424 Select Plants for Industrial Culture and 



a palatable and wholesome sort of cream for tea or coffee is obtained 

 at any moment. Baked remnants of Almonds, left after they have 

 been used at the oil-mill afford one of the best kinds of food for 

 diabetic sufferers. There exist hard- and soft-shelled varieties of 

 botli the sweet and bitter almond. The Almond-tree is subject to 

 two fungus-diseases, caused by Cercospora circumscissa and Spori- 

 desmium Amygdalearum [Frank]. In Victoria it often suffers 

 greatly from the attacks of the Red Spider ; Mr. C. French recom- 

 mends spraying with a strong kerosene-emulsion after pruning, and 

 again with a weaker solution when the leaves begin to appear. 

 Almonds can even be grown on sea-shores. The tree bears still the 

 climate of Christiania in Norway [Professor Schuebeler], and it has 

 been successfully reared by the Moravian missionaries iu the most 

 arid regions of Central Australia, but it does not thrive so well there 

 as the Peach-tree. The crystalline amygdalin can best be prepared 

 from bitter almonds, through removing the oil by pressure, then sub- 

 jecting them to distillation with alcohol, and finally precipitating 

 with ether. The volatile bitter almond-oil a very dangerous liquid 

 is obtained by aqueous distillation. Dissolved in alcohol it forms 

 the essence of almonds. This can also be prepared from peach- 

 kernels. The almond-tree is one of the aptest, to be chosen as a 

 standard ot comparison with other kinds of trees (as well as other 

 plants) for records of synchronous flowering time. It is the harbin- 

 ger of spring among ordinary orchard- trees. The flowers afford to 

 bees, early in the season, nectar and pollen. With the European 

 Walnut-tree and the Olive-tree cultivated on a vast commercial scale 

 at Santa-Barbara by Captain Ellwood Cooper, the President of the 

 State-board for horticulture in California. France produced in 1890 

 about 800,000 bushels of dried almonds, (Sahut, from "Bulletin du 

 Ministere de 1' Agriculture"), import of almonds into Victoria during 

 1887, 140,591 Ibs., valued at 5,942. Britain imported 130,000 cwt. 

 valued at 412,000, in 1889. 



Prunus Armeniaca, Linne.* (Armeniaca vulgaris, Lamarck.) 



The Apricot-tree. China, as already indicated by Roxburgh, riot 

 indigenous in Armenia. Cultivated up to 10,000 feet in the Hima- 

 layas. Professor C. Koch points to the alliance of this tree to P. 

 Sibirica (Linne), and he considers P. dasycarpa (Ehrhart) to be a 

 hybrid between the apricot- and plum-tree. A variety of apricot 

 occurs with a sweet kernel. Cold-pressed apricot-seeds yield an oil 

 much like that of almonds. Muspratt found as much as 24 per cent, 

 tannin in the bark. With the almond-, quince- and fig-tree one of 

 the earliest of orchard-trees to come into spring-foliage. The " Flor 

 Ziram" is a black-fruited apricot from Persia. It came only recently 

 into European culture ; it fruits at an early age and bears consider- 

 able frost [St. Olbrich and V. H. Brown in Moeller's "Gaertner- 



, Zeitung," 1895]. The Chinese P. Mume (Sieb. and Zucc.), is a pecu- 

 liar apricot-tree. Dried apricots and peaches (the stone removed) 



