, IS days beating off Cape Horn. 

 Now I could leave San Francisco and be 

 in Europe in 12 days," 



The outrageous rise in beef and its 

 sympathetic effect on carnivorous food, 

 including eggs and "bow wow" sausiige, 

 has driven us in the rural districts to a 

 strictl.v vegetaljle diet, in consequence of 

 which there is no palatable rat free lunch 

 in our house, so the rodents have left the 

 cottage and invaded the carnation houses. 

 They jtimp up and bite off the buds just 

 as they are about to expand, nibble off 

 the calyx, scatter the petals and feast 

 on the seed pod. I have tried to give 

 you a few hints on various tojiics in the 

 past, won't some good brother florist tell 

 me how to drive them (.tl'P r^'ls) over 

 to my neighbors? I have tried i' Rough 

 On Rats,'' a perfect misnomer, and 



