482 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 458. 



Little more will be required, as a rule, except to shorten in 

 judiciously the flowering wood after bloom, and under this 

 treatment shrubs will develop into their best form and 

 flower abundantly year after year. 



An instructive paragraph in the forthcoming report of 

 Secretary Morton refers to the gratuitous seed-distribution 

 by the Government, which he had attempted to regulate 

 and place on a rational basis in accordance with the pur- 

 pose of the law as it was originally enacted. Unfortunately, 

 his good intentions were thwarted by Congress, and he 

 reports that for the year ending in June he has contracted 

 for seed to the value of $130,000. Prices were low last 

 year, but they are still lower this year, so that the quota of 

 each Congressman will be dq,uble what it was in the year 

 1896, and will contain enough seed to plant about three hun- 

 dred acres instead of 163^ acres, as was the case last year. 

 Careful estimates show that at retail-price valuation these 

 seeds would amount to more than two million dollars, and 

 it is no wonder that the retail seedsmen of the country 

 made an effort by injunction to prevent the Department 

 from purchasing seed to be used in competition with their 

 business. This injunction, however, was denied, and thus, 

 as the Secretary remarks, the great privilege of gratuitously 

 furnishing garden and flower seeds to a small per cent, of 

 the people out of the money raised from the revenue of all 

 the people is preserved by the members of Congress anil 

 the officers of the Department of Agriculture. Of course, 

 there is no more reason why Congress should scatter seed 

 around in this loose way than there is for distributing flan- 

 nel shirts or liver pills or stove polish. But, nevertheless, 

 the seed distributed this year will be sufficient to plant 230 

 square miles of ground, and will, therefore, employ in its 

 distribution sixty mail cars. Last year the seed would 

 have planted a strip of ground a rod wide and more 

 than 36,000 miles in length. This year the increased 

 appropriation would plant a strip of this width which 

 would reach three times round the globe, and the cost of 

 carrying this four hundred and odd tons of seed through 

 the mails will be something like $150,000. We unite with 

 the Secretary in regretting sincerely this unnecessary and 

 wasteful expenditure of public money. It is a national 

 disgrace that Congress does not put a slop to the wretched 

 business. 



The Study of Varieties of Fruits and Vegetables. 



IN connection with the criticism upon Variety Tests at 

 the Experiment Stations, which appeared in a recent 

 editorial in Garden and Forest, I should like to call atten- 

 tion to two ways in which a garden collection of the varie- 

 ties of a cultivated species may be used with profit. 



First, in tracing the progress that has been made in im- 

 proving the species during a given period, such a collection 

 is indispensable. The importance of knowing just how a 

 species is inclined to vary, and what value has been placed 

 on certain variations that have occurred, is apparent when 

 questions relating to the further improvement of the species 

 are considered. This is especially true when these values 

 have been passed upon by a jury of thousands of compe- 

 tent gardeners and their customers. As the birth-rate of 

 new varieties in the trade greatly exceeds the death-rate of 

 the old, it is possible to bring together in a garden col- 

 lection about all of the varieties of a particular fruit or 

 vegetable that have enjoyed any degree of popularity dur- 

 ing a period of fifty years or more. And in the absence of 

 both exact descriptive literature and museum specimens we 

 must goto such a collection in order to compare what are 

 considered the most highly developed forms of a species 

 at the present time with those that were considered the best, 

 five, ten, twenty or fifty years ago. 



Second, in sifting out the less important singularities of 

 the different sorts from what may be termed the specific 

 traits of the cultivated form of the plant, the garden collec- 

 tion of varieties can furnish information that is not obtain- 



able elsewhere. In making generalizations concerning 

 such matters, as the disorders to which plants of a species 

 are subject, or the atmospheric or soil conditions that are 

 either favorable or antagonistic to the performance of the 

 vital functions of the plants, it is important that one should 

 not be misled by varietal eccentricities. The popularity of 

 varieties is often of short duration, and it is in no wise cer- 

 tain that the successor to the variety of any fruit or vegeta- 

 ble that is looked upon most favorably at the present time 

 will be an offspring of that variety, or even of the parents 

 of that variety. It may come from quite a different branch 

 of the species. Consequently, a comprehensive study 

 should include the distinct forms, and so far as all of the 

 varieties have traits in common, these may be considered 

 in generalizations relating to the species as a whole. Vari- 

 etal peculiarities which are of a less permanent character 

 should not materially influence such generalizations, but 

 be associated with the variety or varieties to which they 

 belong. 



Rhode Island Experiment Station. -£■ &• Kinney. 



A Canon near Ukiah. — I. 



KIAH VALLEY is the bed of one of an ancient chain 

 of lakes which formerly extended along the upper 

 course of Russian River, in the heart of the Coast Range 

 of northern California. By a process of silting on the one 

 hand and cutting down their outlets on the other, these 

 lakes had, at the time of the first white settlements some 

 forty years ago, been reduced to mere ponds, which were 

 soon drained. In the table-lands about the foot of the 

 steep surrounding mountains the banks of the old lakes 

 may be seen, while their beds are rich alluvial lands. Ukiah 

 valley is eight miles long, with an extreme width of three 

 miles. On the east and west it is hemmed in by high ranges 

 which rise to twenty-three hundred feet above the sea and 

 seventeen hundred above the floor of the valley. The 

 range to the west is abrupt in ascent and deeply cut by 

 great canons, or gorges as they would be called east of 

 the Rockies, down which in winter torrential streams flow, 

 while in summer there are living streams fed by springs. 

 Here, as well as elsewhere in California, almost all of the 

 precipitation of rain is between October and April. During 

 that period from thirty to fifty inches fall, while between 

 May and October scarcely enough falls at any time to lay 

 the dust. Each of the canons of this section has its dis- 

 tinctive features, dependent on soils, slope, exposure, 

 moisture, and the angle at which the sun strikes it. In the 

 Sierras large areas have substantially the same soil and 

 support about the same class of vegetation. In this part 

 of the Coast Range the soils change at short intervals suf- 

 ficiently to affect vegetable life. The mountain regions 

 have been so torn by upheavals, landslides and the action 

 of heavy rainfall, that the soil is hardly the same in any 

 two consecutive spans of a hundred yards each. 



The mountain west of Ukiah marks the most distant 

 point from the ocean reached by the Redwood forest. A 

 few of these trees are found on the edge of the valley, 

 others are scattered along the mountain streams, and on 

 cool slopes there are a few small groves, but on the east side 

 of the valley not one is to be seen. For fifty miles north 

 and south the same condition exists. Even where the Rus- 

 sian River is narrowed to a gorge, and Redwoods dip their 

 branches in its water on the west side, not a single tree 

 has crossed the stream. All of the trees which are its 

 attendants, except the Tanbark Oak, Quercus densiflora, 

 are found in abundance on the east side of the river and 

 chain of valleys. 



One of the most beautiful and varied of the canons on 

 the west side debouches into the valley about a mile below 

 Ukiah, and is locally known as Doolan Canon. For a half 

 mile before it enters the valley its floor is a vale a few hun- 

 dred yards wide. Starting from the stream the slope is at 

 first gentle, but quickly changes to abrupt hillsides, which 

 rise to high headlands on either side, A beautiful 



