1885. 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



239 



three years in the North. I have had good suc- 

 cess in growing most all kinds of plants and vege- 

 tables. This spring I have had very bad luck 

 with my cabbage, and the pest that destroyed 

 them is something new to me. On the 15th of 

 May I set 120 strong cabbage plants and they 

 grew very fast. They had made six and eight 

 leaves, and had hoed them by the ist of June. I 

 was watching for the cabbage worm to appear 

 when I noticed the leaves began to turn yellow. 

 I cleaned the earth away from the plant and found 

 the root presented a rotten appearance. On ex- 

 amining it I found it full of little white maggots. 

 There were twenty or thirty on the root They 

 had eaten every particle of root and all around 

 the stalk, and were working in the lower leaves. 

 I found every plant just the same. It was too 

 late to try and save them. They are serving my 

 radishes and turnips the same way. If you know 

 what they are and if there is any remedy for get- 

 ting rid of them, I would like to know what it is. 

 Also, what club root is. The maggot is white 

 with a black head. If you have space enough I 

 would like to hear from you through the Garden- 

 ers' Monthly, of which I have been a constant 

 reader for the last three years and I find it very 

 useful and instructive to me." 



[So far as the maggots are concerned they are 

 probably only those which always breed in decay- 

 ing vegetable matter. Just what caused the roots 

 to decay is not clear from the above account. We 

 do not remember seeing any that presented the 

 appearances described. Perhaps some reader 

 with a similar unfortunate experience can tell 

 more about it. Club root is an entirely different 

 matter.— Ed. G. M.] 



An English Gooseberry. — Some one sends us 

 a branch with large white gooseberries of the 

 English race, but no note has reached us as to 

 what it is or where from. 



If it is a seedling, and an opinion is desired, we 

 can only say that though very good we should 

 hardly consider it equal to the average of the 

 named kinds offered in the catalogues. The 

 English gooseberry has already been so highly 

 improved that there is little chance for good novel- 

 ties in this line. There is more chance for success- 

 ful improvement in the American race. 



Immediate Effect of Pollen on Fruit. — 

 By request the Editor of this magazine wrote a 

 review of all that he could find on record relating 

 to the chapter by Mr. Darwin, favoring the view 

 that there is an immediate effect of pollen on fruit. 



This paper appears in the Rural New Yorker of 

 June 13. pages 404, 416. The result of that review 

 is, that there is no evidence that any change by 

 pollen has ever been accomplished in fruits, though 

 it appears that the cotyledons of some seeds — being 

 part of the new plant — may be affected. The 

 following letters refer to the articles in the Rural 

 New Yorker. 



The first is from Mr. D. S. Marvin, Watertown, 

 N. Y. "In crossing grapes I have never observed 

 any variation in the fruit immediately produced. 

 I have had light colored fruit in seedlings from 

 Gregg and Taylor, two black caps." This last 

 point shows that change in fruits may come about 

 even after crossing, and yet without the pollen 

 having any influence to prevent change, much less 

 causing it. 



The next letter is from the distinguished Presi- 

 dent of the American Pomological Society. " I 

 wish your paper on the immediate effect of 

 pollen on fruit in the Rural New Yorker could 

 have been reserved for the meeting of the Pomo- 

 logical Society at Grand Rapids. It is one of the 

 most remarkable papers of the age, able, reason- 

 able, sensible, exhaustive, and finally conclusive, 

 that I have ever read, and I believe will be so re- 

 garded by all intelligent people. 



"I started experiments with the Strawberry under 

 glass this spring, taking diverse kinds for the pur- 

 pose, and not one of them has sustained the 

 hypothesis that there is any immediate effect of 

 pollen on fruit." 



Sending Peaches by Express. — A Baltimore 

 correspondent says : " I write at the request of my 

 employer who places great value on your knowl- 

 edge in everything connected with the business. 

 He wants to know the most improved method of 

 packing ripe peaches, so that they would carry safely 

 from Baltimore to Newport, even if they were only 

 two dozen in apackage, just so they would go safely. 

 The expense of the apparatus would be no objec. 

 tion. He thinks, if you were to give your views 

 through the Gardeners' Monthly, it might be of 

 great value to others as well as himself." 



[This note refers to peaches forced under glass 

 in winter, and are of course much more tender 

 than the peaches grown in the open air, and would 

 require much more care than is given to the or- 

 dinary market fruit. We should think, however, 

 that an ordinary peach crate, which is little more 

 than a series of shallow shelves, so arranged that 

 no peach would rest upon or press against its 

 neighbor, is all that would be required. And of 



