2l6 



GARDENING. 



April i, 



Published the 1st and 15th of each month 



— bt — 



THE GARDENING COMPANY, 



Monon Building, CHICAGO 



Subscription Price, J2.0U a Year— 24 Numbers. Adver- 

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Entered at Chicago postofflce ns second-class matter. 

 Copyright, I8H8, by The Gardening Co. 



Address all communications to The Garden- 

 ing Co., Monon Building, Chicago. 



Gardening Is gotten up for Its readers and In their 

 Interest, and It behooves you, one and all, to make It 

 Interesting. If It does not exactly suit your case, 

 please write and tell us what you want. It Is our 

 desire to help you. 



ask any QrrESTioNS you please about plants. 

 Bowers, fruits, vegetables or other practical gardening 

 matters. We will take pleasure In answering them. 



Send us Notes of your experience In gardening In 

 any line; tell us of your successes that others may be 

 enlightened and encouraged, and of your failures, 

 perhaps we can help you. 



Send rs Photographs or Sketches of your 

 tlowers. gardens, greenhouses, fruits, vegetables, or 

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 graved for Gardening. 



CONTENTS. 



Tree planting 209 



Notes on oaks (ill us.) 210 



T ho witch hazels 211 



Bechtel's double-flowering crab 211 



The white oak (illus.) 212 



Cyclamens (illus.) 212 



Begonia coronata (illus.) 213 



Further notes on sub- watering 213 



Springdale farm (illus.) 214 



Seasonable notes 214 



Dahlia notes 215 



Some new American cannas 215 



Notes 216 



Some new notions about old insects 210 



Workers in horticulture (portrait) 217 



A now mushroom spawn 217 



Desirable raspberries ami blackberries 218 



Cowslips 218 



American raised roses 218 



Societies 219 



Catalogues received 220 



Plans for a national park on the battle- 

 field at Lookout mountain are well under 

 way. 



Two new and much improved varieties 

 of the common artichoke are said to be 

 very popular in European gardens. 



A large numberof mulberry trees have 

 been set out at Springville, Utah, in anti- 

 cipation of the growth of the silk industry. 



The state of New York has appro- 

 priated $10,000 for the establishment of 

 a College of Forestry at Cornell Univer- 

 sity. 



The Wichita, Kansas, posts of the 

 Grand Army of the Republic will plant a 

 liberty tree with appropriate ceremony in 

 Riverside Park, April 20. 



Crocuses planted so as to form the 

 words "Welcome Spring" have attracted 

 much attention in Lincoln Park, Chicago, 

 during the past week or two. 



For the third consecutive year the 

 Richmond, Indiana, city council has voted 

 an appropriation oi several hundred dol- 

 lars to carry on the preliminary work of 

 establishing gardens for the poor of the 

 city. 



A writer in an English paper gives 

 this recipe for preventing rust in carna- 

 tions, which he received from a gardener 

 in Germany, whose plants were unusually 

 fine and in healthy condition. He mixes 

 two pounds of vitriol and four pounds of 

 freshly-slaked lime in twenty-seven gal- 



lons of water, and stirs well together, 

 until it is clear, not blue, and then he 

 adds two pounds of sugar and mixes all 

 again. With this he syringes his plants 

 once a week, early in the day. The syr- 

 inging should be done quickly, finely and 

 evenlj-. 



At a recent meeting of the national 

 flower congress in Asheville, N. C, Mrs. 

 McKinley, Mrs. John A. Logan and Mrs. 

 J. S. Carr were added to the national 

 committee. The purpose of the congress 

 is to secure the adoption of a national 

 flower for the United States. The next 

 meeting will be held in Washington, D. C. 



The Pennsylvania railroad is about to 

 send out a large army of gardeners, under 

 the direction of the chief florist and land- 

 scape artist, to begin planting flowers 

 and trees at many of the stations. Many 

 new station lawns are to be sodded, and 

 at places where new work has been done 

 the cuts and embankments will be looked 

 after. 



The park commissioners of Milwaukee, 

 Wisconsin, are thinking of building a con- 

 servatory and propagating house in 

 Mitchell Park, which will cost from 

 $16,000 to $20,000. Two or three archi- 

 tects are now figuring on drawing the 

 plans for this building. It is to contain 

 a tank in which the water will be warmed 

 and in which the Victoria regia, queen of 

 water lilies, will be grown. 



Arbor Day occurs April 8 in Missouri, 

 and the horticultural society of that state 

 is to be commended for the publication and 

 distribution of a circular giving concise 

 directions for the selection, digging and 

 handling, and planting of trees. Lists of 

 suitable trees, shrubs, roses and climbing 

 plants are also given. Interested parties 

 should send for a copy to the secretary, 

 L. A. Goodman, Westport, Mo. 



The governors of at least two states, 

 Ohio and Wisconsin, have designated 

 April 2 as Arbor Day, and they urged its 

 general observance by tree planting. 

