August 30, 1893.] 



Garden and Forest. 



363 



prepared to furnish the material. The chief reliance was 

 placed upon Willows of the shrubby sorts, in large 

 variety, and such herbaceous bog and water-side 

 plants as Flags, Cat-tails, Rushes, Irises and Pond- 

 lilies, most of which had to be gathered for the purpose 

 from localities on the shores of lakes and swamps in Illi- 

 nois and Wisconsin. In this work 100,000 Willows, sev- 

 enty-five car-loads of herbaceous plants, 140,000 other 

 aquatic plants, and nearly 300,000 Ferns and other herba- 

 ceous plants were used. 



Mr. Olmsted's report concludes with a hearty commen- 

 dation of Mr. Rudolph Ulrich, who has been the chief ex- 

 ecutive in carrying out this work, and to whose discretion the 

 carrying out of the particulars of the plan was largely due. 

 He has entered admirably into the spirit of the design, 

 and the zeal and skill with which he has carried on rapid 

 work in an emergency can hardly be too highly praised. 



Altogether, one cannot read the report without a re- 

 newed sense of gratitude that, in a critical occasion like 

 the preparation for this great Exposition, the country 

 could command the services of artists of the rank of 

 Messrs. Olmsted & Codman, and that they were selected 

 to make a design which should comprehend the entire 

 scheme, and that in the construction so few departures 

 from the plan were permitted. 



Few Americans who take any interest in agricultural 

 science cross the Atlantic without paying a hurried visit, 

 at least, to Rothamsted Farm, some twenty-five miles from 

 London, where the important experiments of Sir John 

 Bennet Lawes and his colleague, Dr. John Henry Gilbert, 

 are in progress. The Rothamsted experiments are of more 

 than national importance, for Sir John Lawes set out fifty 

 years ago to investigate some of the most obscure prob- 

 lems in the nutrition of plants and animals, and in the ex- 

 haustion and possible recuperation of the soil — problems 

 on the solution of which successful agriculture must always 

 depend. To this study he has devoted a long and patient 

 life, each year adding to the mass of data which are col- 

 lected with the utmost care by analyzing crops and soils 

 and soil-water, and by other records made with an accu- 

 racy and completeness never excelled in the records of 

 scientific investigation. Problems of this sort require so 

 much time and forethought for their investigation that 

 serious attempts at their solution would never have been 

 undertaken, much less pursued with unfaltering zeal, 

 except by a man like Sir John Lawes, who combined in 

 his single person a scientific temper, a broad public spirit, 

 an enthusiastic love for the work, and an ample fortune to 

 enable him to carry out his plans. Already these experi- 

 ments cover half a century, but, not satisfied with this, Sir 

 John has dedicated to their prosecution his famous labor- 

 atory, together with the experimental farm, with an en- 

 dowment of half a million of money, all of which are 

 handed to some of the most distinguished scientific men 

 of the age for their future administration. It was fitting, 

 therefore, that a distinguished gathering, headed by His 

 Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, should meet, as 

 they did recently at Harpenden, to commemorate the 

 fiftieth anniversary of the Rothamsted experiments, by 

 dedicating a granite memorial to Sir John Bennet Lawes 

 and Dr. Gilbert. 



Sir John Lawes is greatly interested in American agricul- 

 ture, and he has been a frequent contributor to the agri- 

 cultural press of this country. Dr. Gilbert has visited us in 

 former years and addressed many agricultural and scien- 

 tific meetings, and we are pleased to learn that he is about 

 leaving England for Chicago, where he has undertaken to 

 deliver a course of lectures on scientific agriculture, as 

 taught by the Rothamsted experiments. As this work at 

 Rothamsted has been of world-wide service, there is no 

 man in all the world who takes an intelligent interest in 

 agriculture or horticulture who will not unite with us in 

 wishing that the lives of these two benefactors of the race 

 may be extended through many fruitful years. 



