234 



Garden and Forest. 



[May 14, 1890. 



deer which enliven them. But apart from this one view 

 across the park, there is nothing at Welbeck to delight the 

 eye of the lover of Nature or of natural beauty. The 

 architecture is cold and monotonous, and the trees are, as 

 a rule, small and in poor condition. Welbeck, however, 

 as it exists, affords one of the most useful object-lessons in 

 Europe, for it shows as no other country-place can show 

 that the mere expenditure of money, unaided by taste and 

 judgment, is powerless to accomplish any results in land- 

 scape-gardening of real or permanent value ; and no 

 American can see Welbeck and all its ghastly splendors 

 without rinding cause of congratulation for the laws and 

 customs of his native land, which make such establish- 

 ments impossible here. Welbeck is the principal although 

 much the least interesting of the four great estates created 

 on what was once Sherwood Forest (seepage 197), and 

 known as " the Dukeries." 



It is rather a remarkable fact, which perhaps some of our 

 readers will be able to explain, that there is now nowhere 

 in the United States any one distinguished for a knowledge 

 of cultivated Roses. Rosarians, as they are called in 

 England, are common enough there, and their patient re- 

 searches and their zeal in gathering and disseminating 

 knowledge about Roses has been of the greatest service in 

 increasing the taste for the cultivation of the queen of 

 flowers. It is hardly conceivable that the rose does not 

 hold the first place among flowers in the affection of the 

 people of this country. She must still be queen by right 

 and by tradition, although some newer favorites, like the 

 Chrysanthemum, may appear to press her hard for a 

 time. No people in the world buy so many roses as ours, 

 and although fashion and love of display may have some- 

 thing to do with the great prices often paid for these 

 flowers in winter, a real love of roses for their own sake 

 is the true reason of their popularity. 



American florists grow roses, especially under glass in 

 winter, to perfection, and the best products of their skill 

 are hardly to be matched anywhere. One can be a good 

 commercial grower of roses and yet have only a limited 

 knowledge of a comparatively few varieties, and the pro- 

 fessional florist from a business point of view need only 

 know how to draw from these the best money returns. 

 What is really needed, however, in the interest of horti- 

 culture here is some one with leisure and opportunity to 

 take up and carry on systematically the study of Roses where 

 Parkman and Ellwanger have left the subject The field is 

 an inviting one. The possibilities of Rose-culture in this 

 country are great, and so are the possibilities of improving 

 the various races of the Rose to meet the demands of the 

 different climatic conditions in various parts of the country. 

 What a tempting field California and our southern States 

 offer to the enthusiastic rosarian ! There is much to 

 learn, too, of the possibilities of Rose-culture in the trying 

 climates of the northern States. Certainly there is not now 

 in American horticulture any other field where careful 

 study is so much needed as in that offered by the Rose, and 

 no other where intelligent investigation in the right spirit 

 will find so little competition, or can do more useful 

 work or earn for the investigator a more agreeable reputa- 

 tion. 



The Mandioca. 



IN an economic point of view the Mandioca, or Manioc, is 

 one of the most important agricultural productions both 

 of Brazil and Paraguay. It takes the place of wheat in the 

 northern continent, furnishing the inhabitants with an abun- 

 dant, cheap and nutritious breadstuff, yielding an enormous 

 quantity of material all the year round. With this the people 

 are independent of the rest of the world for food. Here, in 

 Paraguay, I do not know how they could get along without it. 

 Corn, or maize, as it is generally called, is indeed raised, hut 

 it is a somewhat uncertain crop, and needs more cultivation 

 than the native Paraguayans are disposed to give to anything 

 which requires care. Their chief article of subsistence, there- 

 fore, is this wholesome and easily raised root, which the lazi- 

 est people on earth can have with scarcely any labor. 



As found here, the Mandioca is of two forms or species, 

 each of which has several varieties. One of these, which has 

 borne various botanical names, such as Manihot Aipe, Mani- 

 hot paltnata, Janipha Lceflingii, and Jathropha dirfcis, but 

 called by the Paraguayans " Manioc a dulce," is the most com- 

 mon. The other, known to the natives as " Manioca brava" 

 {Manihot utilissbna of botanists), is not so frequently culti- 

 vated, though it is often seen in the fields. The sweet Man- 

 dioca forms the principal article of diet of the common people, 

 as its roots are entirely innocuous. They may be used as a 

 vegetable for the table, equaling the potato or parsnip, which 

 they much resemble. Boiled for table use, they are white, 

 sweet and palatable. All foreigners take to them at once. 

