1876.] 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



UT 



EDITORIAL NOTES. 



Timber of Delaware. — It is very much to be 

 regretted that in the efforts of the various States 

 to display their resources at the Centennial so 

 many of them have lacked the ability to discover 

 those in their midst of whom to take intelligent 

 counsel. Here is a scrap reported to be the Cen- 

 tennial " discovery" for Delaware : 



"There are twenty-nine varieties of wood 

 grown in this State, as has been discovered by 

 Colonel H. B. Fiddeman, of the Centennial Com- 

 missioners. These are : Chestnut oak, white oak, 

 red oak, black oak, Spanish oak, peach oak, 

 hickory, poplar, sassafras, chestnut, sweet or 

 white gum, yellow gum, black gum, Avhite cedar, 

 red cedar, maple, walnut, wild cherry, yellow or 

 long-leaf pine, spruce, holly, ash, persimmon, 

 dogwood, sycamore, birch, mulberry, locust, and 

 beech. They will all be exhibited at the Centen- 

 nial." 



If such an able botanist as Mr. Wm. N. Canby, 

 Col. Fiddeman's neighbor, had been consulted, 

 he would no doubt have doubled the list to the 

 credit of Delaware, and made no charge we are 

 sure for such able service. We can say of our 

 knowledge of Delaware, thinking merely just 

 as we write, that, besides the trees named, 

 there is the water oak, the post oak, scarlet oak, 

 blackjack oak, shingle oak (supposing that by 

 peach oak the willow oak and not this is in- 

 tended), pin oak, swamp white oak; besides 

 there are several kinds of walnut, ash, hickory, 

 locust, pine, and so on, while the "long-leaf pine" 

 does not grow there at all. The most common 

 pines of Delaware are Pinus in ops, P. mitis and 

 Pinus rigida. 



Tree-planting in Massachusetts. — To en- 

 courage arboriculture within the State, the 

 Trustees of the Massachusetts Society for Pro- 

 moting Agriculture have voted to offer prizes to 

 the amount of $3,000 for plantations of different 

 trees of not less than ten acres in extent, to be 

 awarded in 1887. The white ash is the only 

 native tree for which prizes are offered, as the 

 trustees have in view the advantage of devoting 

 to sylviculture the large tracts of barren waste 

 land now so common in the New England States, 

 and which can only be made profitable and pro- 

 ductive by covering them with such trees as the 

 European larch and the Scotch pine, which are 

 well suited to the New England climate, and 

 flourish on the poorest soils and in the most ex- 

 posed situations. 



The trustees have also voted to print 8,000 

 copies of Mr. Sargent's Essay on Tree Culture, 

 which we have noticed elsewhere, for distribu- 

 tion among the farmers, in the hope that its 

 perusal will excite in them an interest in this 

 branch of agriculture. 



This is not the first time that the public are 

 placed under obligation to the managers of this 

 old society. Three quarters of a century ago 

 the Botanic Garden at Cambridge was founded 

 through their liberality, and the increased public 

 usefulness of the same establishment is due to 

 the annual grant made to it from the fluids un- 

 der their control. 



Sub-hardy Eucalyptus. — An Eucalyptus, sup- 

 posed to be E. viminalis, has been found in a 

 garden at East Lothian, in Scotland, that has 

 been out for thirty years, though somewhat in- 

 jured in severe winters. This is hardier than E. 

 globulus, and we should say might perhaps do 

 out as fir north as Southern Virginia. It is well 

 worth the trial. 



Dogwood Charcoal. — A correspondent sug- 

 gests that the writer in the Scientific American 

 must mean a Buckthorn (Ehamnus frangula), not 

 a Dogwood, and further suggests that this Buck- 

 thorn would be well worth planting extensively 

 for gunpowder charcoal. 



Origin of Sericulture. — Whence came this 

 silk-worm? What is its country and that of the 

 mulberry — for the tree and the animal seem to 

 have always travelled side by side? Every thing 

 seems to indicate that China — Northern China — 

 is its point of departure. Chinese annals estab- 

 lish the existence of industries connected with it 

 from those remote and semi-fabulous times when 

 the emperors of the Celestial Empire had, it is 

 said, the head of a tiger, the body of a dragon, 

 and the horns of cattle. They attribute to the 

 Emperor Fo-Hi, 3,400 years before our era, the 

 merit of employing silk in a musical instrument 

 of his own invention. This date carries us back 

 5,265 years. They are said to have employed the 

 silk of wild caterpillars, and to have spun a sort 

 of floss. At that time they knew nothing of 

 raising the worm or of winding the cocoon into 

 skeins. 



This double industry appears to have arisen 

 2,650 years before our eia, or 4,515 years ago, 

 through the efforts of an empress named Si-ling- 

 Chi. To her is attributed the invention of silk 

 stuffs. You will not be surprised to see that the 



