286 



THE GARDENKKS' MONTHLY 



[September, 



Editor spent four weeks very delightfully. If any 

 one should be tempted to follow the Editor's ' 

 example, and take a trip to this great northern 

 wonderland of America, he will be particularly 

 fortunate if he gets on the " Idaho," and into the 

 hands of these courteous and genial gentlemen. 



It may added that though much of the matter 

 for the Monthly had supervision before the Edi- 

 tor's departure, credit is due to his brother Joseph, 

 for the careful superintendence given the three 

 months numbers which appeared in his absence. 



Dr. John A. Warder. — We were pained to 

 learn on the return of the Editor from the West, 

 of the death of Dr. John A. Warder, which oc- 

 curred at his beautiful home at North Bend on the 

 15th of August. He was in his seventy-second 

 year ; but so great was his sprightly cheerfulness 

 on all occasions that few would have taken him 

 for one of so great an age. 



Few men in the East have done more to awaken 

 an interest in horticulture than Dr. Warder, and in 

 in the West no one has probably done as much as 

 he. He was a Pennsylvanian by birth, and con- 

 nected by marriage with the well known families 

 of Cope and Haines, which have done so much 

 for the intellectual reputation of Philadelphia, es- 

 pecially in connection with the Philadelphia 

 Academy of Natural Sciences of which Dr. Warder 

 remained a member to the day of his death. He 

 went West early after marriage, and practiced med- 

 icine with great success, abandoning it for rural 

 Hfe at North Bend, above Cincinnati, in 1855. In 

 a literary way the writer's first acquaintance with 

 him was when he undertook the editorship of the 

 Western Horticultural Review, which appeared 

 about the same time with Downing's Horticulturist. 

 There seemed no room for another purely horti- 

 cultural magazine at that time, and Dr. Warder's 

 venture was comparatively short lived, but it had 

 a wonderful influence on the horticulture of Cincin- 

 nati ; and at that time, in connection with the Cin- 

 cinnati Horticultural Society which Dr. Warder 

 did so much to sustain, Cincinnati became with the 

 Boston and Philadelphia Societies among the great 

 leaders of horticulture in the United States. The 

 wide spread progress made in strawberry culture 

 during the past quarter of a century owes much to 

 Dr. Warder in the Horticultural Review, and the 

 Cincinnati Horticultural Society. In 1858 his 

 work on hedges appeared, which is still the chief 

 reference book on this subject. In 1867 Warder's 

 Pomology came out covering however apples only. 

 It is the nearest attempt to place the descriptions 



of fruit on a scientific basis that has ever been 

 made. The limit of characters was too narrow. 

 There was not enough allowance made for possible 

 variations from climate or soil. In our mind it 

 always seemed a wonder the Doctor did not go on 

 and perfect his method. It will always stand as 

 the best advance ever made by a single author on 

 scientific pomology. As a botanist as well as an 

 author he has done valuable service. He was the 

 first to show that there were really two species of 

 Catalpa in this country, and to suggest for the 

 Western form the name of C. speciosa, eventually 

 adopted by Dr. Engelmann the describer of the 

 species. Whatever good may come from the re- 

 cognition of the arboreal merits of the Catalpa^ 

 will be mainly the work of Dr. Warder. 



In brief there is scarcely an agricultural, horti- 

 cultural, forestry, pomological or scientific society 

 in the United States which will not directly or in- 

 directly miss Dr. Warder, and his name will long 

 stand prominent in the annals of American intel- 

 lectual progress. 



H. B. Ellwanger. — While our readers had be- 

 fore them Mr. EUwanger's paper on the Manetti 

 rose, which appeared in our last issue, its talented 

 young author was then on his death-bed. He had 

 been down for some weeks with typhoid fever, to 

 which he succumbed on the 7th of August ; being 

 then in his thirty-third year. In the nursers' busi- 

 ness there are so few which take to the pursuits of 

 their fathers in an intelligent way that the death of 

 one like this is more than a usual loss to the horti- 

 i cultural community. Mr. Barry's son William, and 

 1 Mr. Geo. EUwanger's son, the subject of the present 

 note, promised to continue long after their parents' 

 I decease the business names which have made this 

 I firm so honorably known wherever a tree is 

 i bought or sold. Aside from this, rosarians will 

 I miss him more than all. Young as he was, he had 

 already become a leader and an authority in all 

 i that concerns the rose. We are sure the sympathies 

 I of the whole horticultural body will go out to his 

 wife and aged parents, especially as their loss is in 

 this case so very much our own. 



I Astragalus canariensis. Mr. Valentine 



I Burgevin writes : " It was probably through my 

 I own oversight that you substituted 'Tropgeolum 

 'canariensis' for 'Astragalus canariensis' in my 

 I essay 'Amongst the Flowers' which you were so 



kind to make room for in your excellent magazine. 

 1 The latter name was given to me by a florist when 

 I I became acquainted with the plant. I bore with 



philosophic patience the reflection that the error 



