March 22, 1877. ] 



JODRNAL OF HOBTICULTUKE AND COTTAGE GABDENER. 



217 



than pots and take up less room. The varieties we grow here 

 are Altemantbera magnifioa, A. amabilis, A. paroDychioides, 

 A. latifolia, and A. amctna. The last-named I find requires a 

 Jittle special treatment. It is necessary to have good plants of 

 it to plant oat, also to plant them thickly, for when once the 

 plants assume their deep colour in the leaves the growth is 

 very slow; it is likewise best to have some store plants to place 

 in heat to propagate from. They will grow luxuriantly and 

 the leaves will be almost green, but I find the cuttings give 

 far more satisfaction from these than from the high-coloured 

 ontdoor plants. 



All the Alternantheras are strictly speaking stove plants, and 

 the reason of the failures we often hear of in winter is through 

 the plants being eubjected to a temperature far too low. In a 

 temperature ranging from 60° to 70° they seem at home and 

 comfortable.— J. Andebson, Hill Grove. 



BEES IN FBDIT CULTURE. 



The last (third) report of the Vermont Board of Agricnltnre> 

 Manufactures, and Mining, contains a paper by James F- 

 Crane of Bridgeport, on the relation of bees to fruit culture > 

 in which the importance of the presence of bees as agents o^ 

 fertilisation in the period of bloom is shown by numerous 

 examples. The first of these runs as follows : — " In 1774, 

 Count Anthony, in Bavaria, President of the Academy of 

 Science at Munich, proved by official family records that a 

 century earlier, when bees were kept by every tenant on the 

 estate, fruit was abundant, whereas then, when only seven 

 kept bees, and none of these kept more than three colonies, 

 fruit was scarcer than ever among his tenantry." The count's 

 conclusion as to cause may or may not have been right ; but 

 it raises the practical question whether there is not also a 

 relative decline in beekeeping in the United States as com- 

 pared with the great increase in fruitgrowing and attempts at 

 fruit-growing. There has been, we think, a marked decline in 

 the " setting " of fruit, which all have attributed to weakened 

 trees, cold rains, &c. ; but it is worth considering whether the 

 lack of the " little busy bee " is not also a cause of barrenness. 



Our only way of ascertaining the relative progress of fruit 

 culture and bee culture is by reference to the census, and that 

 gives us the following figures : — 



Val. Orchard 'Wax. Honey. 



Products. IbB. IbB. 



1840 .. 8126,766 .... 29,173 



1860 .. 446.049 



1880 .. 1,126,128 66,730 .... 1,846,803 



1870 .. 8,671,789 .... 46,262 .... 1,547,178 



This would indicate a much smaller increase of bees than of 

 fruit trees and Vines. In thirty years the value of orchard 

 fruit has increased thirtyfold, while the products of bees have 

 hardly doubled. Each bee may be said to have fifteen times 

 as many fruit blossoms to visit as the old-faehioned hummers 

 of 1840 ; and the fertilisation may be done with corresponding 

 imperfection, especially in a time of cold rains with little 

 sunshine. 



Again, it is to be considered that cold winters destroy bees 

 as well as injure fruit trees, and that consequently, in the 

 years following a winter of intense cold, there are a lees num- 

 ber of bees to act as conveyers of pollen from flower to flower 

 as well as, it may be, a greater need of fertilisation in enfeebled 

 blossoms. — {Prairie Farmer.) 



MYOSOTIS DISSITIFLORA. 



Mccn praise has been justly bestowed on this very beautiful 

 spring fiower. A bed of it is indeed charming, and its utility 

 for indoor decoration is highly valued by all who have grown 

 it for this purpose. Your correspondent on page 34 has not 

 in the least exaggerated its merits ; but I now write to eay 

 that I have succeeded in raising from Myosotis dissitiflora a 

 seedling far exceeding its parent in beauty. The flowers are 

 larger, many of them being more than half an inch in diameter. 

 The segments are broader, giving the flowers a very compact and 

 rounded appearance, while the colour is quite equal to that of 

 its parent. I found my first plant last spring in a bed of 

 M. dissitiflora. I immediately raised the plant, and by the 

 month of October it had grown IJ foot across, having blossomed 

 and seeded freely. I have now some portions of the plant in 

 pots flowering freely in a cool orchard houte. The seedlings of 

 the above plant are also flowering, the flowers of these being 

 somewhat larger than those of the parent plant, which I 

 attiibate to the greater vigour of the seedlings. The planta 



are grown in loam and leaf soil without any manure whatever. 

