50 Notes and Gleanings. 



Is THE Potato Disease Hereditary? — I planted, in 1865, some pink 

 kidney potatoes of a late-keeping kind, called here Yorkshire Kidneys. They 

 produce much haum, and are a little given to disease. The crop was diseased. 

 I selected from the diseased potatoes twelve of the very worst, — so bad, so 

 rotten, as scarcely to have any vitality, — and planted them, in March, 1866, on 

 a piece of poor ground without any manure. The result was seventy-one pota- 

 toes quite sound, and fifteen diseased. In 1867 I planted the diseased potatoes 

 and a few sound ones, sufficient to make a long row: the resuk was scarcely 

 any disease at all. In 1S68 I planted two rows, taking all the diseased and 

 small potatoes : the result was a good crop and no disease. 



To-day (April 21) I have looked over the potatoes left, about half a bushel, 

 and cannot find a trace of disease. — Cor. Jour. Hort. 



Fig Culture in France. — Figs and fig culture seem to be exciting more 

 attention in this country than formerly, and it is well that they do so, for no fruit 

 can be more wholesome or delicious than these, when fully grown and well 

 ripened. The pot cultivation of the fig tree, as practised so successfully at 

 Chiswick, has already occupied some space in the " Florist and Pomologist," and 

 we now propose to glean from Mr. Robinson's recent book * some particulars 

 of fig culture as carried on in France, according to the system of M. Dubreuil. 



In our own southern counties, e. g., at Arundel, Shoreham, and the Isle of 

 Thanet, the fig succeeds well as a standard tree. It is not, however, in this 

 form that it is most successfully treated around Paris, for the frosts are severe 

 enough to leave it Httle chance of escaping destruction. The plan adopted to 

 protect the trees and fruit is to collect the branches into three or four bundles, 

 and in this form to bury them in a trench beneath little banks or ridges of earth, 

 the crown of the root being also protected in a similar way. Such a plan might 

 very well be adopted in favorable localities in England. The plan admits of 

 being carried out on sloping ground, with a very slight modification ; and in this 

 way our railway embankments having a southern exposure might, in many 

 instances, be utilized. 



In our climate, as in that of France, the fig, as is well known, produces at the 

 latter part of the season incipient fruit, which form the first crop of the following 

 year ; vvliile in spring it produces other fruit, which get matured by the end of 

 summer in very favorable seasons only. The former, called the first crop, or, by 

 the VKnc\\,JigHes /leiirs, are the most important, and it is these which the French 

 system of culture is intended to secure ; while the others, the second crop, or 

 fifties d'auiomne., are seldom of much importance, and are hence, for the most 

 part, unheeded. 



The fig trees are planted at five or si.x yards apart, in lines four yards apart, 

 the holes being of considerable size, and filled with well-manured soil. Layers 

 are used, and the roots are planted rather deep, the surface of the hole being at 



* The Parks, Gardens, and Promenades of Paris, Described and Considered in Relation to the JVants 

 0/ our own Cities, and of Public and Private Gardens. ]3y W. Robinson, F. L. S. With upwards of 

 Four Hundred Illustrations. London: Murray. A comprehensive and highly suggestive account of French 

 gardening, especially in respect to those features which bear more intimately on our own practice. It 

 should occupy a place in every garden library. 



