March 26, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



149 



GARDEN AND FOREST, 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building, New York. 







. Professor C. S. 



Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW 



YORK, N. V. 



NEW YORK, 



WEDNESDAY, 



MARCH 26, 



I89O. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



page 

 Editorial Articles :— A Gardeners' Problem. — Legislation Against the Gypsy 



Moth 149 



The Cypress of Montezuma. (Illustrated) 150 



Holiday Notes from Southern France and Northern Italy. — XIII., 



George Nicholson. 150 



Entomological: — A Newly Imported Rose Saw-fly J. G. Jack. 151 



New or Little Known Plants: — Aster ptarmicoides. (Illustrated.) 152 



Fo'reign Correspondence: — London Letter W. Watson. 152 



Cultural Department:— The Cantaloupe Robert P. Harris, M.D. 153 



Orchard Experiences. — III T. //. Hoskins, M.D. 154 



Notes on Hardy Ferns F. N. Horsford. 155 



Anthuriums IV. H. Taplin. 1 56 



The Spring Garden J. N. Gerard. 156 



Orchid Notes F. Goldring. 157 



Iris Susiana E. O. Orpet. 157 



The Forest : — The Hemlock. (Illustrated.) Professor A. N. Prentiss. 157 



Correspondence : — Hollyhock Diseases Professor B. D. Halsti'd. 158 



Grafting F. W. Burbidge, A.M. 158 



Grafting Oaks Dr. C. Both: 159 



The Study of Botany P. 159 



Orchids at Easton, Pennsylvania E. V. L. 159 



Notes , 1 59 



Illustrations : — Aster ptarmicoides. Fig. 27 153 



The Cypress of Montezuma, Fig. 28 , 155 



Seedling Hemlocks, Fig. 29 158 



" A Gardeners' Problem." 



IN the latest number of the Gardeners Chronicle received 

 here the editor announces that the entertaining, though 

 somewhat roving, discussion which has covered whole 

 pages of our valued contemporary ever since the year be- 

 gan, is now brought to a close "in the absence of any 

 new evidence on either side." Since the reverberations of 

 the controversy have been heard in our own columns, it 

 may not be inappropriate to state just what this "Gar- 

 deners' Problem " is which has aroused the botanical 

 talent of the old world into such general activity. The 

 Kew Bulletin for December last contained an important re- 

 port by our correspondent, Mr. Watson, on tropical and 

 sub-tropical plants grown in the open air in southern 

 Europe, and this was prefaced by a note in which Mr. 

 Dyer, Director of the Royal Gardens, said : "Horticulture 

 is essentially an empirical art. Botanical science can 

 afford little a priori information as to the cultural condi- 

 tions which any plant will require or tolerate ; these for the 

 most part can only be found out by trial and experience." 

 This paragraph was pronounced by Dr. Masters as dis- 

 couraging to those who believe that practical horticulture 

 has a right to look to vegetable physiology and anatomy 

 for guidance and for profitable suggestion, and he added 

 that the statement of Mr. Dyer was too absolute. These, 

 so far as we now remember, were the most positive 

 declarations ventured on either side, and the various dis- 

 putants assumed positions somewhere between these 

 extremes, and usually about equidistant from each. The 

 problem, from its nature, does not admit of demonstrative 

 reasoning, and therefore remains unsettled. This fact, 

 however, does not deprive the discussion of a genuine 

 value, for each writer endeavored to illustrate some 

 phase of the question by examples of plants in actual culti- 

 vation, so that a body of experience has been collected 

 which will prove of assistance to all who are interested in 

 the practice or theory of horticulture. 



In studying the argument in the case of Empiricism vs. 

 Botanical Science, it may be worth while to remember that 

 knowledge is knowledge, whether it is acquired by cultivating 

 plants or by studying them in some other way. Any one who 

 attempts to build a sustained argument based upon the 



assumption that knowledge which is practical can be sepa- 

 rated by a distinct line from knowledge which is scientific, 

 will be likely to come to grief. We do not mean by this 

 that there was a general confusion of terms in the discus- 

 sion of this gardeners' problem, but it seems like draw- 

 ing a rather fine distinction when it is said of an author 

 that he speaks as a gardener on one page and as a botanist 

 on the next, and that in the one case his utterances, drawn 

 from the stores of his empirical knowledge, are helpful to 

 the cultivator, while in the other case his counsel, based on 

 scientific knowledge, has no practical value. When it is 

 stated that the gardener who has a genius for his work 

 will " naturally hit upon the right method " of cultivation ; 

 and again, that the good gardener will "know instinct- 

 ively" what treatment to apply in a given instance, this 

 means that the gardener has been doing just what the man 

 of science would have done if he had been engaged in re- 

 search in the same field. He has been making deductions, 

 classifying, generalizing. What is called his instinct is 

 the result of reasoning from data gathered by observation, 

 and his conclusions may be strictly logical, although he 

 has never thought of formulating them. 



In regard to the general question it may be said that in 

 this country there are some persons who are apprehensive 

 that farmers and gardeners will be unfitted for the practice 

 of agriculture and horticulture if they are subjected to in- 

 struction in the sciences related to these arts. The foun- 

 dation of so many agricultural colleges, with chairs of 

 horticulture, would seem to indicate, however, that what 

 the country at large is afraid of is not too much science, 

 but too little. It is true that very many of the marked ad- 

 vances in agricultural and horticultural practice have been 

 made by actual workers in the field who have found by 

 experience that certain methods and processes could be 

 improved upon. These steps forward have not been due, 

 as a rule, to men of science, but it is equally true that 

 science has always been ready to present the reasons for 

 the change, and in this way to suggest the most 

 hopeful lines for further improvement. It seems to our 

 people that a man who knows why he adopts a given 

 method of cultivation is likely to be a more practical 

 cultivator, less likely to fail in the essentials of the prac- 

 tice, than one who blindly follows the rule of thumb. 

 Horticulture and agriculture, too, are no doubt largely 

 empirical arts ; but we sympathize with Dr. Masters in 

 the belief that the addition of scientific knowledge will help 

 to place them on a foundation more sure and productive 

 than that of individual experience. 



We cannot expect that every farmer and gardener will 

 become an expert in vegetable physiology, but it is rea- 

 sonable to hope that intelligent cultivators will acquire so 

 much of the elements of the science as are set forth, for 

 example, in Professor Johnson's treatise, " How Crops 

 Grow," and there need be no fear that the little knowledge 

 thus gained will prove a dangerous thing. Neither farmer 

 nor gardener needs to be so well schooled in chemistry that 

 he can make a quantitative analysis of a soil, or of a food 

 ration, or of a fertilizer ; but he should know enough of 

 this science to be an intelligent student of the current 

 literature of the experiment stations. Indeed, one can 

 hardly visit a farmers' institute in this country without 

 hearing the more successful farmers talk intelligently about 

 nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash, or of carbohydrates 

 and albuminoids, and these farmers will testify that this 

 elementary knowledge has directly improved their prac- 

 tice. The students of mycology and entomology have 

 rendered incalculable benefit to horticulture by discover- 

 ing remedies for plant-diseases and destructive insects, and 

 the gardener and farmer are certainly better equipped for an 

 encounter with the black rot of the Grape or with the cur- 

 culio, if they know enough of the history and habits of fun- 

 gus or insect to understand why a given method or a 

 given season is selected for the application of the remedy. 

 And so we might go through the entire list of sciences re- 

 lated to horticulture, and fail to discover one, an elementary 



