February ig, 1896.] 



Garden and Forest. 



79 



brings valuable fertilizers to the surface as well as collects 

 nitrogen ; it checks the late growth of trees so that they will 

 ripen their wood, and in all these ways it is a useful crop for 

 orchards. A growth of Crimson Clover six inches high will 

 add nitrogen to the soil which would cost $16.00 in money. A 

 growth thirteen inches high will add $25.00 worth of the same 

 plant-food to an acre. Where this Clover fails the cause is 

 usually poor seed. 



IRRIGATION IN FRUIT CULTURE. 



Although the artificial application of water has been prac- 

 ticed for some time in our western states, it has not been con- 

 sidered heretofore essential to fruit culture in the east. But 

 Mr. Hale, in an interesting address, argued that an extra water- 

 supply would be necessary in the horticulture of the future in 

 the eastern states. The cultivation of fruits requires careful 

 labor ; much capital has been invested in plants and planta- 

 tions, with facilities for handling, and the grower ought to go 

 a step farther and insure his crop. Mr. Hale had lost half a 

 crop by drought many times. A neighbor of his had invested 

 $800 in a ram and reservoir, seventy feet above his fruit gar- 

 den, and had applied water at the rate of one inch a week for 

 three weeks, and thereby increased his product in quantity 150 

 per cent., while it was ot much better quality, so that while the 

 abundant berries on the irrigated land brought eleven cents a 

 basket, the smaller crop on the other land was bringing but 

 nine cents. The increased value of his fruit on three acres 

 paid in one year the cost of his plant. Another neighbor ran 

 a stream through open ditches and doubled his product on 

 an average of nine years, although there was only one severe 

 drought during the time. Last year was a dry one in Connec- 

 ticut, but on the first of August there came three inches of rain 

 at the home farm, with not a drop at the other orchard. The 

 result was that sixty per cent, of the fruit in the home orchard 

 was classed as extra, while only twenty per cent, in the other 

 orchard reached that grade. In the home orchard twenty- 

 eight per cent, only was in the second-best grade, while forty 

 per cent, was in the second grade in the dry orchard, the re- 

 mainder in both being of two lower grades. This one shower 

 made a gain in the home orchard of from $1,200 to $1,500. 

 Mr. Hale has planned to irrigate his farm by putting in a six- 

 inch pipe from a spring-fed reservoir on high ground and a 

 four-inch pipe farther down. The farm is like most of those 

 in the Connecticut valley, long and narrow, sloping back from 

 the river, and the pipe has been laid along the contours of the 

 highest ground, with a hydrant every two hundred feet. He 

 has not devised completely a scheme for distributing the water, 

 but he is sure this can easily be done, and he thinks there is 

 not one farm in ten where water cannot be secured for irriga- 

 tion at an expense which would be met by the increased 

 product. A man near Pittsfield, Massachusetts, buys water 

 from the city at ten cents a thousand gallons, and has put in a 

 pipe to distribute it. He has no doubt that it will pay a good 

 dividend on grass crops, and much more on fruit. It is just 

 possible that the fruit may be of lower quality, but that is by 

 no means certain, but certainly it would be larger, more beau- 

 tiful and more salable. Windmills are too uncertain, because 

 when water is wanted it is wanted badly. Steam power is used on 

 some farms near Boston, and Mr. Hale believes that if eastern 

 men who have put their money in western irrigation plants 

 had invested it at home it would have yielded a rich return. 



NEW STRAWBERRY CULTURE. 



Mr. L. J. Farmer explained the great change in the methods 

 of growing Strawberries during the last ten years. In fertilizers 

 we are now using large quantities of potash and phosphoric 

 acid and less nitrogen. In transportation we use light cheap 

 crates as gift packages. In the actual cultivation we have made 

 less progress, and there is still too much hand labor. The old 

 way was to set the plants early and cultivate all the season. 

 The new way is to take up the plants at the usual time, trench 

 them in and then transplant to the field about the first of June. 

 The trench is made deep by the plow and the plants are set 

 against the landside, twenty-four to the foot, and left until set 

 out. The rest of the soil is worked deep until planting-time, 

 so that the white grubs are turned up for the birds and the 

 weeds are killed. The plants are sprayed the first season, as 

 can easily be done in this close row, and should be done every 

 week. If planted in ground that has not been affected by old 

 beds they will need no further treatment. He wets the plants 

 before moving them ; takes abundant earth with the roots, and 

 they keep right on growing. In transplanting it is not neces- 

 sarv to pinch off the leaves, as the plants are like potted plants, 

 only better. In the field the rows are five feet apart and the 

 plants a foot apart in the row. If confined to one berry, he 

 would plant the Parker Earle. 