White Huckleberries. 



IN Garden and Forest (vol. ii., p. 50) I called attention 

 to the occurrence of white berries of Vaccinium Cana- 

 dense at Shelburne, New Hampshire. In that case micro- 

 scopic examination showed that the white color was not 

 due to the presence of a fungus, but was merely a form of 

 albinism, as appears also to have been the case in other 

 instances of white blueberries recorded in America. The 

 production of white berries in species of Vaccinium in 

 Europe is not rare, and the reader interested in the subject 

 will find a list of localities in the paper by Ascherson and 

 Magnus, "Die weissfriichtige Heidelbeere," inthe Verha?idl. 

 Zoo/. Bo/. Gese//, Vienna, 1891, 679. Inasmuch, however, 

 as in Germany a peculiar form of white indurated berries 

 of Vaccinium Myrtillus was shown by Schroeter in 1879 to 

 be due to the attack of the fungus Sclerotinia baccarum, 

 and since, in 1888, Woronin described in the Memoirs of 

 the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg a number of simi- 

 lar diseases of other Vaccinia, it became a matter of interest 

 to know whether the same, or similar fungus diseases, did 

 not also occur in this country where Vaccinia abound, and 

 have a certain value as articles of food. 



Since my notice in Garden and Forest I have watched 

 not only the wild huckleberries and blueberries, but also 

 those sold in the markets, in search of the so-called white 

 berries, and I found two years ago that they were com- 

 mon and easily recognized when they have once been de- 

 tected. In the Boston market the huckleberry is especially 

 affected. The berries are not white throughout, as in the 

 case of the albino berries, but have circumscribed, often 

 sunken, white spots, with usually a pink border. The 

 spotted berries are at times so abundant as to injure the 

 appearance of a dish of berries, and it is awkward to be 

 obliged to pick out and reject the diseased berries, which 

 are seldom removed in the kitchen. I have also noticed 

 the spots on the fruit of V. Pennsylvanicum, and occasion- 

 ally on V. vacillans. 



Microscopic examination showed an abundance of the 

 mycelium of the fungus causing the trouble, but it was 

 impossible to distinguish the species since the spots are of 

 the nature of Sclerotia and the perfect ascosporic form of 

 the fungus does not occur in nature until after the berries 

 have fallen to the ground, and are not easily recognized or 

 collected. 



Fungi of this genus have, however, a characteristic form 

 of conidial fruit which develops on the young shoots and 

 leaves in spring or early summer, and I was very glad on 

 receiving from Mr. J. G. Jack some shoots of V. vacillans, 

 collected at the Arnold Arboretum toward the end of last 

 May, to be able to find a white powdery fungus which 

 proved to be the conidia of a species of Sclerotinia. They 

 resembled so closely in their microscopic structure the 

 conidia of Sclerotinia baccarum, as figured and described 

 by Woronin, being nearly spherical, with very small dis- 

 junctors, and growing in no case on the leaves, but always 

 on one side of the youngest shoots, that, even in the ab- 

 sence of the ascosporic form, we may consider the fungus 

 on V. vacillans to be the same as that of V. Myrtillus in 

 Europe. Whether the spots on V. Pennsylvanicum and 

 Gaylussacia resinosa are caused by the same species of 

 fungus needs further inquiry. In Europe species of Sclero- 

 tinia are recorded on Vaccinium Vitis-Idoea and V. Oxycoc- 

 cus, both of which are well known in this country under 

 the names of Mountain Cranberry and small Bog Cran- 

 berry. But, so far as is yet known, white spots of Sclero- 

 tinia have not been observed on the berries of either of 

 those species in this country. 



Notes on the Forest Flora of Japan. — XX. 



OF the Oak family it is in Carpinus only that the forests 

 of eastern Asia are superior to those of America, 

 where we have a single species of Hornbeam, a small tree 

 confined to the eastern side of the continent. Europe pos- 