 I send herewith a specimen for your inspection. The original 

 plants of Myosotis dissitiflora from which the seed of this 

 variety was saved were grown in company with others of 

 M. grandiflora in the vicinity of an apiary. — W. Gkovbs, 

 Shortlands, Kent. 



[The flowers are fully as large as represented by our corre- 

 spondent ; it is a promising variety of a popular fiower. — Eds-I 



PEACH FORCING.— No. 8. 



Thinning.— No other fruit exhibits in so marked a degree 

 the eflect of overcropping as does the Peach. With a redun- 

 dancy of blossom the setting of the fruit is much less certain 

 than with a fair number of bold healthy blossoms, or if many 

 blossoms set few swell larger than peas before dropping, er 

 they collapse when commencing stoning, and while, if too 

 many remain for ripening, the fruit is small, having little flesh, 

 not much juice, and next to no flavour. 



The effect of overcropping is not, unfortunately, confined to 

 the present crop, but its direful influence is felt in the next 

 season's result. A tree carrying a heavy crop makes very little- 

 growth, and BO much of it is appropriated to the maintenance 

 of the present crop that the growths for affording the crop of 

 the succeeding year are ill-nourished, and the buds do not 

 attain fall development, consequently many of the blossoms 

 are small and imperfect, dropping without first casting the 

 petals, which is not the case with perfect flowers. 



Judicious and early thinning can hardly be too strongly in- 

 sisted on. It is very pleasing to see a tree studded with young 

 swelling fruit, but it does not always occur to the observer that 

 if two fruits are left where only one ought to be is diminishing 

 the size and quality of the latter by half. Some have so great 

 a dread of the fruit being cast at stoning time that they leave 

 two fruits where they only intend to allow one to ripen, re- 

 sulting not unfrequently in both dropping, and just as fre- 

 quently in both remaining. The changes are not on that 

 account equal, for most fruits pass the stoning safely when the 

 crop is thin, therefore with a fair crop we may safely conclude 

 that we shall have no difiiculty in eiiecting their stoning, and 

 I should like to know if we allow but one fruit in place of two 

 to grow until stoning if that fruit will not be much larger at 

 stoning and have a better chance of being finer than had we 

 allowed two to remain ? 



After the fruit is the size of horse beans thinning should 

 commence. The trees being furnished with shoots upon the 

 branches a foot apart we may safely reduce the number of fruits 

 to two on each branchlet, and even so early we must see to the 

 position of those retained with regard to their having room for 

 attaining their ripened proportions without coming into con- 

 tact with the trellis or branches adjoining, and if possible have 

 the fruit so disposed that it be equally exposed to light on all 

 sides. When the fruit is the size of a small walnut we may 

 take off the smallest, ill-shaped, and badly disposed of the two 

 fruits left upon each shoot for stoning and ripening. What if 

 a few are lost in stoning; those remaining will be all the finer, 

 and the certainty of future crops be better insured. 



No Peach of the large kinds, as Noblesse, Grosse Mignoniie, 

 &a., ought to have less than 1 square foot of surface — that is, 

 1 square foot of supporting foliage. It is not always practi- 

 cable to have the fruit just where it is wanted ; it willsuflioe if 

 one fruit be taken for every foot of trellis occupied, and if more 

 fruit must be left upon a part of the tree to make up a defi- 

 ciency in another it is desirable to apportion the extra fruit to 

 a vigorous part of the tree ; or in case of there being much 

 fruit where the growths are weak, rather than weaken it still 

 more by allowing a superfluity to make up the deficiency of 

 other parts (and those frequently the strongest), thin the fruit 

 to a foot distance apart, and let the other parts take care of 

 themselves. The medium-sized Peaches may be left inches 

 apart. Some may consider the distance too great; my ex- 

 perience points the contrary. If there be one thing more than 

 another to be guarded against in gardening it is that of too 

 great expectancy in the capability of trees for producing fruit. 

 Prodigious crops generally mean inferior quality. 



Nectarines are small as compared with Peaches, and usually 

 set more freely, nor are they thinned to anything like the same 

 extent as Peaches. Such Nectarines as Albert Victor require 

 to be thinned the same distance as the large-sized Peaches, aneJ 

 such sorts as Elruge ought to have 1 square foot of surface ; 

 none, however small, should have less than 81 square inches 

 of supporting foliage surface, the hnit being 9 inches apart. 



