1882.] 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



251 



- EDITORIAL NOTES. 



Rochester nurseries.— These suffered severely 

 during the times when business generally was 

 depressed, and it was pleasant to find during a 

 hasty visit to the flower city recently that, though 

 no new firm had ventured into business, the older 

 ones were in a measure prospering. Some 

 grounds are scattered, and cannot easily be 

 reached by a hurried circuit, but the writer 

 managed to make brief calls on EUwanger & 

 Barry, Gould Brothers, W. H. Little, H. E. 

 Hooker, and the great seed firms of Vick and 

 Hiram Sibley, all of whom seem to be pros- 

 pering. H. E. Hooker has been prostrated by 

 the blow that compelled Vick and Stone to give 

 way, but he was able to be out for the first 

 time on the daj' of our call. We have to go to 

 press so soon after the editor's return, and there 

 has been little time to write much since; but he 

 hastens to thank the numerous friends he found 

 there for the many kind attentions everywhere 

 offered him. 



The Detroit Carnations. — We have another 

 communication from Messrs. Breitmeyer, written 

 in a good spirit, and from this point unobjection- 

 able. But the matter has grown to be a person- 

 al one, and the further discussion would not in- 

 terest m;i,ny readers of the magazine. 



The Apricot.— Pliny, as well as Linnteus and 

 most modern botanists, includes anjongst Plums 

 the Apricot (Prunus Armeniaca), a tree most ex- 

 tensively cultivated, and which sows itself very 

 readily in cultivated grounds over South-eastern 

 Europe, Western Asia and East India, but its 

 native country is very uncertain. The ancients 

 called it Armeniaca, as having been brought 

 from Armenia into Italy, where it is not indige- 

 nous ; also Prsecoca, Prasecoqua and Prsecocco ; 

 and under one or other of these names it is men- 

 tioned i)y Dioscorides. by Galen, by Columella 

 (who is the first who speaks of its cultivation) 

 by Pliny (who, about ten years after Columella, 

 asserts that it had been introduced into Rome 

 about thirty years), by Martial, etc. Democritus 

 and Diophanes give it the name of Bericocca, 

 analogous to the Arabian Berkac and Berikhach, 

 the probable origin of the Italian names of Ba- 

 cocca, Albicocca, aijd even, according to Cesal- 

 pin, Baracocca; and, lastly, Paolo Egineta, ac- 

 cording to Matthioli, has spoken of these fruits 

 under the name of Doracia. Although some ol 

 these names, even in modern times, have been 



occasionally misapplied to a variety of Peach, 

 yet they all properly designate the Apricot and 

 show that that fruit was known in very remote 

 times. Having never been very much apprecia- 

 ted, except for its odor, there was not in former 

 days any great propagation of varieties of it. 

 Micheli, however, under the Medici, enumerates 

 thirteen among the fruits cultivated for the 

 table of Cosmo 111.— The Garden. 



Gardening by the Monks of Old.— The Gar- 

 den gives this interesting note on monastic gar- 

 dening in England : 



"Gardening in the middle ages was one of the 

 favorite occupations of those men who, to escape 

 the 'madding crowd's ignoble strife,' sought a 

 home in the cloister. Scott has happily exem- 

 plified this in Father Boniface, who, when raised 

 to the dignity of Abbot of Kennaquhair, casts a 

 regretful glance back to his early days spent in 

 the monastery of Dundrennan, where he says: 

 ' I passed my life ere I was called to pomp and 

 to trouble. I can almost fancy I see the cloister 

 garden and the pear trees which I grafted with 

 my own hands.' Father Boniface's lot was cast 

 in stirring times ; while he was musing a great 

 change was passing over Scotland. In common 

 with other countries of Christendom, she ac- 

 cepted the reformed doctrines, and the Regent 

 Murray, like our own bluff Harry, 



Broke into the spence 

 And turned the monks adrift. 



The poor abbot was glad to seek refuge in peace- 

 ful obscurity and employment in the pursuit of 

 gardening. Thus contented, he viewed his coun- 

 try's troubles with a stoicism which amounted to 

 indifference. ' What avail,' he says, ' earthly 

 sorrows to a man of fourscore? It is a rare 

 dropping morning for the Early Colewort.' 

 Almost every one can remember quaint gardens 

 which once formed part of the demesne of some 

 religious house, now long since converted to 

 secular uses. 



" The broad terraced border at New^stead, full 

 of old-fashioned flowers, which the brothers 

 themselves may have planted, and which con- 

 trasts strangely with the rest of the pleasure 

 ground laid out by Le Notre — this and many 

 similar spots rise up before our mental vision at 

 the mention of 'monastic gardens.' When our 

 warlike ancestors were spending their time in 

 fighting, and scarcely ever out of the battle and 

 the fray, and while somewhat later on in Eng- 

 land's history others were engaged in the peace- 

 ful pursuits of trade and commerce, the monks 



