320 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 441. 



Notes. 



At the sale of the second large shipment of Calfornia fruits 

 to England this summer better prices were realized last Friday 

 than in the previous week. Bartlett pears brought from $1.43 

 to $1.87 a box, and plums advanced fifty cents a box. 



Well-blanched celery is now coming from New Jersey, 

 western New York and Michigan, and costs fifty cents for a 

 dozen stalks. Asparagus may still be had at twenty-five cents 

 a bunch. The quality of tomatoes offered has improved within 

 the past fortnight, and smooth firm specimens of such sorts as 

 Acme and Beauty cost fifty cents a half-peck. 



The leaves of one of our Golden-rods, Solidago odora, are 

 used in some parts of the country as a substitute for tea. In 

 the last number of Medians' Monthly it is stated that the plant 

 is in very common use by German families of the interior of 

 Pennsylvania. It is even an article of trade. Men gather the 

 leaves in summer-time and peddle them from house to house 

 in the winter. 



Lord Penzance last year cut the hips from some of his hybrid 

 Sweet-briers rather late in the season, in order that his plants 

 might not be exhausted by ripening the fruit. He was sur- 

 prised to find that most of these plants bloomed freely a 

 second time in late summer and kept flowering until severe 

 frost. It is suggested that if the flowers had been cut as soon 

 as they faded the autumnal flowering might have been still 

 more abundant. 



In former volumes we have called attention to Isotoma 

 longi flora, a perennial plant from the West Indies, and belong- 

 ing to the Lobelia family. It is quite distinct and showy 

 in late summer, bearing snow-white long-tubed flowers more 

 than an inch across. In the last number of the Florists' 

 Exchange Mr. Oliver calls attention to the fact that this plant 

 blooms at the same time with its relative, our native Cardinal- 

 flower, and the two when planted together make a very 

 effective combination. Plants will grow abundantly the first 

 year if seed is sown early enough. 



It is well known that late Peas often suffer seriously from a 

 mildew, Erysiphe communis, a near relative of the powdery 

 mildew of the Grape. The disease not only attacks the leaves, 

 but the pods, stems and leaf-stalks, so that the entire plant 

 seems to be covered. Frequent cultivation mitigates the 

 trouble somewhat, but not entirely in hot dry seasons, so that 

 it is good practice to sprinkle, or better, to spray the plants 

 with a solution of copper sulphate at the rate of one pound to 

 500 gallons of water. This prescription is recommended in a 

 bulletin of the Michigan Experiment Station. 



The Angelica Tree, or Hercules Club, Aralia spinosa, must 

 be seen in the Big Smokies before its beauty can be fully esti- 

 mated. There in the rich soil along the streams it often has a 

 trunk eight inches in diameter and becomes a tree with wide 

 spreading branches and thirty-five feet high. It is just flower- 

 ing now in Central Park, and its immense feathery panicles of 

 wdiite flowers, with their lilac fragrance, arrest the attention of 

 every visitor. It is interesting at every season for its armor 

 of large prickles, its broad, graceful decompound leaves often 

 a yard across and its enormous panicles of black fruit. 



Refrigerator-cars are indispensable in these days when fruits 

 and other perishable products are to be transported to any 

 considerable distance, but their use is expensive and ice makes 

 much additional weight. Many experiments have, therefore, 

 been tried to discover some better and cheaper method of 

 carriage for long distances. In California fruit has been trans- 

 ported in tight cars filled with some gas in which the micro- 

 scopic germs of decay cannot live. For some reason this 

 method has not yet proved practicable. The latest experi- 

 ment in this line is a car built of wood and paper with several 

 dead-air spaces and a live-air space at the floor-level. The car 

 is then filled with sterilized air, or air in which the germs of 

 the various ferments have all been killed. This air is pumped 

 from the locomotive into the train after having been heated 

 until it is sterilized. Before it gets into the car it passes 

 through a coil ot pipe surrounded by ice and is thoroughly 

 cooled. The air is drawn out by another pump, so that the 

 car is kept constantly filled with a fresh supply of sterilized 

 air. The inventors have much faith in this project, but it has 

 not been tried to such an extent as yet to prove its practical 

 value. 



The occurrence in the stomachs and intestines of horses, 

 cattle and sheep of balls composed of hair taken into the 

 stomach little by little while animals were licking their coats, 

 is well known. Balls made up of plant hairs — that is, of the 



so-called beards or awns of oats, barley or other grain — have 

 also been reported. Crimson Clover has long been used in 

 Europe as a torage-plant, and nothing appears to have been 

 published there regarding its liability to form such accre- 

 tions, but a leaflet recently prepared by Professor Coville, of 

 the Department of Agriculture, records several instances where 

 horses have evidently been killed in this way. The mature 

 calyces of Crimson Clover, as well as the stalks, are covered with 

 hairs one-eighth of an inch or less in length, and they are stiff 

 and barbed. If overripe clover is fed to horses there is dan- 

 ger that these bristly hairs will accumulate in the stomach and 

 intestines in spherical balls, which will increase in size and 

 hardness by addition of the same matter to their surfaces. 