 Governor Scofield, of Wisconsin, further 

 suggests: "It would te highly appro- 

 priate for the schools of the state to 

 devote the day to the planting of trees, 

 shrubs and flowers so that the school 

 grounds be permanently beautified, and I 

 recommend that this be done." 



Some experiments recently in Belgium 

 tend to throw doubt on the truth of the 

 assumption that insects are guided to 

 flowers by the brightness of their colors. 

 Brilliantly colored dahlias were covered 

 so as to show only the disks, and butter- 

 flies and bees sought these flowers with 

 the same eagerness and frequency as those 

 which were fully exposed. The conclusion 

 reached that the insects were guided 

 by their sense of smell rather than by their 

 sight seems conclusive. 



The horticultural display at the 

 Trans-Mississippi Exposition at Omaha 

 promises to be very extensive. Mr. L G. 

 Kellogg, president of the Wisconsin 

 Horticultural Society has applied for 500 

 feet of space for a fruit exhibit; Mrs. M. 

 A. Shute, secretary of the Colorado State 

 Board of Horticulture, has notified the 

 authorities that she has on file guarantees 

 for 1230 square feet of space in horticult- 

 ure building, and hopes to soon have 

 enough to completely fill the 1860 feet 

 which have been reserved in this building 

 for Colorado, and Prof. J. L. Budd of the 

 State Agricultural College states that the 

 horticultural exhibit of Iowa, prepared 

 under the direction of A. F. Coleman, of 

 Corning, will be very elaborate. 



SOME NEW NOTIONS ABOUT OLD INSECTS. 



The following is an abstract of a lecture 

 on the above subject, delivered before the 

 Massachusetts Horticultural Society by 

 Prof. M. V. Slingerland: 



For many centuries the insect world 

 has afforded one of the most fascinating 

 of all fields for observation by those who 

 speculate upon the various phases of that 

 mysterious something called life, and they 

 get some of their most interesting facts . 

 from the insect world. Entomology, or 

 the science of insects, is thus an old science 

 and has had many devotees. 



The first book devoted entirely to insects 

 was published in England in 1634. It is 

 a quaint old volume entitled "Theatrum 

 Insectorum," by Drs. Penney and Mouf- 

 fet. The volume is a compendium of 

 what was known about insects previous 

 to the seventeenth century. Hundreds of 

 busy minds during the succeeding two 

 centuries found recreation in watching 

 these interesting creatures, and their 

 recorded observations have added much 

 to our knowledge of the insect world. It 

 was not until about the beginning of the 

 present century, however, that the lives 

 and habits of insects came to be studied 

 with a view to discovering their most 

 vulnerable points, that men might the 

 more easily destroy them. In short, that 

 phase of the study of insect life which has 

 come to be known as economic of applied 

 entomology, is scarcely a century old. 



In America, nearly even thing relating 

 to insects has been published since the 

 Revolution. Many articles on well-known 

 insect pests are scattered through the 

 early horticultural and agricultural liter- 

 ature. In 1841 Dr. Harris's "Treatiseon 

 the Insects of Massachusetts" was pub- 

 lished. This simply, concisely, yet beau- 

 tifully written account of what the author 

 had seen and learned about insects, justty 

 entitles him to be called the "Father of 

 American Economic Entomology;" and 

 the science ol modern entomology may 

 well be said to have had its birth in Amer- 

 ica with the publication of this notewor- 

 thy volume by the state of Massachu- 

 setts. 



Inquiries from such horticulturists as 

 have studied the injurious insects have 

 stimulated workers in entomology to 

 study our injurious insects with renewed 

 vigor. The result is that the so-called 

 "remedies" now recommended are more 

 often based upon a more scientific and 

 rational knowledge of the insect and of 

 horticultural conditions than previously. 

 The more progressive horticulturists now 

 realize that the science of spraying has 

 come to stay. 



Climatic andotherunknown conditions 

 often cause a considerable variation in 

 the habit and life of an insect. The same 

 insect may pass through but one genera- 

 tion in a year in one locality, while in 

 another state, perhaps only one or two 

 hundred miles away, it will be double- 

 brooded. It may lay its eggs on the fruit 

 in one state and on the adjacent leaves in 

 another. Oftentimes a successful method 

 of fighting an injurious insect depends 

 upon some apparently trifling habit 

 which may be easily overlooked. My 

 experience in studying the habits of 

 insects during the past few years has led 

 me to believe that there is much to be 

 learned about some of those insects that 

 we have thought we knew all about. 



Recent additions to our knowledge of 

 that old and familiar pest, the codling- 

 moth, illustrate most of the facts above 

 mentioned. If there is any one of our 

 common insect pests about which we have 

 thought that there was little new to be 

 learned it is the codling-moth. There was 



