FLORAL NOVELTIES. 355 
sideration where every day is precious.” These words I can endorse, 
and I wonder why people will give place to faded out, degenerate 
petunias, when a little outlay will give a new and brilliantly colored 
stock. 
Time hardly allows me to speak of the new zinnias (those who 
have visited Como Park within the past two or three years have seen 
the wonderfully pretty changes in this old fashioned flower), of 
Allen’s Defiance and the Machet varieties of Mignonette with their 
numerous spikes of fragrant fiowers, of the the new varieties of 
verbenas, hollyhocks, phlox and numberless other well known 
garden flowers. Referring again to Como Park, I saw there last 
summer a bed of verbena venosa—something new to me—having a 
pretty violet or purple blossom, somewhat smaller than anordinary 
verbena blossom, but more convex. It is very pretty and de- 
serves a place in our gardens. 
While it is undoubtedly true that many of the so-called novelties 
are only old things under a new name, and also that many come 
from tropical countries and are not suited to the short summers of 
our northland, it is also true that very many most desirable things 
come to us from time to time through the florist’s and seedmen’s 
novelty introductions. There is this one characteristic of them all, 
however, they come high. If you must have them the first year they 
are advertised, well and good, but if you can have patience to wait a 
season or so, you will not only avoid unsatisfactory things, as time 
will witness the survival of the fittest only, but in a season or so 
they may be bought at more reasonable prices. Perhaps the same 
laconic advice that droll Sydney Smith gave to a young man who 
was contemplating marriage may apply to the would-be purchaser 
of novelties. It was simply, ‘don’t’. Wait buta year or two and 
learn from the experience of others, or be able to make your own ex- 
periments at much less cost. 
OWATONNA TREE STATION. 
E. H. S. DARTT, SUPT. 
Secretary Latham:—I think itis wise for our society to allot certain 
lines of work to our different experiment stations. In this view I 
suppose this should be known as the girdling station. I have no 
doubt that more girdling has been done here in the last three years 
than in all the world besides and beneficial results are becoming 
very conspicuous in the large number of new seedling apples of 
great promise that are being brought into bearing, and the more 
thorough test of old varieties. Previous to girdling we had no way 
to hurry a variety into bearing except by our laborious method of 
grafting, which involves the same principle as girdling, namely: 
interfering with the flow of sap. 
Formerly we supposed that the early testing of the size, color and 
quality of fruit were the only advantages gained by girdling, but 
now we know that while we are inflicting injury to cause early bear- 
ing we are testing the innate hardiness of the tree. Just as adversity » 
tries men’s souls so girdling causes the premature development of 
