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THE GARDENER'S MONTHLY 



[December, 



for sale. Dr. Kegel, in company with a business 

 partner, has an extensive nursery about two 

 miles distant from the gardens. This nursery is 

 in one sense also a botanical garden. Plants 

 are grown quite largely of little known species 

 of Northern Europe and Asia for distribution to 

 botanical gardens, private collections, etc., in all 

 parts of the world. Fruit trees are not largely 

 grown. Indeed the soil here is not favorable for 

 growing of fruit or fruit trees ; yet here are 

 found very many varieties of the apple of the 

 hardiest known varieties. The German varieties 

 in stock, when the scions were sent to our 

 Department of Agriculture in 1870, were long 

 since discarded. The sorts now grown are true 

 Russians, which can stand rough usage. In 

 connection with this nursery I should say 

 that Dr. Maximowiz, the able curator of the 

 Imperial garden, has spent four years recently in 

 the interesting sections of North-western China, 

 Dahuria, the Amoor, etc ; very many of the 

 novelties he collected are here propagated for 

 distribution. In like manner the eldest 

 son of Dr. Regel is now collecting in Bo- 

 kara and other portions of Central Asia under 

 the special protection and auspices of the 

 Russian government. The ancient centres of 

 civilization are proving rich in species and 

 varieties, which have measurably escaped the 

 attention of the economic botanists. 



"Of course the Imperial gardens are enriched 

 by these collections, but the propagation of novel- 

 ties for distribution seems wholly done at the 

 private nursery, on commercial principles. 



"The people are an opened-faced, clear 

 complexioned race, who talk Russian with 

 deciaediy musical accents. Officials and the 

 landed proprietors usually talk French, and 

 many of them speak English imperfectly. Dr. 

 Regel and Dr. Maximowiz speak English freely, 

 the latter indeed quite as well as a native 

 Yankee." 



Improvement in Gardeners.— One of the most 

 intelligent of Canadian gardeners writes: "Your 

 Gardener's Monthly I especially prize as con- 

 taining much and very valuable information, and 

 must be much prized by those who wish to go 

 forward in horticulture. Without such works 

 gardeners will soon find themselves far behind 

 in their ideas, and there are many gardeners 

 who rest on the first they learned, and never get 

 beyond that." 



Smallest Flower in the World. — Dr. A. 

 Gattinger, of Nashville, says: ''A few days ago, 

 while paying some attention to the autumnal 

 flora, I happened to pass by a small pond on 

 Mrs. Spence's place, near the Lebanon pike, and 

 to observe the ' Wolffia Columbiana,' a plant of 

 such diminutive size that rarely any one would 

 notice it except a botanist, aware of its existence 

 and eager to find it. The surface of the pool is 



covered with a green scum, which, at a close 

 inspection, is found to consist of two distinct 

 little plants. The one, a flat and disk-shaped, 

 roundish, floating frond, the size of a lentil, with 

 a few delicate rootlets pending from the lower 

 surface, is the ' Lemna polyrrhiza,' a species of 

 Duckweed. The other looks like very small 

 green grains, scattered between the Duckweed, 

 and forming with this a dense covering over the 

 entire pool. These grains are oval-shaped, 

 measuring from J to J of a line in length, floating 

 half submersed, and void of rootlets. It is very 

 rarely seen in flower, its general way of propa- 

 gating being by bulblets, produced at the edge 

 of the frond, and falling to the bottom of the 

 water at maturity. The flower, where it happens 

 to be found, is proportionate in dimensions, 

 almost invisible to the naked eye, and consists 

 of one stamen and one pistil, which burst 

 through a chink in the upper surface of the 

 small frond, and produce one ovule." 



American Flowers in Europe. — It seems to 

 astonish Europeans that good things can come 

 from America. Reveu Horticole, a French maga- 

 zine, notes many good points in the double 

 Bouvardia "besides the interesting fact that it 

 originated in North America." 



Popular Horticulture. — How words in one 

 country may come to have different meanings 

 in others, is evidenced by La journal de la vul- 

 garisation de V Horticulture. In our language this 

 would be briefly rendered "popular gardening." 



Proceedings of a Convention of Agricul- 

 turists, HELD IN THE DEPARTMENT OP AGRICUL- 

 TURE, January, 1881. Published by the Depart- 

 ment. We have here the papers read and the 

 discussions thereon ; the latter, however, do not 

 seem very well reported. Members are made to 

 give replies to questions, which, so far as the 

 proceedings go, were never made ; and when a 

 member does rise to answer questions there often 

 seems little relevancy between the two. This 

 sort of reporting is often found in reports of 

 local societies, but would have hardly been ex- 

 pected here. In the discussions on grape cul- 

 ture, Mr. Wm. Saunders is reported as saying 

 that phylloxera has been long observed on the 

 roots of grapes ; but that it is only when the 

 plants are otherwise diseased and their normal 

 vitality impaired that the insects prevail to a 

 fatal extent. Prof. Riley suggested that in Europe 

 the appearance of the phylloxera in any neigh- 

 borhood added immensely to any destruction of 



