October 31, 1914 



HORTICULTURE 



617 



MASSSACHUSETTS AGRICULTUR- 

 AL COLLEGE NOTES. 



The junior class in Floriculture 

 visited A. X. Pierson's, Cromwell, 

 Conn., on Saturday. Oct. 2-ith. Quite a 

 few acres of giound are devoted to 

 grass. Piersons do most all of their 

 own construction of new houses. 



The Landscape Art Club has elected 

 Earle S. Draper ])resident. Harold D. 

 Grant vice-president. .Malcolm Goodwin 

 secretary and Andrew Dalrymple treas- 

 urer. Weekly field trips will be made 

 to study the native materials about 

 the surrounding country. 



The program for the second annual 

 flower show of the Holyoke and North- 

 ampton Florists' and Gardeners' Club 

 is in distribution. There are 42 classes 

 listed, but it is a pity the classes 

 should be limited to members of the 

 society only. This narrows the scope 

 of competition, and the far-reaching 

 effects of the exhibition. 



An exhibition will be lield on the 

 3rd and 4th of November in French 

 Hall. Table decorations and other 

 showy groups will largely feature this 

 exliibition. A display of fancy pottery 

 will attract much attention, as many 

 ideas can here be worked out individ- 

 ually by the students. .\ few new 

 varieties of flowers tried out in the 

 department will be exhibited for the 

 judgment of the public. The idea to 

 be emphasized in these floricultural 

 exhibitions is to arouse interest and 

 to receive support from outside grow- 

 ers, especially the commercial men. 

 There should be co-operation between 

 the college on the one hand and the 

 commercial grower on the other, so 

 that when the outside grower exhibits 

 a fine display its merits can be noted 

 by the student. He then gets ac- 

 quainted with the varieties of flowers 

 which the market demands. 



W. H. H.\TFIELD. 



SWEET PEA VEILED BRIDE. 



BASIC SLAG FOR GRASS-LAND. 



For many years Professor Somer- 

 ville has advocated and practiced the 

 use of basic slag for the improvement 

 of grass-land. His experinece has 

 shown that in the cases of land which 

 responds to this treatment, the 

 meat and milk-producing power of 

 grass-land has doubled or even quad- 

 rupled — poor herbage having been con- 

 verted by the dressing of phosphate 

 into a tangle of white clover. Pro- 

 fessor Somerville now shows Dy 

 means of a series of careful experi- 

 ments carried out at the School of 

 Rural Economy, Oxford, and published 

 in the Journal of the Board of Agri- 

 culture, that grass-land to which basic 

 slag has been added, after having am- 

 ply repaid the cost of the dressing, 

 contains an accumulated fertility, 

 which is demonstrated at once and in 

 striking manner as soon as the land 

 is ploughed and sown with oats or 

 other cereals. The experiments indi- 

 cate that on land thus treated the first 

 tillage crop is likely to show .'lO per 

 cent, increase over that taken from 

 similar but untreated land. In the 

 case of land at Cockle Park, North- 



We take much pleasure in present- 

 ing a portrait of C. C. Morse & Co.'s 

 sensational new sweet pea. Veiled 

 Bride. We understand that the sto'-'v 

 of this variety is stili verv limited. 

 Mr, Morse says that Veiled Bride 

 has been in his "work shop" for about 

 five years, and it is only now that 



they have been able to get it fixed. 

 The cross made made between Coun- 

 tess Spencer and Helen Pierce, the 

 Veiled Bride Spencer appearing in the 

 second generation. While it is not a 

 very large Spencer, its daintiness and 

 sweetness are bound to make it a fa- 

 vorite. 



umberland, which had been dressed 

 three times during 17 years with 10 

 cwts. of basic slag, the productive 

 power was shown to have been in- 

 creased by so much as 1.53 per cent., 

 and soil from a pasture that had re- 

 ceived only 7 cwts. of basic slag three 

 years previously was improved by 124 

 per cent. This accumulated fertility 



is to be ascribed partly to the residues 

 of the pliosphatic manure, but chiefly 

 to the indirect effects of that manure. 

 Among these indirect effects are the 

 increased accumulation of humus and 

 the larger fixation of nitrogen due to 

 the increase of leguminous plants ia 

 the grass-land treated with phos- 

 phates. Gardeners' Chronicle. 



