98 



CANADIAN HORTICULTUKIIST. 



pleasant ; separates from the stone, 

 which is flat, very long, and a little 

 curved. Good to very good. 10th of 

 September. 



There is a variety grown about 

 Collingwood, which is known as Baker's 

 German Prune, and is highly valued. 

 At our meeting there, Mr. Lewis spoke 

 of it as follows : — 



I believe the Baker's German Prune 

 is the coming plum in this country, 

 and the one most desirable for planting 

 on a large scale, with a view to ship- 

 ping. Most of our varieties you have 

 to pick and market the whole business 

 in a few days, or you will have them 

 rotting on your hands ; but Baker's 

 German Prune, when tit to market, 

 can be allowed to hang on the tree and 

 await the market for three or four 



weeks without injury to the plum itself. 

 Another thing ; when you are over- 

 loaded, and have a large quantity of 

 plums that you cannot market any- 

 where else, it is a freestone, and can 

 be easily pitted, and when evaporated, 

 or dried in any other way, is a good 

 salable article, and desirable for that 

 reason. Another point in its favor, 

 in my experience, is, that they bear 

 every year. With me, they have borne 

 every year for six years, and the pres- 

 ent is the first year in which there has 

 been a partial failure, and that I attri- 

 bute to the heavy crop of last year. 

 There is a lady at Nottawasaga, named 

 Mrs. Rose, who has marketed from a 

 few trees a large quantity of these 

 German Prunes yearly in this place, 

 and who, I venture to say, has netted 

 more money from her orchard of plums, 

 in proportion to its size, than any 

 other person in this country. 



A GREAT BOTANIST. 



Prof. Asa Gray, of Harvard College. 



LIKE the shock which is caused by 

 the death of some dear friend, 

 was the sensation experienced by many 

 of us on seeing the announcement of 

 the death of Prof. Asa Gray, the most 

 widely known and esteemed of all 

 modern botanists. How many of us 

 conceived our first love for Botanical 

 Science through the study of his 

 " Lessons in Botany," and in later 

 years find in his " Structural and 

 Systematic Botany," a rich treasury of 

 information. And because the study 

 of Botany has contributed so much to 

 the progress of Horticulture, revealing 

 to us the nature of plant life, and thus 

 placing us in a position to the better 

 care for the useful, and to more effect- 

 ually destroy the injurious, such as the 

 apple scab, the plum knot, the grape 



mildew, etc., therefore we consider it 

 quite within our province to pay a last 

 tribute to one so noted in this depart- 

 ment. His death occurred at his home 

 in Cambridge, Mass., on the 31st of 

 January last, of paralysis. He was 

 the son of a farmer, and was born in 

 Oneida County, N.Y., in 1810. While 

 still a medical student at Fairfield, he 

 became acquainted by correspondence 

 with Dr. John Torrey, Professor of 

 Chemistry in the College of Physicians 

 and Surgeons in New York City, who 

 was also a writer on Botanical Science. 

 Through this acquaintance it was that 

 Prof. Gray received much encourage 

 ment in a line which soon became 

 his chief and special study, and which 

 has opened up for him so brilliant a 

 career. For thirty years, from 1842 



