THE CANADIAN HORTICULTUKIST. 



233 



BLOOD-LEAVVED JAPAN MAPLE. 



varieties. Mi-. Meehan says, "There 

 is no prettier sight than a large bed 

 made up of the different varieties of 

 Japanese maples. They will set off and 

 contrast with surrounding plants better 

 than any other class grown, having at 

 the same time richness possessed by no 

 other tree. Several large plants of the 

 Blood-leaved Japan Maple, growing 

 around Germantown attract wide atten- 

 tion, being the admiration of all who 

 see them." 



TREES AND RAINFALL, 

 Scarcity of rain, which was the cause 

 of so much loss to the agriculturists in 

 some parts of the North-West last year, 

 is a phenomenon not peculiar to Can- 

 ada. President Adams, of Cornell 

 University, in a recent address, points 

 out that the removal of the ti-ees, cen- 

 turies ago, reduced the fields about the 

 Mediterranean to sterile deserts. The 

 same process is going on across the line. 

 President Adams says : "The trees ai'e 

 being swept away, and what is the 



result? The rainfall has been dimin- 

 ished, the showers which heaven may 

 still bounteously fui-nish, instead of 

 being welcomed by the soft verdure of 

 forests and cultivated fields and lo%-ingly 

 kept in the soil for the good of all 

 animal and plant life, is repelled by 

 parched hillsides, so that it shoots off in 

 angry torrents and is soon once more in 

 the lakes and the great rivers and the 

 oceans beyond. Thus, by a perfectly 

 explicable method our climate is under- 

 going a certain change, and it is the 

 change which, in some of the regions of 

 the Old World, has caused the sand to 

 drift over regions that were once the 

 homes of a prosperous peo])le." He 

 adds : " And yet there is no tendency 

 of nature that is more amenable to the 

 influence of man's appreciative intelli- 

 gence. Everybody remembers Emer- 

 son's allusion to the ability of the 

 English, by the planting of trees on the 

 borders of Egypt, to bring rain again 

 after a drouth of 3,000 years. We 

 have been doing the same thing in the 

 West ; for they tell us that the plant- 

 ing of trees and cornfields in Kansas 

 and Nebraska, up to the very frontier, 

 has already pushed the rain line further 

 West by moi'e than a hundred miles." 

 — Mail. 



Co-operative fruit and vegetable 

 evaporating and preserving establish- 

 ments are bound to be a feature of our 

 farming in the future. This industry 

 is particularly adapted to sections not 

 convenient to good markets. There is 

 money in it for the ])roprietors of evap- 

 orators, and there must l)e still more 

 for the patrons when the business is 

 run on the co-operative system. Read 

 ail that is said upon this subject and 

 act upon it. The co-0]>erative fruit and 

 vegetable utilizing factory is a very 

 simple affair compared to the creamery 

 system, which has proved so successful. 

 —F. & 11. 