 When a ball has reached a sufficient size, whether after a few 

 days or several weeks, it closes up the intestines, and after sev- 

 eral hours of intense suffering the animal dies. Since the hairs 

 on this plant do not become stiff until it has passed the flow- 

 ering stage, it should never be fed to animals after it is fully 

 ripe. Of course, the practice of feeding the straw of this clover 

 after it has ripened and has been threshed for a crop of seed 

 is dangerous. These Clover hair balls are often four inches 

 in diameter, with a surface texture like fine, firm felt. 



Raspberries are now quite out of season and currants are 

 past their prime. Blackberries are no longer at their best, 

 Staten Island and the Hudson River furnishing the bulk of 

 supplies, which bring fifteen cents a quart for the choicest. 

 Huckleberries, from the Pocono and the Shawangunk Moun- 

 tains, are still plentiful, and cost thirteen cents a quart at retail. 

 New apples include such varieties as Nyack Pippin, Orange 

 Pippin, Sweet Bough, Sour Bough, Astrachan and Duchess of 

 Oldenburg. Much of this fruit is immature and small, but 

 barrels of large hand-picked specimens sell for $1.25 to $1.75 

 in the wholesale markets. Sound showy Willow Twig apples, 

 from last year, held over in cold storage, are still occasionally 

 seen. These are sold at sixty cents a dozen. Other out-of- 

 season fruits are Hart's Late oranges, from California, and 

 grape-fruit from Jamaica. New limes are plentiful and sell for 

 seventy-five cents a hundred at retail. Pineapples cost from 

 fifteen to fifty cents each. Georgia peaches, which continued 

 until the first of August, are now succeeded by Troth, St. John, 

 Mountain Rose and Crawford varieties, from Maryland and 

 Delaware. With the last Le Conte pears from the south the 

 first Keiffers are appearing. Bartletts of good size and color 

 are coming from New Jersey, and also such kinds as Catherine, 

 Bloodgood, Clapp's Favorite, Bell and Scooter. Concord grapes, 

 from Georgia, may now be had, and Niagaras and Delawares 

 from North Carolina. The stock of muskmelons from Mary- 

 land, Delaware and New Jersey is below the average in quality 

 this season. Altogether the finest specimens seen here this 

 year are in occasional small shipmentsreceived from Mont- 

 real. These large, heavily netted fruits sell for $1.00 apiece. 

 Watermelons are becoming less plentiful and are declining in 

 quality ; large ones cost fifty cents each. 



All readers of Mrs. Alice Morse Earle's Customs and Fash- 

 ions in Old Neiu England will turn to her article entitled Old 

 Time Flower Gardens, in Scribner's Magazine for August, 

 with the assurance of finding a trustworthy statement of facts, 

 combined with a most pleasant play of fancy. The illustra- 

 tions are singularly effective, and they help the text to carry us 

 back to the days when Johnny-jump-ups, Flowers-de-luce and 

 Bouncing Bet were to be found every year in the same place 

 in the home garden. Perhaps, if we could see some of these 

 old gardens reproduced to-day the actual flowers would be 

 less fair than those which we see in memory, but there are 

 some suggestions from these colonial times which even the 

 modern artist in landscape would do well to heed. Fortu- 

 nately, the best of the old plants are good plants still, and, per- 

 haps, they are more abundantly planted now than they ever 

 were. Mrs. Earle makes out a long catalogue of what was to 

 be found among the plantings of the Puritans in New Eng- 

 land, what the Dutch women cared for in New York, what 

 such flower lovers as John Bartram and Edward Shippen 

 made abundant near Philadelphia, and what were found in the 

 beautiful terraced gardens about Virginian homes. The per- 

 sistence of some ot the old-time plants is noticed by Mrs. Earle 

 as one of their strong traits. And there is poetry as well as 

 pathos in her statement that the sites of colonial houses now 

 destroyed, and the very trend of the old roads, can be traced 

 by the cheerful faces of these staying flowers which have 

 escaped from the trim gardens where they were once planted. 

 The situation of old Fort Nassau, in Pennsylvania, so long a 

 matter of uncertainty, is said to have been definitely deter- 

 mined by the familiar garden flowers found growing on one 

 of these disputed sites. 



