6o 



Garden and Forest. 



[January 29, 1890. 



bend. This will not only disfigure the grounds, but encourage 

 disorderly usages that will gradually lead to other encroach- 

 ments, until the original design be obliterated and its orna- 

 mental value be utterly lost. For similar reasons, the more 

 ambitious or pretentious any decorative feature may be, the 

 greater the risk of incidental damage that will make it a 

 mockery of the motive with which it was introduced. What- 

 ever general type or special feature of embellishment may be 

 desirable, the measure with which it can be fittingly main- 

 tained will be the best gauge of what may wisely be attempted. 

 This measure will be of a different standard for public grounds 

 from that current in well-kept private gardens. The condi- 

 tions differ more widely than is generally believed. Pri- 

 vate grounds are almost wholly free from a large class of 

 petty trespasses that are the constant accompaniment of pub- 

 lic use or occupation. Park policemen may be appointed to 

 prevent such damage and to secure orderly behavior, but in 

 practice they are often an expensive luxury more ornamental 

 than useful. Trespasses that in the aggregate may be fatal to 

 all decent management, taken singly may seem so petty as to 

 be unworthy of notice. Stepping on forbidden grass, dodging 

 out and in through bushy thickets, breaking twigs, picking 

 flowers, peeling saplings, girdling Birch-trees, carving Beech- 

 trunks, even downright stealing of small plants, or their wan- 

 ton destruction, may be of daily occurrence without detection, 

 or, if detected and gentle reproof be unheeded, sterner action 

 will be resented and arrest be worse than useless. Take a 

 flagrant case to court, and the plausible lies and special plead- 

 ing that will be heard and believed will make the misdemeanor 

 seem too trivial to occupy the time of the court. 



Those untoward conditions make it prudent not to indulge 

 freely in showy or costly ornamentation. Take, for example, 

 the culture of Azaleas or Rhododendrons. When they are in 

 bloom the temptation seems too strong for the average park 

 visitor. They will be despoiled at every favorable oppor- 

 tunity, and soon the plants will be entirely destroyed, as from 

 two to three years' growth of twig will go with every flower- 

 truss that is plucked. Natural conditions of soil and situation 

 suggest a sheltered and shady location, but there the risk of 

 depredation is greatest. Constant police supervision is im- 

 practicable, and the safest place will be the most exposed 

 and frequented ; but there you must fight against sun and 

 wind, drought and frost. Of the two evils you may choose 

 the less, but only to meet constant vexation and disappoint- 

 ment and final failure. 



After explaining why a formal and artificial scheme of 

 planting may be the most effective in small city squares, Mr. 

 McMillan argued against the use of trees and plants with 

 highly colored foliage, where broad effects were aimed at, as 

 unduly exalting the abnormal above the normal, the rare' 

 freak above the common type. It is surely false to Nature to 

 do so, or to run to excess in the display of strange colors, 

 however natural the tints may be. Nature is always temper- 

 ate in the display of high color. The rainbow is evanescent. 

 Dew-drops sparkle only at a certain angle of vision, and soon 

 evaporate. A gorgeous sunset covers but a small part of 

 the heavens, and lasts but a few minutes, and the exhibition is 

 not opened daily or even weekly. For a week or so in 

 autumn there is a brilliant display of colors in the foliage of 

 trees and shrubs ; but the duration of the brightest tints in 

 any leaf is very brief, and the whole display is but "a fleeting 

 show." Because we can admire these changing colors so 

 much for a brief period as the foliage ripens, it does not fol- 

 low that we coidd enjoy the display with equal relish if 

 exhibited during the whole season of active vegetation. As a 

 daily diet, it would surely satiate, and even nauseate, the most 

 hungry appetite for high color. 



Mr. McMillan's paper contained many other valuable sug- 

 gestions, to some of which we shall refer in the future. 



Recent tests indicate that London Purple may be more dan- 

 gerous to foliage when used in spraying than Paris Green, 

 because it sometimes contains more soluble arsenic. 



In Chautauqua County 8,000 tons of grapes were produced 

 last year, which, at so low a price as three cents a pound, were 

 worth nearly half a million dollars. In Yates County 7,500 

 tons were produced. 



Hyposulphite of Soda, though not a perfect remedy for the 

 scab of Apples or Pears, is still the best that is known, and 

 when a mixture of half an ounce to ten gallons of water is 

 used it will destroy a large proportion of the fungus. 