NUT CULTURE. 

 There is much encouragement to plant our native nuts and 

 some of the foreign ones. As a rule, our indigenous trees are 

 good bearers, and, in Mr. Van Deman's opinion, they produce 

 nuts of better quality than foreign ones. The Chestnut is receiv- 

 ing the most attention now, and there are a few well-marked 

 native varieties of value. Although they are smaller than the 

 European varieties, they are of better quality and very produc- 

 tive. The best are Delaney, Excelsior, Griffin, Hathaway, 

 Morrell and Otto. Rocky hillsides and other places unsuitable 

 for tillage can be used with profit for nut-trees, and they can 

 beset about buildings and in pastures. The European varie- 

 ties seem more profitable. It seems to be a rule that the more 

 pubescence the nut has the better its quality. European varie- 

 ties are more fuzzy than the Japanese, and less so than the 

 American sorts. The most prominent of these are the Para- 

 gon, Numbo, Ridgely and Hannum. Japanese Chestnut-trees 

 have a more dwarf habit, and the nut has a bitter skin. They 

 graft quite readily on American seedlings, and the best varie- 

 ties introduced are Alpha, Early Reliance, Grand and Superb. 

 Among the Hickories the best nut-tree is the Pecan, a native 

 of our southern states, and the Shell-bark Hickory, common 

 throughout the north-eastern states. A firm in Pennsylvania 

 ships more than twenty tons of hickory nuts every year. The nuts 

 should be planted in rough places four feet apart each way and 

 thinned as they grow. Seedlings are variable, and so they must 

 be grafted. The principal varieties are Hale's, a large thin- 

 shelled sort, Learning, Curtis, Elliott and Mulford. Among 

 the Walnuts, our native Butternuts may, perhaps, be improved, 

 but the so-called English Walnut is the best of the family, 

 although it is difficult to grow as far north as New York. There 

 is no doubt that nut-trees are hard to graft and to bud. Evapo- 

 ration should be prevented until the sap begins to flow. When 

 the sap starts the grafts should be put in underground. The 

 scions should be cut so as to have the pith all on one side, or, 

 if necessary to graft above the ground, they should be covered 

 well to prevent all evaporation possible. 



Recent Publications. 



Lessons in Ele??ientary Botany for Secondary Schools. 

 By Thomas H. MacBride, State University of Iowa. Bos- 

 ton : Allyn & Bacon. 



With so many excellent elementary text-books on the 

 science of botany, any newcomer is apt to find a crowded 

 field. But the new year has brought a new botany, which 

 is in a measure a new departure. The plant-lover who has 

 learned his plants in the woods, who has been impressed 

 with the wonderful order and beauty of the trees as 

 they spread their naked branches against a wintry sky, 

 and watched the swelling of the Cotton wood-buds in 

 early spring, seen the Box-Elder twig take on an added 

 color as the warm days approach, and admired the orderly 

 arrangement of the scales in the bursting Lilac-buds, has 

 often wondered that no book-maker has adapted a botany 

 to what he sees about him. The boys and girls begin their 

 study of botany usually just after the Christmas holidays, 

 when all the land is bare, while the text-books have usually 

 begun with the germinating seed, or the tiny seedling. 

 Professor MacBride has been impressed with this incon- 

 gruity and has endeavored to prepare a book adapted to 

 the season when botanical study usually begins. In doing 

 so he wisely places in the hands of pupils twigs of the 

 trees and shrubs growing all about them — and with which 

 many of them never become acquainted. The author has 

 an important secondary object in view, for in his preface 

 he says : " We have before us the spectacle of a great 

 nation absolutely ignorant of the principles of forestry. If 

 the schools can so shape botanical instruction as to make 

 it practical in the direction of a better appreciation of the 

 value of a tree, they may in so doing advance, not the 

 cause of science only, but of humanity." This sentiment 

 will find emphatic approval in the heart of every tree-lover, 

 and it is a pleasure to add that Professor MacBride's book 

 goes far to fill the purpose noted. 



It is a modern book and demands a modern teacher. 

 The days when a student could " pass " in botany without 

 ever having handled a plant, gaining his limited knowl- 

 edge from the text-book, are over. The book under consid- 