 They may be fed to animals in the raw state, and are greedily 

 eaten by cattle without injury. They are full of starch ; indeed, 

 that is the ingredient which renders the Mandioca so valuable, 

 and the roots are frequently used as is the potato in our own 

 country, for the manufacture of this important commercial 

 and domestic necessity. The roots are grated or ground into 

 powder, and, after the juice is expressed, dried in the sun or 

 on plates over a fire, and thus made into flour, which forms 

 an excellent bread when baked. The Paraguayan method is 

 to knead the bread with new cheese or ground rice, melted 

 fat, salt, water, and a litde coriander seed, prepare it in long 

 cylindrical rolls or rings, and bake it in the rounded earthen 

 or brick ovens, resembling huge ant hills, which may be seen 

 in the rear of many of the houses. The bread thus prepared 

 is commonly called " chipa," and is, at least when fresh, a 

 delicious article of food. The native women make and sell 

 quantities of it in the Asuncion market. In the town of Luque, 

 on the Asuncion and Villa Rica Railroad, they are noted for 

 the fine bread which is made of this flour, and the passengers 

 eagerly purchase it from the women who offer it for sale. I 

 have also seen pastry and sponge cake made of the flour as 

 light and palatable as anything prepared from wheat flour, and 

 I do not know why it may not serve all the purposes for which 

 the latter is used. 



If the ground powder is heated upon iron plates and par- 

 tially cooked, it clusters into hard and irregular lumps, and 

 forms die well-known tapioca of commerce, or, prepared 

 somewhat differentiy, it becomes the article known in England 

 as "Brazilian arrow-root." 



The Mandioca brava does not differ much from the M. dulce 

 in external botanical characters. Both are stout herbs, growing 

 from five to eight feet high, branching and very foliaceous. 

 Both have their flowers in short axillary racemes, the flowers 

 small, purplish white and nodding, producing a capsular, five- 

 valved fruit, and an acrid, milky juice. The leaves of both 

 species are alternate, on long petioles, palmate, with narrow, 

 deeply-cut lobes. The natives, however, readily distinguish 

 the two species. M. dulce, they say, when questioned, has red 

 stems, petioles and leaves, while those of M. brava are white. 

 On examination, however, it will be found that this distinction 

 will not always hold good, as M. dulce frequently has stems 

 and petioles almost or quite white, while those of M. brava 

 are not unfrequently reddish. A much better distinction lies 

 in the shape of the stems, which, in the former case, are 

 nearly or quite terete, while in .)/. brava they are more or less 

 angled ; and also in the angle at which the petioles of the two 

 species spring from the stems, rising in M. dulce at a right 

 angle, or even sloping downward, and in M. brava at an angle 

 of sixty or forty-five degrees. After all, the only satisfactory 

 distinction lies in the juices of the two plants. That of M. 

 dulce, as already stated, is sweet and innocuous. That of M. 

 brava, on the contrary, is poisonous. The juice of this species 

 has been known to kill cattle if the roots are eaten in the raw 

 state. If, however, the juice is thoroughly squeezed out, and 

 the grated pulp dried, it may be used in making flour and 

 bread, like that of the other species. Indeed, some of the 

 people here tell me that they prefer the bread made from M. 

 brava to that made from M. dulce. It makes a lighter bread, 

 they say, but I cannot see much difference between them. In 

 Brazil, I believe, the M. utilissima is most commonly used in 

 making cassava bread and tapioca, but either species will pro- 

 duce the same result, and certainly M. dulce is much the safer 

 of the two. Why two species so closely resembling each 

 other in all external botanical characteristics, growing side by 

 side in the same soil and under the same conditions, should 

 develop such different active principles, is one of the vege- 

 table mysteries which cannot be solved ; but that they do is 

 certain. I do not find that the roots of the M. brava are ever 

 exposed for sale in the market, though those of M dulce may 

 always be seen in great piles upon the floors and benches of 

 the market-house. The people evidently have a wholesome 

 dread of the poisonous species. 



