1883.] 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



187 



respect of all who had dealings with him, or who 

 were in any way brought into his presence. He 

 was a skillful and careful cultivator ; whatever he 

 did was well done. Of late years he made a sort 

 of specialty of the Brighton grape, which he intro- 

 duced, and of roses, and I have often had occa- 

 sion to admire his remarkably skillful and success- 

 ful management of these. He was also a man of 

 excellent taste, of which his home and grounds 

 gave ample evidence. 



An avenue running through his grounds, planted 

 with Chinese magnolias and Cembran pine, placed 

 alternately, is among the finest objects of the kind 

 I know of. Another, planted with weeping birch, 

 is also very fine, and both are original and unique. 

 Mr. Hooker was not a routine man, but a thinker. 

 His death is justly regarded as a great loss to the 

 nursery trade and to the community at large. He 

 was in the prime of life and in a position to make 

 his usefulness more widely felt than ever. He was 

 one of the founders of the Western New York 

 Horticultural Society, for some time its President, 

 and always one of its most intelligent and staunch- 

 est supporters. That excellent society owes much 

 to Henry E. Hooker, and his death will be 

 sincerely mourned by all its members. 



In his social and domestic life Mr. Hooker 

 was one of the best of men. He leaves a wife and 

 four daughters, who have in their bereavement, in 

 an especial manner, the sincere sympathy of the 

 nurserymen and horticulturists, not only of this 

 country but of Europe. 



EDITORIAL NOTES. 



To Intelligent Correspondents. — All com- 

 munications relating to advertisements, subscrip- 

 tions, or other business, must be addressed to the 

 publisher, 814 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. 



All referring to the reading matter of the maga- 

 zine must be mailed to the editor, Germantown, Pa. 



No express packages for the editor received un- 

 less prepaid ; and marked ''Paid through to Ger- 

 mantown, Pa." 



The Force of Habit. — Scientific men tell us 

 that in nature results continue long after the causes 

 which brought them about cease to exist. Ed- 

 ward Munger, in speaking of the time when he 

 was a boy, says it was the custom of school 

 children as you pass a school-house to make a 

 bow, but in these latter days, as you pass a school- 

 house, you must keep your eye peeled, or you will 



get a brickbat at the side of your head. He still 

 bows his head, but the devotional feeling is wholly 

 replaced by others as wide as the poles asunder. 



The Tallest Nurseryman in the United 

 States is said to be Daniel Conger, of Walcott, 

 N. Y., who stands 6 feet 6 inches. We remember 

 that when, in a critical moment during the civil 

 war, he was asked as an influential public speaker 

 and a leading public man in his community, o go 

 and make a speech to favor enlistments ; he went, 

 and from the platform simply said, " I am going to 

 enlist as a private soldier ; who will go with me?" 

 No wonder the company was immediately filled, 

 when they had such a bulwark as this to shelter 

 them, and still less wonder when, during the war, 

 he hobbled into our office, from a neighboring 

 hospital, with a bullet through him. Men of this 

 size should have two pensions, as surely their 

 chances of being struck were doubled. 



Origin of the Purple Birch. — The Journal 

 of Horticulture SdiystVx^ pretty plant was raised in 

 America. This we take to be a slip of the pen for 

 " France." The plants in America originally came 

 from France, and, indeed, the Journal says in the 

 same paragraph : " It was obtained by chance by 

 an old hand of the firm of Transon Brothers, 

 named Dubois, from a sowing of the ordinary birch. 

 He very soon observed the unaccustomed ap- 

 pearance of the plant, and after having raised it he 

 took grafts therefrom, and placed them on young 

 stocks of the common variety, and afterwards 

 established them in pots. 



Origin of the Manetti Rose. — The origin of 

 this famous rose is obscure. In a letter to the 

 Revue Horticole M. Bertin, Sr., says he sowed 

 some seeds of unknown Bourbon roses in 1832. 

 Among plants from these he found one very vigor- 

 ous one. He gave plants to many leading horti- 

 culturists, such as Servi, and Bertin, the latter of 

 whom called it Manetti. 



To us this does not seem quite clear, for there is 

 nothing whatever of the Bourbon family of roses in 

 the Manetti. It is so near in all its characters to 

 the American Rosa lucida, in all except its ex- 

 tremely strong growth, that one may suspect more 

 relationship to it than to the Bourbon race. No 

 explanation is given of the- name, which appears 

 to be Italian. M. Carriere regards it as of Italian 

 origin, and proposes to rank it as a species. He 

 calls it Rosa Bertini. 



Cats in a Bombarded City. — A correspondent 

 of the Salt Lake Contributor thus describes the 



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