Tune 21, 1893.) 



Garden and Forest. 



261 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building, New Yoric. 



Conducled by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



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



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 1893. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articies : — Experimental Work in the Improvement of Useful Plants. 261 



Pennsylvania Forest Commission 262 



Cultivation of Bulbs in Texas 262 



Hardy Azaleas at Knap Hill The London Garden. 262 



Dutch Bui bs i n Texas Jtilien Revere/ton. 262 



Notes from West Virginia Danske Dandrid^e. 263 



Notes on Mexican Travel.— VI C G. Pringle. 263 



New or Little-known Plants : — Syringa pubescens. (With figure.) 264 



Azaleo dendrons.. 264 



Cultural Department : — Caraganas or Siberian Pea-trees J. G. Jack. 265 



Some California Raisin Grapes Charles Howard Shinn. 265 



Notes From Baden-Baden Max Leichtlin. 267 



Plants Hardy in Vermont F. H. Hors/ord. ifrj 



Plants in Flower J, N. Gerard. 267 



Correspondence: — The Wild Garden John Chamberlain. 268 



The Kumquat Orange in Florida C. A. Bacon. 268 



The Virgilia F. S. 268 



New Anthuriums Robert M. Grey. 269 



The Cohjmbian Exposition: — Green Vegetables Professor L. H. Bailey. 269 



Notes 270 



Illustration : — Syringa pubescens in a Massachusetts Garden, Fig. 39 266 



Experimental Work in the Improvement of Useful 

 Plants. 



THERE is abundant evidence that the w^ork of the ex- 

 periment stations is growing- more practical every 

 year. By this we do not mean that it is growing less scien- 

 tific, for really, unless all study and tests are conducted 

 in the true scientific spirit, they will have little value. What 

 we are glad to say is that the knowledge which is gained 

 at the stations concerning the diseases of plants, the life 

 and habits of insects, the chemistry of soils, of milk and of 

 butter, is speedily adapted to practical use in the farms and 

 gardens of the country, so that spraying compounds and 

 spraying machinery, the Babcock tester and other appli- 

 ances for securing approved products in agriculture and 

 horticulture are becoming just as famiHar to cultivators 

 and dairymen as plows and ordinary implements of hus- 

 bandry wrere ten years ago. No doubt, there is much mis- 

 directed effort in these stations, but, on the whole, they are 

 developing on hopeful lines, and the people who are profited 

 by them are coming every day into closer connection with 

 them and are learning where to turn for satisfactory an- 

 swers to many of the puzzles and troubles which confront 

 them in their daily occupation. 



What we should like to see is increased attention in some 

 of the stations to experiments for the improvement of 

 quality in varieties of useful plants. The breeding of im- 

 proved plants bears the same relation to horticulture that 

 the breeding of improved stock does to animal husbandry. 

 When we remember that all the valuable varieties of orchard 

 fruits have been produced from comparatively few species 

 whose fruits were originally scarcely edible, and that exqui- 

 site flavor, various times of ripening, differences in form, 

 color and keeping quality and other points of excellence 

 have all been gained by selection, hybridizing and cross-fer- 

 tilization, it hardly becomes us to say that the very highest 

 results have yet been attained. Of course, there has been 

 much thought and care bestowed on all these matters dur- 

 ing the long generations which it has taken to develop 

 these fruits from their primitive forms, and yet there has 



been very little systematic study of hybridizing and cross- 

 breeding. 



Any skillful breeder of horses will undertake in a few 

 generations to furnish an animal of a given size and con- 

 formation, an animal which is just suited for a given kind 

 of work. Very few plant-breeders would care to promise 

 the production of a raspberry of a given firmness or flavor, 

 or a rose of a given form or color, and yet there must be 

 certain laws which can be, to some extent, relied upon in 

 the rearing of different strains of plants just as there are in 

 the rearing of different strains of animals. In the north- 

 west there has been very much work in the line of securing 

 orchard fruits of greater hardiness, and experimenters there 

 are learning what varieties can be most hopefully used as 

 parents. We are learning, too, what blood can be trusted 

 to produce a hardy Grape-vine, but there is much more to 

 be discovered, and to make these discoveries requires sys- 

 tematic effort through a long series of years. It is a w^ork 

 which does not command immediate pecuniary reward; it 

 is too slow and too costly and too uncertain. Eesides this, 

 it is a work which requires scientific knowledge and trained 

 skill of the highest sort, and therefore it cannot be expected 

 of ordinary cultivators. 



What seems to be needed is a new class of specialists 

 who shall devote themselves entirely to this work of plant- 

 improvement. Desultory and unsystematic experiment 

 will not answer. The subject must be pursued in a thor- 

 oughly scientific way. This is why the matter is com- 

 mended to experiment stations. In these stations there 

 are horticulturists and botanists and chemists ; why not 

 have some one to devote his labors exclusively to the 

 improvement of plants.? This w^ork is tedious and most 

 uncertain at the beginning. All the processes, from the pol- 

 lenizing of the flowers to the gathering of the seed, require 

 the utmost care. Many of the fertilized flow^ers will fail 

 to set seed, and then the fruits which contain the coveted 

 seeds must be carefully watched throughout the season. It 

 requires another year, sometimes many years, to produce 

 plants from these, and then the most careful investiga- 

 tion of their characters must be made. Sometimes the 

 material produced will be too scanty to work with, and 

 again it will be so abundant and will open out into so 

 many directions that a man with anything else on his 

 hands will despair of exploring them all. No one can have 

 too large a knowledge of horticultural varieties for this 

 work ; no one can have too profound a knowledge of 

 plant-growth ; no one can have too many appliances at his 

 command to make the work efficient. It certainly is wor- 

 thy of the highest skill and the closest application, and it 

 promises to be of sufticient value to justify the attention of 

 the men who are paid to make experiments for the benefit 

 of the agriculture and horticulture of the country. Few 

 private individuals have the means, the time, the appli- 

 ances and the skill which are necessary to prosecute this 

 work, and the stations were organized for the express pur- 

 pose of undertaking research w^hich it is beyond the power 

 of private individuals to conduct. 



These thoughts have been suggested by an account of the 

 labors of Mr. Luther Burbank in California, who is said to be 

 testing 600,000 hybrid and cross-bred seedling Raspberry- 

 plants, more than half a million hj^brid seedling Lilies, and to 

 be making experiments with many other genera on an equally 

 generous scale. We know nothing, by personal examina- 

 tion, of the novelties which Mr. Burbank oft'ers of the 

 Mammoth Japan Chestnut, for instance, which has been 

 selected from more than 10,000 seedlings, a tree bearing 

 glossy nuts as large as the Japanese chestnut, and as sweet 

 as the American chestnut ; or of a Walnut, a hybrid between 

 Juglans nigra and JuglansCalifornica, with nuts of the largest 

 size and in quality much superior to those of either parent. 

 What we do know is that Mr. Burbank has been experi- 

 menting in this line for many years, that the Potato which 

 he originated, and which has gone by his name, has been 

 a variety of established merit for the past sixteen years, 

 and that he is known as the originator of several Plums 



