September 30, 1S96.] 



Garden and Forest. 



39 1 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribute Building, New Y k. 



Conducted by 



Professor C. S. Sarg 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST-OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, if 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Eoitorial Article: — Agricultural Depression , 391 



An Experimental Grove or White Pine J. D Lyman. 39c 



The Sand Dunes of Northern Indiana and their Flora.— IV. .Rev. £. J.Hill. 393 



Plant Notes : — Rhododendron (Azalea) Indicum obtusum album. (With figure.) 394 



Cultural Department: — An Outbreak of Asparagus Rust, 



Professor Byron D. Hahted. 394 



Quality in Tomatoes Will, W. Tracy. 395 



The I\iills Grape Professor F. C. Sears. 396 



Rose Gardens for America Rev. E. J. Hill. 396 



Rattlesnake Plantains !!'. P. 396 



Ophiopogon Jaburan variegatum, Pennisetum Ruppellianum. . . .E. O. O. 397 



The Loganberry, Strawberries E. D. S. 397 



Caryupteris mastacanthus Edward J. Canning. 397 



Correspondence : — Notes from Santa Barbara F. Francescki. 397 



American Plums Professor F. A. Waagh. 39S 



The Wild Flower Garden IV. E. Britton. 39S 



A Factory Garden Edward J. Canning. 39S 



Dipladenias George McU'/lliam. 399 



The Forest : — The Burma Teak Forests. — IX Sir Dietrich Brand is. 399 



Notes 400 



Illustration : — Rhododendron (Azalea) Indicum obtusum album, Fig. 52 395 



Agricultural Depression. 



AT a recent session of one of the schools of horticulture 

 which are held in the different counties of this state 

 under the Experiment Station Extension Bill, Professor 

 Bailey departed from the customary order of procedure in 

 these institutes and talked for a short time on "The 

 Farmer's Trials." The unusual sluggishness of trade, com- 

 merce and all productive industries now prevalent, no 

 doubt, warrants the discussion of topics of this sort on such 

 an occasion, and although a consideration of such problems 

 is foreign to the general purpose and spirit of these columns 

 it may be worth while to call attention to certain condi- 

 tions which have helped to bring about the existing agri- 

 cultural depression in this country and in a large part of 

 Europe. The trials of the farmer during the hard times 

 have not been exaggerated, and he is driven into his present 

 straits by poor prices and not by poor crops. Professor 

 Bailey protested in the first place, however, against the 

 prevalent idea that farmers are suffering more than other 

 members of the community. In the general stagnation of 

 business his profits have fallen like those of the manufac- 

 turer and every one else, and he is no worse off radically 

 than his neighbor. There is no special road to renewed 

 prosperity for the farmer unless the condition of the whole 

 country is improved, and any legislation designed to aid 

 farmers as a class would be not only ineffective, but per- 

 nicious. There are failures among tradesmen as well as 

 foreclosure of mortgages on farms, and if tradesmen, as a 

 rule, were as slack in their business methods as farmers 

 mercantile failures would be much more frequent. The 

 farms of New York state average from $3,000 to $5,000 in 

 value, and with this capital invested prudent farmers are 

 able to support their families, while it is doubtful if the 

 same amount of capital invested in business would average 

 as much. Professor Bailey added that under the Homestead 

 Act, which, as we look back upon it, was a singularly unwise 

 measure, great areas of free and railroad lands were taken 

 possession of by numbers of emigrants who rushed into 

 the west to make homes for themselves. The area of culti- 

 vated land increased at a much more rapid rate than the 

 population grew, and a surplus of breadstuffs soon caused 



depressed prices. Since the greater part of our arable lands 

 are now occupied, the population is growing more rapidly 

 than the area of cultivated land is expanding, so that we 

 may look for the time in the near future when the demand 

 fur food will, in some measure, equal the supply, and then 

 the stringency will cease and the farmer may expect a 

 greater reward for his labor. 



Whether this prediction is fulfilled or not, the statements 

 on which it is based are strictly true. Since 1890 the wheat 

 production of the country has been more than twice as 

 great as it was in 1870, and there is no doubt that these 

 large crops, added to the millions of bushels which are 

 exported from India and the Argentine states, have sup- 

 plied the world with more wheat than it can eat, or, at 

 least, more than it is willing to pay for, and to this it must 

 be added that Russia, Hungary and Spain have multiplied 

 their production still more rapidly, while Australia threatens 

 to put millions of bushels upon the markets of the northern 

 hemisphere. But this is only one factor in a great change 

 which has been going on all over the world during the last 

 half of the century. In agriculture as well as in manufac- 

 tures, science with inventions, which come from increased 

 knowledge, have so cheapened production of every sort 

 that the world we live in is quite a different one from the 

 world of the early years of the present century. Machinery 

 has so multiplied the power of a single man to cultivate 

 and harvest and transport crops that a bushel of wheat can 

 be raised, harvested and turned into flour in the distant 

 west at less cost than it could be raised a few years ago in 

 the rich Wheat-fields of northern New Jersey or Pennsyl- 

 vania, and it costs actually less to put flour into the New 

 York market from Minnesota than it cost our fathers to 

 carry it fifty miles. With sulky-plows and horse-cultivators, 

 with cheap fertilizers and a knowledge of how to apply 

 them, the market-gardeners and truck-farmers of Yirginia 

 and southern New Jersey, by the aid of rapid transit, can 

 sell fresh vegetables at a profit in this city for less money 

 than they could have afforded to sell them on their farms a 

 few years ago. It is owing to this cheap transportation 

 that the fruit growers of the east are compelled to compete 

 with a thousand car-loads of fruit brought into this city 

 every year from California. When early apples from 

 Canada come into competition with late winter apples 

 from Australia in the English market, and perishable fruits, 

 like plums and peaches, raised in California, are sold in 

 Liverpool, it is evident that the element of distance between 

 the producer and consumer of agricultural products is prac- 

 tically annihilated. 



Much truth is written nowadays about careless farming, 

 but it is equally true that the farmer raises better domestic 

 animals, that the vineyardist and orchardist produce better 

 grapes and better fruits and more of them, that the market- 

 gardener and truck-grower produce vegetables and small 

 fruits of better quality and in much greater quantity than 

 they did a few years ago. All this means that there is an 

 enlarged market for our orchards and our vineyards, our 

 farms and our gardens, and that modern science has 

 abled us to produce more on every acre and with less 

 outlay than we once did. These are precisely the condi- 

 tions which the cultivators of the soil were hoping and 

 praying for fifty years ago, and yet the)- are the \ ery 

 ditions which are now helping to bring on the low prices 

 of which complaint is made. 



And what of the future? Very clearly, we may expect a 

 still greater advance in agricultural and horticultural science 

 and practice in the years next ensuing. Phosphates from 

 rock and potash from the Stassfurt mines are already cheap, 

 ami even now it is announced that German investigators 

 are on the eve of perfecting processes lor drawing upon the 

 vast stores of nitrogen in the air so as to make that most 

 expensive element of plant-food as cheap as the others. 

 Professor Nobbe, of Saxony, the distinguished plant physi- 

 ologist, claims that he has produced on a commercial scale 

 pure cultures of the different bacteria which are efficient in 

 fixing the free nitrogen of the air in a form available 



