October 4, 1893.] 



Garden and Forest. 



413 



drives, and empty them into piles, from which they are loaded 

 into wagons. They are then drawn to the packing-house, 

 where they are emptied upon a long table covered with hay 

 or straw. The packer now selects the melons into two grades, 

 being very careful to use only melons of the highest excellence 

 and greatest uniformity of shape, size and coloi for the first 

 grade, which is to go to market as " Guaranteed Pure Osage" 

 and "Guaranteed Straight Packing." The melons must be 

 placed so firmly in the crates that they cannot setde and be- 

 come loose. A good packer is able to tell at sight the quality 

 of a melon and to judge if it will fit well into a certain place ; 

 he, therefore, avoids unnecessary handling of the melons and 

 works rapidly. An expert packer, in the best of the season, 

 can pack fifty crates an hour, although twenty to twenty-five 

 crates an hour is considered to be quick packing. The second 

 quality melons are again graded down to tolerable uniformity 

 in size and shape, but they are usually sold without the name 

 of the variety or the grower. As in all other crops, there is 

 great difference between the grades of the different growers. 

 This was apparent in running over the boxes as they were piled 

 in tiers in the boat on their way to Chicago, and it explained 

 the differences in prices which the various shippers receive. 

 An acre of Osage should average about two hundred cases of 

 marketable melons, or about 2,400 to 3,000 melons. For the 

 last twenty years the average net returns to the grower have 

 run from sixty-two cents to $1.05 per crate. Mr. Morrill is the 

 largest grower. This year he has twenty-five acres in melons, 

 and he has grown as high as sixty acres in one year. He now 

 saves the choicest of the melons for seed, with which he sup- 

 plies mucii of the market. The melons are cut in halves and 

 the contents scooped out widi the hands into large pails or 

 barrels. Or if the melons are to be sold to local consumers, 

 one segment of the melon is cut away and the interior is taken 

 out with a tablespoon. The pulp is allowed to remam in the 

 barrels only until fermentation begins, at which time it is 

 floated off and the seeds are washed out. The seeds are then 

 spread upon a wire screen out-of-doors to dry; racks are ar- 

 ranged in the packing or other sheds upon which these screens 

 can be laid during a storm. About thirty Osage melons yield 

 a pound of seed. It is often said that these Benton Harbor 

 growers plant Cucumbers with the general melon-crop in 

 order to spoil the seeds, so that the public cannot obtain them 

 freely, but this is an error. There is no evidence that Musk- 

 melons and Cucumbers ever cross, arid although Mr. Morrill 

 once believed that they did, he is now prepared to abandon 

 the opinion. 



The enemies to melons at Benton Harbor are the striped 

 beetle and a blight which dries up the leaves. The beetles are 

 kept away by dusting the plants with lime into which just 

 enough sulphur has been stirred to give it a yellow tinge. For 

 the blight no remedy has been' found, and Bordeaux mixture 

 does not appear to check it. It is undoubtedly a bacterial dis- 

 ease. Upon new lands, near woods, woodchucks are often 

 serious pests. They eat the runners and bite holes from the 

 young melons when they reach the size of an egg. The urchin 

 is not a serious enemy to melon-growing here, for the acreage 

 is so great that he cannot compass the entire subject. 



Mr. Morrill, who has been the chief means of developing the 

 trucking interests of Benton Harbor, is yet comparatively 

 a young man, and he now finds himself well-to-do, and in de- 

 mand for important work in his town and state. He is largely 

 interested in fruit, and is the largest, and probably the best, 

 blackberry grower in Michigan. His Blackberry-plantation 

 now covers forty-two acres, of which seven acres are in Wil- 

 son's Early, and thirty-five acres in Early Harvest. Mr. Morrill 

 is fortunate in having started with no knowledge of the busi- 

 ness, for he was free from the traditions and conservatisms 

 which chill the enterprise of many farmers and keep them 

 from making progress. 



Cornell University. L. H. BuUey. 



California Railroad-station Gardens. 



A FEW years ago there was hardly a railroad-station garden 

 -^~^ or park in California, except a few in the southern part of 

 the state, which were partly or wholly maintained by private 

 enterprise to help the sale of town-lots. Now there are many 

 worth notice, though the state is so large, and so sparsely set- 

 tled in parts, that no railroad company, however wealthy, could 

 immediately establish gardens everywhere. The rule appears 

 to be that the most progressive communities get the first sta- 

 tion-parks. 