The high price of sugar materially lessened the demand for 

 many kinds of fruit during the last season. This was particu- 

 arly true of Currants, but the price of Strawberries was also 



affected because the preservers used comparatively few of 

 them. 



It was generally held that an orchard of Dwarf Pears is 

 more profitable than one of standard trees. Dwarf trees had 

 proved long-lived, yielded as good if not superior fruit, were 

 less susceptible to blight and bore more regularly. Dwarf 

 Pears could be planted on heavier soil — indeed they should 

 not be planted on light, sandy ground, which is not naturally 

 adapted to the Quince root. The Duchess had heretofore 

 been used almost exclusively as a dwarf, but the Kieffer was 

 now largely worked on dwarf stock, and the Anjou and Howell 

 were named as varieties especially adapted to this treatment. 

 One orchard of four and a half acres yielded 441 barrels of 

 Duchess pears last season, which brought $1,906. The prac- 

 tice is to cut back severely every year and fertilize heavily. 



The movement in favor of fruit-growers' institutes was 

 commended because, it was argued, this industry was quite as 

 important as others in which instruction was provided by the 

 state. If dairy institutes are held in the grazing districts 

 of the state to the advantage of butter-makers, cheese-makers 

 and milk-producers, there is equal reason to suppose that 

 local meetings for discussion in the fruit-growing districts at 

 which experts in various branches of fruit-culture could read 

 papers, would prove helpful. If it is essential to weed out 

 from the dairies of the state unprofitable breeds of cattle, it is 

 quite as important to discard unprofitable varieties of fruit. 

 The average yield of apples in the state is less than one barrel 

 to the tree, and individual trees under the best conditions 

 have borne ten barrels and even more than twice ten barrels, 

 according to the veteran Major H. T. Brooks. 



Notes. 



Trailing Arbutus was found, last week, in full bloom, in two 

 places in the neighborhood of Mays Landing, New Jersey. 



As evidence of the advanced state of the season in South 

 Carolina, Dr. Mellichamp sends us a branch of the old Morns 

 multicanlis, gathered on the 18th of January, with expanded 

 flowers and full grown leaves. 



A European correspondent, who has traveled in Ceylon, 

 calls our attention to the fact that a plant mentioned in a 

 notice of an article from Mac7iiilla?i's Magazine on "Weeds" on 

 page 611 of our last volume is not, as the English writer 

 supposed, the blue-flowered Ageratum, but Lantana cnra- 

 pavica. 



A correspondent from Minnesota writes that a Tamarac 

 tree {Larix Americana) has lately been found which measured 

 seven feet eight inches in circumference four feet above the 

 ground, and was estimated to be 125 feet high. The largest 

 Cedar {Thuja occidcntalis), observed by the same correspond- 

 ent, measured ten feet four inches in circumference at four 

 feet above the ground, and was about seventy feet high. Both 

 these trees grow near a brook of constant spring water, and in 

 alluvial soil, rather stony. 



A monster Elm-tree stands on the Avery Durfee farm in 

 Wayne County, New York, between Palmyra and Marion. 

 Two feet above the ground it measures thirty-three feet ten 

 inches in circumference, and five feet above the ground 

 twenty feet and ten inches. It is sixty feet to the first limb and 

 the total amount of lumber in the body of the tree is 16,250 

 feet. Eighty years ago, when the farm was cleared, this tree 

 was left as a landmark. It was then a giant among the sur- 

 rounding forest trees. 



About 20,000,000 pounds of prunes are annually produced 

 in California, largely of the better quality, which are packed in 

 fancy boxes like the high-grade French prunes. In our east- 

 ern cities the California fruit has sold, <sf late, in much larger 

 quantities than the French, and at prices from three-quarters 

 of a cent to one cent higher per pound. But between 60,000,- 

 000 and 70,000,000 pounds of inferior foreign prunes are an- 

 nually imported, to be sold at very low prices to the laboring 

 and mining population of all parts of the country. 



According to the London Times, the largest market for 

 Christmas-trees in Germany is Berlin, where, this season, 400,- 

 000 trees were sold, varying in height from two to thirty feet. 

 At wholesale, the plants are bought by the schock— that is, in 

 parcels of sixty, large and small ones being taken together as 

 they come, at an average price of from about $5 to $5.50 per 

 schock. At retail, trees not more than two feet high sell for 

 twelve and a half cents. From seven to ten feet is the size 

 most in demand, which brings from twenty-five to fifty cents, 

 while twenty-foot specimens of fine quality bring $2.50 or $3. 

 Almost all are Fir-trees, cut in the Hartz Mountains. 



