fHK CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST. 



177 



THE ABELE OR SILVER POPLAR— 

 NOT THE SILVER MAPLE. 



Dear Sir, — As requested, I forward 

 a few leaves of the silver maple grown 

 here. The first I knew planted was in 

 front of the central school, it made 

 enormous growth, a great spreading 

 tree, and on account of the silvery ap- 

 pearance of the under side of the leaves 

 and the glossy surface of the upper side 

 it became a great favourite, but after a 

 few yeai-s people found it a great 

 nuisance, because it suckered so much. 

 Those at the school are all destroyed. 

 There was several trees of it also planted 

 on the court house square (so-called), 

 but I see they are trying to get rid of 

 them also. We have the silver poplar 

 as well. 



W. Hick. 



Goderich, 8th July, 1886. 



We are under obligations to Mr. 

 Hick for his kindness in complying 

 with our request that he would send us 

 some leaves of the tree known in his 

 vicinity as the silver maple, but which 

 had the bad habit of throwing up suck- 

 ers from the roots. It is very much to 

 be regi-etted that this poplar, for it is 

 one of the varieties of the poplar known 

 as Abele and Silver Poplar, should 

 have come to be called silver maple. 

 It is not a maple at all, of any variety. 

 The silver maple, known to botanists 

 as Acer das/ycarpum, is a very fast 

 growing tree, much used for road-side 

 I)lanting, the leaves of which are blight 

 green above and silvery white beneath, 

 but not coated with such a thick cover- 

 ing of white, downy material, too heavy 

 to be called pubescence, as is found in j 

 this poplar. They are also more deeply i 

 cut and sharper pointed than those of \ 

 the poj)lar. We were greatly surprised, , 



on reading Mr. Hick's previous com-- 

 munication, that the silver maple should 

 be accused of throwing up suckers, and 

 felt confident that there must be some 

 mistake. We trust that he will do 

 what he can to correct the impression 

 that seems to have got abroad that this, 

 poplar is the silver maple. It is toa 

 bad that so useful a tree, one so hardy, 

 so vigorous, so easily transplanted, so 

 free from the fault of suckering, should 

 have been confounded with the silver 

 poplar. 



The silver poplar wdiich Mr. Hick 

 mentions above as being also grown in 

 his section, is doubtless another variety 

 of silver poplar, possibly that knowiL 

 to botanists as F. canescens. 



BEES AS HELPERS IN THE ORCHARD. 



I would like to hear or read a dis- 

 cussion on the subject of whether an 

 apiary, kept in the immediate vicinity 

 of an orchard or fruit garden, produced 

 any perceptible difference in the yield 

 of fruit, in comparison to any other 

 orchard or fruit garden not being in 

 close proximity to where honey bees 

 are kept, but having other equal natu- 

 ral advantages. 



This question may appear to be ridi- 

 culous on the face of it, but I should 

 think that it is important to ascertain. 



We have much yet to learn of the 

 secrets of nature, and what we have 

 attained to is like a drop in the bucket, 

 or the first step in the ladder. 



The relations of the various king- 

 doms of nature to each other are but 

 imperfectly understood. Goethe, the 

 German poet, relative to the dawn of 

 light entering into the human mind, 

 illustmtes it by the figure of a young 

 man, with open book in hand, exclaims, 

 as he sees the rising sun j)artially 