The Southern Pacific Railroad has spent, and is spending, a 

 vast sum annually to beautify choice spots around its principal 

 stations, and it has a wide range of soils and climates to choose 



from. At Los Angeles, at the main station, the large grounds 

 attract much notice. Two fine desert Palms, planted in old 

 Spanish times, still remain. The lawn is set with a good col- 

 lection of semi-tropic trees and other plants. Camphors, 

 Araucarias, Hakeas,Casuarinas, CannasandCaladiums are con- 

 spicuous. There is a triangular space planted with Yuccas, 

 Cacti and other Arizonian plants, brought from the desert. 

 Pomona has a particularly attractive square at the depot, where 

 Roses bloom all winter. Ontario and many other towns of 

 southern California, and even newly started villages, are 

 making the station-grounds interesting, if only by Palms, Gre- 

 villeas and Magnolias. 



Along the ocean, where the problems before the railroad 

 gardeners are often exceedingly difficult, the abundant use of 

 succulents, such as the Mesembryanthemums, and of Bamboos 

 and Eucalypti is quite general. Where the water-supply is 

 good, one sees many and magnificent Passifloras, Tacsonias, 

 Ipomceas and the tropic Hibiscuses. It is a common thing at 

 this season, September 12th, to see a trellis or fence covered 

 with the ripe golden fruits of some of the edible Passifloras. 

 Acres of Bamboos planted closely in shifting sands have been 

 of great value, if sufficient water can be had to establish their 

 growth. 



In the San Joaquin Valley no railroad-station is more attrac- 

 tive than that of the one at Merced, a few years ago a barren 

 waste of several acres. It has been changed with great rapidity 

 to a mass of shrubbery and stretches of lawn. The so-called 

 Umbrella-trees, from the southern states — a regular form, I 

 believe, of the old Pride of China, Melia Azaderach — are be- 

 coming the characteristic tree of the San Joaquin region, and 

 no one can overlook their dark, dense, regular appearance. 



Some of the most beautiful gardens of the Southern Pacific 

 Railroad are on the Monterey line from San Francisco, past 

 San Jos6 to the ancient capital of the state. Along " the penin- 

 sula," as San Mateo County is often called, there is a more fin- 

 ished and cultivated aspect about the little railroad-stations 

 than in any other part of California. San Jose never had the 

 land for more than a bit of green lawn. Castroville has a very 

 picturesque large garden wilderness, overgrown and full of 

 bloom at all seasons, a bower of Roses, Dahlias, Carnations 

 and nearly everything that could be gathered together in the 

 district. Every year a few more stations begin to make gar- 

 dens, and the old ones are kept up and improved. It is cer- 

 tain that the railroads are spending large sums to beautify 

 their grounds, and the time will come when one of the special 

 features of travel in this state will be the horticultural variety 

 displayed in the thousands of small railroad gardens and parks 

 scattered along every valley and mountain pass from San 



Diego to Siskiyou. rj- c/ • 



Niies, Calif. Charles H. Sliinn. 



Foreign Correspondence. 

 Lilies at Kew. 



THE systematic cultivation of Lilies on a large scale at 

 Kew is a somewhat recent development of the out- 

 door gardening in that establishment. Formerly many at- 

 tempts were made to grow them in specially made beds 

 in that portion of the gardens devoted to the cultivation of 

 monocotyledonous plants, but these all failed, and so — 

 with the exception of a few species which thrive even under 

 the most depressing conditions — Lilies played little or no 

 part in ornamental gardening at Kew until within the last 

 six or eight years. The success which has attended the 

 new departure, and the wonderfully tine eifects produced 

 by masses of the showier species and varieties, are so great 

 that an outline of the methods pursued may be of general 

 interest. 



Soil and Position. — Most of the Lilies at Kew grow well 

 in peat ; some few refuse to grow in peat, but do well in 

 loam ; some do equally well in loam and peat. But, gener- 

 ally speaking, the key-note of success was struck when the 

 bulbs were planted among low-growing shrubs. Behind 

 the Palm-house is the so-called "American Garden/' con- 

 taining masses of Ericaceous and other plants in large beds ; 

 among these are Rhododendrons — low-growing species — 

 Azaleas, Ledums, Callunas, Ericas, Pieris, Leucothoe, 

 Daphne, etc. These shrubs serve a double purpose ; they 

 keep the ground cool about the Lily-roots and shelter the 

 young growths from the late spring frosts. Every few 

 years, as the shrubs grow too dense, it is necessary to re- 



