of Rural Art and Taste. 



125 



Don't Understand, 



The Gerinantown Telegraph misinterprets 

 our correspondent's idea, when it says Mr. 

 Josiah Hoopes " deplores the mania for new 

 sorts of fruits, and neglecting the good, long- 

 cultivated and profitable old sorts which, in a 

 measure, had been abandoned." 



It won't do, major : you must rub up your 

 glasses and take another look. He, in unison 

 with all true horticulturists, deplores the 

 mania that leads men to plant new varieties, 

 simply because they are new, but he is just as 

 much opposed to retaining an old variety 

 simply on account of its antiquity. 



The idea of the article in question, and 

 which appeared in the columns of this journal, 

 for January, was to glance over the field of 

 labor since The Horticulturist com- 

 menced its work. And the comparison was 

 to ascertain whether we had gained anything 

 in point of quality or not. He has nothing 

 to " deplore ; " for it is a well known fact that 

 we have gained in very many ways, although 

 not in flavor in any of our leading fruits. 



He did not advise anyone to plant the But- 

 ter Pear, nor the Ncivtown Pipphi apple, and 

 yet there are sections of our country where 

 these succeed now ; and we say the residents 

 of these localities will be foolish indeed if they 

 give them up for some doubtful novelty. 



JSiirly Heatrice I'ench. 



Col. Ed. Wilkms, of Maryland, writes spe- 

 cially to inform us that the recent paragraph 

 respecting the Early Beatrice peach being lia- 

 ble to attacks of the curculio, is untrue. A 

 few dropped from trees, but not from effects of 

 the curculio. His faith in the tree is such 

 that he has planted 3,500, and now orders 

 1,000 more trees. 



J<Uotvei:s in. Californiii. 



We are favored with the following from the 

 correspondence of a lady who is visiting at 

 Vallejo, near San Francisco : 



" I have been over to the United States 

 navy yard. It seemed like an hour in Eden, 

 the park and gardens are so beautiful. The 



Castilian rose is the native rose here ; into it 

 are budded all the choice varieties. * I saw 

 roses, " Cloth of Gold," eleven inches across, 

 the bushes clambering over half-way up a three 

 story brick house : hedges of from six to eight 

 feet high of pink and red Fish geranium ; 

 trees of Lemon geranium and Hairbell fuch- 

 sias grow like grape vines. 



" Lady Washington geraniums are the 

 plants that grow most thrifty here in the yard, 

 and Cuba lilies keep blowing all the summer 

 out of doors. Dew plants run over every- 

 thing unless it is kept weeded out. Carnation 

 pinks are as large as our roses. They have 

 to keep cutting flowers, or the blossoms kill 

 the plants if allowed to blossom too freely." 



Grou'ttt of It Jtose Slip. 



A rose slip one foot long, planted in Los 

 Angelos, Cal., in 1872, had made in 1873, 

 one year from planting, in the aggregate, a 

 growth of fifty feet. 



yl Floi-dl C'itif. 



A traveller writes of the beauty of the flow- 

 ers in south France : 



" The profusion of violets, roses and camel- 

 lias that are hawked about the streets of Nice 

 during March and April is very attractive, 

 and the taste with which the bouquets are ar- 

 ranged is very remarkable. All through the 

 country the little children run about offering 

 little bouquets of violets and wild flowers 

 arranged with a taste that you would not find 

 in Covent Garden. The white camellias are 

 not so beautiful as what we have in our 

 houses ; they are very white, but do not open 

 out, and have the appearance of a fuchsia with 

 the outer petals recurved and the center petals 

 standing upright and close together. The 

 rose in that season appeared to me to be 

 chiefly Safrano, of the large roses ; but the 

 masses of the yellow and white Banksian that 

 hang down from the walls of every garden are 

 perhaps the most striking objects at that sea- 

 son. The scarlet geraniums, which grow 

 everywhere, are chiefly a nosegay of a pinkish 

 scarlet. I have seen a hedge on the roadside 

 at Beaulieu, six feet high, and masses hanging 

 over the rocks on the seaside at the same 



