THE GENESEE FARMER. 



373 



HORTICULTURAL ITEMS FROM FOREIGN 

 JOURNALS. 



Dr. W. J. Berkeley, of the Gardeners' Chronicle, 

 disposes of the "jute question," very completely, 

 and offers the best reasons to prove its unfitness 

 as a substitute for cotton. 



It is proposed to cultivate the Japanese wax 

 tree in France. The vegetable wax is one of the 

 principal articles of export from that country. It 

 is obtained from the seeds. 



There are three International Horticultural 

 Exhibitions held in Europe this season— one in 

 Belgium, one in Vienna, and one in London. 

 Some fruit, &c, is expected from Canada. 



The London Florist has a beautiful colored plate 

 of two new Rhodanthes (E. maculata and R. atro- 

 sanguinea) which it says are " among the finest of 

 the additions which have lately been made to the 

 class of half hardy aunuals." 



The Journal of Horticulture commends the 

 American Arbor Vitro as a hedge plant, except on 

 -wet clayey soils. There are hedges of it in Kew 

 gardens from five to ten feet high, and not more 

 than six inches through at the bottom, and barely 

 an inch thick at the top. It says truly that no 

 plant is more pliable, or bears pruning or clipping 

 better. 



Dr. Frederic W. Morris, resident physician of 

 the Halifax Visiting Dispensary, N. S., has written 

 a letter to the American Medical Times, in which 

 he states that the Saracenia purpurea or Indian cup, 

 a native plant of Nova Scotia, is a remedy for small 

 pox in all its forms, in 12 hours after the patient 

 has taken the medicine. Its taste is so mild that 

 it can be mingled with coffee or tea without affect- 

 ing the flavor. If \aecine or varirious matter is 

 washed with the infusion of the Saracenia, they 

 are deprived of their contagious properties. 



At Kew, in the British National Gardens, they 

 have had during the past year, various flowers ar- 

 ranged in the ribbon style, that is, in stripes of 

 different colors, 50 feet in length by seven in breadth. 

 The effect of this arrangement was exceedingly 

 brilliant, and has been very happily turned to a 

 practical account, inasmuch as all the great centers 

 to English industry have sent agents and artists to 

 copy it, as designs and patterns for the goods they 

 manufacture. One lady ordered to be manufactured 

 for her fifty yards of stair carpeting, and a drawing 

 room carpet, the borders and cantres of which are 

 to be an exact imitation of the borders and centers 

 of the flower-bed in question. 



Truffles were exhibited by Mr. J. Wainwright, 

 from Kettering, at the last Exhibition of the Royal 

 Horticultural Society. 



A correspondent of the Gardener's Chronicle, 

 in a very long and minute account of the Great 

 Show of the Royal Horticultural Society, says that 

 the most remarkable feature of the exhibition was 

 the display of gourds. Several persons had over a 

 hundred in their collections, and two hundred va- 

 rieties were sent from the Society's gardens. The 

 largest of the mammoth variety weighed 103$ 

 pounds, and two others weighed 100 pounds each. 

 One called the Snake, was eight feet long, and there 

 was every size down to the tiniest, which was 

 scarcely as large as a good sized gooseberry. . One 

 variety called the Marmalade, was shown with a 

 pot of marmalade made from the gourd, but the 

 report does not say whether the marmalade was 

 eatable. 



SPARE THE INSECT EATERS. 

 At a recent meeting of the Now York Farmers' 

 Club, Solon Robinson justly remarked : 



"We need more information about insect- 

 destroyers. We have made war upon birds, for 

 some fancied injury they do to the crops, without 

 considering that they are natural enemies of in- 

 sects; we '"hate the sight of toads, and kick them 

 out of our path, without stopping to consider how 

 many insects hurtful to the garden these toads have 

 destroyed; we have a deadly enmity against 

 skunks, and teach the boys and dogs to catch and 

 kill, without stopping to consider that every skunk 

 upon a man's farm is worth, annually, the interest 

 of a hundred dollars. It is true, a skunk will eat 

 an egg or chicken. A mink or a weasel will do 

 the same. What else will they do ? Let us think. 

 They certainly do not live upon eggs and chickens. 

 No "farm affords enough chickens and eggs to 

 furnish food for a colony of skunks, but it does 

 furnish bugs, worms, rats, mice and moles, which 

 the skunks industriously pursue. The weasel is a 

 most efficent ratter. I am not sure about him as 

 an insect-destroyer, as I am of the mink. Insects 

 are his natural food. I have heard of one man in 

 Central New York, who has a pen of domestic 

 minks, which he undertook to breed for their far, 

 which he finds a profitable undertaking, but he has 

 round another thing connected with this new kind 

 of farm stock still more profitable. By keeping 

 his minks and bees close together, he has found 

 that they catch, and eat every miller that comes 

 near them. If a grasshopper sails into the pen. he 

 is snapped up before he touches the ground. Boys 

 are much amused in feeding grasshoppers to the 

 minks, which are as easily penned as rabits and 

 much more useful, as they breed rapidly and the 

 pelts are valuable. Let us study natural history a 

 little more. Let us learn, as we can, that in de- 

 stroying some animals considered noxious, we have 

 increased others that are really so. Let us learn 

 that skunks, weasels, minks, toads, crows, robins, 

 sparrows, swallows, martins, et genus omne, are not 

 the farmers' worst enemies— they are all insect- 

 i eaters and vermin-destroyers." 



