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THE GARDENERS' MONTHLY 



[June, 



ing down an incline into the river. The fact of a 

 moving mountain is strange, but not incomprehen- 

 sible. It seems, says an intelligent correspondent 

 of the New York Times, that the great river and 

 the ravines that point to it have cut their way 

 down through a superincumbent mass of basalt 

 into a substratum of sandstone. This sandstone, 

 we will suppose, presents a smooth surface, with an 

 incline towards the river ; the river cuts under the 

 basalt into the sandstone, and the natural effect is 

 for the superincumbent basalt, acting like a simi- 

 lar formation of ice in a glacier, to slide down hill. 

 It furnishes an illustration of the manner in which 

 some of the more remarkable changes in the 

 earth's surface have been produced, and will 

 doubtless lead to further scientific investigation. 



Poisoned by Lima Bean Roots. — The family 

 of F. L. Kellogg, at Goleta, Santa Clara county, 

 were dangerously poisoned a short time since by 

 eating the roots of Lima beans, which they happened 

 to discover were very palatable. — Pacific Rural 

 Press. 



SCRAPS AND QUERIES. 



Hardiness of Evergreens.— Mr. Charles E. 

 Parnell, of Queen's, Long Island, says : 



" In this vicinity March proved very severe on 

 the more tender evergreens. Euonymus japoni- 

 cus and all its varieties are killed to the ground, 

 and so are all hemlock spruce that were removed 



or transplanted last season. Irish yews, juniper, 

 American and Siberian arborvitaes are severely in- 

 jured, and many are dead." 



The question of what influences the hardiness 

 of plants becomes more intricate every year. It 

 has become settled that it is not frost merely, but 

 something else in conjunction therewith. Here in 

 Germantown some hemlocks have badly suffered, 

 and so has box edgings, small arborvitass and 

 some other things which usually stand a very low 

 temperature, and yet at no time was the thermom- 

 eter at zero. On the other hand, plants like the 

 Euonymus japonicas and Mahonia aquifolia, 

 which commonly suffer severely, have not lost a 

 leaf, and are greener and fresher than we have 

 ever known them. Libocedrus decurrens, which 

 we have seen killed when growing near Thuja 

 gigantea, and totally destroyed, while the latter 

 has been unhurt, has the case reversed this season. 

 The Libocedrus remains as green as grass, while 

 it is the Thuja which is browned. It is frost with 

 wind, frost with sun, frost with drying atmos- 

 phere, or frost on weak or frost on strong plants — 

 or some other combination suiting some plants, 

 which succeed, or not suiting some, which suc- 

 cumb ; but just what, in each case, it seems very 

 difficult to say. The only general result which is 

 clear is, that no result as to what or what is not 

 hardy can be given as a rule. Because a plant 

 once dies is no reason why we should not attempt 

 it again. 



LiTERATUM^ Travels and Personal Notes 



COMMUNICATIONS. 



IN MEMORIAM. 

 BY PATRICK BARRY. 



Henry E. Hooker, of Rochester, N. Y., died 

 on the 1 2th of April last, at the age of fifty-eight 

 years. His health had been failing for more than 

 a year past, but hopes of his recovery were enter- 

 tained until a short time before his death. He was 

 born in Rochester, and lived there all his life. His 

 father, the late Horace Hooker, was one of the 

 pioneers of this section, and was one of the lead- 



ing business men of his day. He was among the 

 first to plant a good collection of fruits, and his 

 sons grew up with a taste for fruit culture which 

 gradually attracted them to the nursery business. 



Of Henry's two surviving brothers, one, Horace 

 B. Hooker, is engaged in the nursery business, 

 and the other, Charles M. Hooker, has one of 

 the finest fruit farms in Western New York, 

 almost within the limits of the city of Rochester. 



Henry E. Hooker has been known as one of 

 the leading nurserymen of the United States for 

 more than thirty years, and no man in the trade 

 enjoyed in a higher degree the confidence and 



