JANUARY 29, 1896.] 



Garden and Forest. 



43 



a remarkably straight and symmetrical form, has always 

 met my warmest admiration. 



The Hackberry is indigenous over as great a longitude 

 as almost any western tree, yet it has very seldom been 

 planted. I know of no plantings from which any judgment 

 of its value might be formed. 



University of Vermont. t '. A. WiUlgll. 



Water against Frost. 



OF course there is no way of protecting plants or crops 

 from injury when the temperature falls several de- 

 grees below the freezing point, but for light frosts the practice 

 of burning any material that will form a dense smoke has 

 been found useful in vineyards by forming a canopy over 

 the field, which prevents the escape of heat by radiation 

 from the ground. Protection by water is, however, more 

 practicable than protection by fire, and we condense the 

 following notes from an article by Professor Kedzie, of the 

 Michigan Agricultural College, which appeared originally 

 in the bulletin of the Michigan State Weather Service : 



The vapor of water in the atmosphere may control excessive 

 changes of atmosphere in two ways: (1) By condensing into 

 water, it liberates enough heat to raise through one degree the 

 temperature of a thousand times the amount of water con- 

 densed, and hence it arrests the fall of temperature by giving 

 out heat. In this way the beneficent dew becomes a warming- 

 pan for chilling fields. (2) Vapor of water in the air as well as 

 clouds prevents the escape of heat by radiation from the soil, 

 and the consequent cooling of the air by night. But for the 

 vapor of water in the air we should have a frost every night in 

 the year. Professor Tyndall says that the removal for one 

 summer-night of the aqueous vapor which covers England 

 would bring about the destruction of every plant which a 

 freezing temperature could kill. 



If the farmer is forewarned of the approach of a slow frost 

 he may do something to avert die calamity. The old plan of 

 a tub of water under a fruit-tree with a rope reaching from the 

 tub into the branches may serve a useful purpose. The 

 evaporation from the water in the tub and of the water carried 

 up through the rope may spread a water blanket about the 

 tree. Of course, such an appliance, while of some use in a 

 small garden, would be futile on the farm. The shallow cul- 

 tivation of hoed crops draws by capillary action upon the 

 reservoir of water in the subsoil and keeps the surface soil in 

 a condition which prevents the rapid distribution of soil 

 moisture, and in this way saves the fields from frost by a cov- 

 ering as impalpable as air, but as effectual as eider-down. One 

 night the Indian Corn in Michigan was almost entirely killed 

 by frost, but a few fields on the banks of rivers and the borders 

 of lakes were spared. In these fields the Corn-stalks next 

 morning were dripping with dew. There had been but one- 

 eighth of an inch of rain in two weeks, but evaporation from 

 river or lake had moistened the air and staved off the frost. 

 If the air over the whole state had been as moist as it was 

 along the rivers a heavy dew would have fallen everywhere, 

 and the corn crops would have been saved. Beds of Coleus 

 and other tender plants which have been thoroughly wet down 

 with cold water in the evening have escaped frost in October 

 when other plants near by were killed, and grapes have been 

 saved by drenching the vines with water. Strawberries and 

 Grapes in blossom may be saved in the same way if a good 

 supplyof water and a sprinkling hose are available when there 

 is threatening frost. Even after severe frosts grapes have 

 been saved by thorough drenching with water early in the 

 morning. 



Mr. E. P. Powell says that the best preventive against frost 

 is a thorough spraying with water during the evening and night. 

 By this means the danger from a fall of two or three degrees 

 can be averted, and this will often save a whole crop. 



Foreign Correspondence. 



The English Fruit Market. 



ONE of the leading salesmen of Covent Garden Market, 

 Mr. G. Munro, lately dealt with the subject of the 

 fruit-supply of England in a paper read before the Horti- 

 cultural Club. It is difficult to arrive at even an approxi- 

 mate estimate of the annual consumption of fruit in the 

 United Kingdom, but as the bulk of what is placed upon the 

 market passes through Covent Garden, Mr. Munro is in a 



position to gauge the supply with some approach to accu- 

 racy. 



There are between seven and eight hundred porters 

 employed day and night in Covent Garden Market in un- 

 loading and delivering English produce, and one hundred 

 and fifty on the average employed on the foreign supply. 

 Many English growers, and not a few among the foreigners 

 who send fruit to England, find it advantageous to consign 

 their produce direct to large centres all over the country, 

 such as Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Mr. 

 Munro stated that the English are becoming much larger 

 fruit-eaters than they were, the demand having increased 

 to such an extent that the principal growers find it more 

 profitable to become specialists. "The grower who sends 

 the largest quantity of a good article regularly, makes a 

 large connection for his goods, large consignments often 

 selling to better advantage than small ones, though the 

 quality of the latter may be equally good." 



Where the foreign grower competes with the English in 

 supplying the same kind of fruit he generally succeeds for 

 the following reasons : 1. He packs his fruit carefully and 

 honestly and never fails to grade it. 2. He grows only 

 sorts that are sure to sell, and in such quantities that he can 

 keep up a regular and continuous supply. This is shown 

 in regard to apples, which are rarely a profitable crop with 

 the English grower, notwithstanding the suitability of our 

 climate for this fruit and the fact that English apples are far 

 better in quality than any foreign. " I was in a large 

 wholesale store in Manchester this autumn where they had 

 English and American apples side by side, and on asking 

 the quantity of each sold I was informed about three thou- 

 sand bushels of American against one hundred bushels of 

 English, and simply because the packing of the latter could 

 not be depended upon." 



Apples are imported into England nearly all the year 

 round, commencing in April from Tasmania, followed by 

 supplies from France, Italy and Germany, and in winter 

 from the United States, Canada and Nova Scotia. American 

 apples are better in flavor than those from Tasmania, and, 

 as a rule, they sell at prices which would scarcely remune- 

 rate the English grower. Mr. Munro does not deal with 

 the question of cost in producing, nor yet with the relative 

 uncertainty of the seasons in England. 



Pears are imported chiefly from France, Italy and Cali- 

 fornia, the latter arriving in excellent condition and being 

 of good flavor. About a thousand cases weekly of Cali- 

 fornian pears, chiefly Easter Beurre, arrive in December, 

 and about six times that quantity in September. Straw- 

 berries, currants and cherries are imported in enormous 

 qualities from France and Spain. Plums, such as the 

 Green Gage, are received from Italy, France and Germany 

 for a period extending over about three months before the 

 English crop is ripe, as many as ten to fifteen thousand 

 flats being often sold daily in Covent Garden alone. Thus, 

 the English consumer gets a surfeit of these fruits by the 

 time the home supply is ready. 



Pineapples are received in shiploads from the Azores, 

 and although the prices they realize are much lower than 

 they used to be, the supply is steadily increasing. The 

 cost of producing pineapples in England is so great that 

 an English-grown pineapple is a novelty in the market. 

 Pineapples are also received from Africa and Florida. 



Bananas are sold in increasing quantities annually, the 

 quality of the fruit being superior to what it was before, 

 now that choice sorts are grown and greater care taken 

 in the transport. There are much better sorts known even 

 than the best of those grown by exporters now, and if only 

 growers will take trouble to secure these the demand for 

 this most delectable of fruits will increase greatly. The 

 ordinary banana of the fruiterer is mawkish and poor in 

 flavor compared with the fruit of such varieties as Ran- 

 Kela, Champa and Pisantr Rastalei. Mr. Munro stated that 

 the bananas received in London and Liverpool in Novem- 

 ber last, from the Canary Islands alone, numbered nearly 

 thirty-seven thousand bunches. 



