304 



Garden and Forest. 



[June 18, 1890. 



that have been cut, not even the misguided enthusiasts who 

 tried to impede the work of the park authorities. 



Anions^ the Hybrid Perpetual Roses blooming out-of-doors 

 not one has behaved better this season than Ulrich Brunner, 

 with its full and perfect buds, exquisite color and rare fra- 

 grance. The Baroness Rothschild, too, is blooming unusu- 

 ally well, and so are those excellent sorts, Magna Charta and 

 Paul Ricaut. If they would only bloom again, as do other 

 hybrids which have no China blood in them! John Hopper, 

 Mrs. Charles Wood and Rev. J. B. Camm are uncommonly 

 good, and Moss Roses never bloomed better. 



The folly of protesting against the popularization of botanical 

 names in the belief that vernacular ones are all-sufficient was 

 recently shown in an article in a horticultural paper which 

 spoke of the poisonous qualities of some of our common 

 plants. " Ivy " and " Dogwood" were named as plants which 

 it is dangerous for many persons even to handle. Of course 

 the reference was to the so-called Poison Ivy and Poison Dog- 

 wood, neither of which has any relationship to the plant whose 

 name has been given it. Both belong to the Rhus family, and, 

 indeed, as Rhus is synonymous with the vernacular Sumach, 

 there is no reason, save popular perversity, why they should 

 not always be called Poison Sumachs. Such a misleading use 

 of terms as we cite, where even the qualifying " Poison " was 

 omitted, may well decrease the pleasure of timid readers as 

 seeming to warn them against two kinds of beautiful and 

 wholly innocuous plants. 



A convenient little pamphlet on the treatment of plant-dis- 

 eases has lately been sent out by the section of vegetable 

 pathology of the Department of Agriculture. At various 

 times we have called attention to the remedies as they have 

 been tried and approved ; but here are grouped together, in a 

 score of pages, the remedies for diseases of the Grape, the 

 powdery mildew of the Apple and the leaf-blight of the Pear 

 by B. S. Galloway; Professor Maynard's experience with mildew 

 of Lettuce and the Rose ; Professor Halsted's study of gall- 

 fungus and scald of the Cranberry ; Professor Goff s applica- 

 tion for Apple-scab, and the hot water remedy for smut in Oats 

 by Professor Kellerman. The pamphlet also contains notes 

 on the effect of certain fungicides upon the vitality of seeds, 

 upon the contagious character of Peach yellows, upon copper 

 salts as fungicides, and upon different spraying apparatus. 

 The bulletin is an extract from the Journal of Mycology, vol. 

 vi., No. 1. 



In " Fort Ancient," a volume recently published by Mr. 

 Warren K. Moorehead, of the Smithsonian Institute, a full 

 description is given of the prehistoric remains in Warren 

 County, Ohio, which are popularly called by this name. They 

 seem to have formed a vast fortress of earthen walls nearly 

 four miles in circumference, and a plausible supposition 

 makes them not more than nine centuries old, and the work 

 of the Mandan Indians, a branch of the great Dakotan or 

 Siouan race. One of Mr. Moorehead's chief aims in writing 

 his book was to advocate the preservation of the vast relic by 

 the formation of a sort of public park similar to that which 

 contains the more famous "Serpent Mound" in the same 

 state now under the guardianship of the Peabody Museum 

 of Archaeology. The interesting illustrated description of this 

 Serpent Mound Park, which was recently published in the 

 Century Magazine, should certainly excite even those who 

 have not read Mr. Moorehead's book to interest themselves in 

 the plan he proposes. 



Since Professor Halsted's article on the Oak blight, in an- 

 other column of this issue, was put in type we have noticed 

 that the Sycamores in Central Park are generally affected. 

 Some leaves from a diseased tree on Jersey City Heights were 

 sent to New Brunswick, and the blight is identified as the true 

 Gliosporium nervisequum. We have observed that the blight 

 has extended throughout northern New Jersey and should be 

 obliged if correspondents would report from other places. 

 Professor Halsted writes that there is little hope from the ap- 

 plication of fungicides, because the trees are large and the 

 foliage cannot be easily reached. The injury to the foliage is 

 so serious that the trees cannot last many seasons if the disease 

 persists. The advice to cut down the badly affected Oaks 

 and Sycamores, in the hope of exterminating the disease, 

 seems rather radical, although Professor Halsted suggests 

 it. There is no certainty that this remedy would be effectual, 

 and the fungus itself could inflict no greater harm, because it 

 would mean the extermination of the Sycamore in this region. 

 There is always the hope that diseases of this sort, after 

 running through a cycle, will be checked in some unknown 

 way, disappearing as mysteriously as they came. 



In the June number of the North American Review Ouida 

 writes entertainingly about gardens, taking for her text a pas- 

 sage in which Lord Lytton reminds us that whoever has a 

 garden has one chamber roofed by heaven, in which the poet 

 and philosopher can feel at home. The seclusion and home- 

 likeness which distinguish every real private garden from a 

 public park are dwelt upon as its essential charm. It follows 

 naturally that a place dedicated to retirement and reflection 

 should be simple and natural, and this gives the author an 

 argument against artificiality of construction, elaborateness of 

 decoration and over much sweeping and pruning, and it justi- 

 fies a plea for old-fashioned tlowers, about which hang memo- 

 ries of a happy childhood. And here is a passage which we 

 cannot forbear to quote: "Of all emotions which give the 

 nature capable of it the purest and longest-lived pleasure, the 

 sense of the beauty of natural things is the one which costs 

 least pain in its indulgence, and most refines and elevates the 

 character. The garden, the meadow, the wood, the orchard, 

 are the schools in which this appreciative faculty is cultured 

 most easily and enjoyably. Dostoievsky may find food for it 

 on the desolate steppe, and Burns in the dreary plowed fur- 

 row ; but to do this, genius must exist in the man who feels : 

 it is to the ordinary sensibilities, the medium mind, the charac- 

 ter which is malleable, but in no way unusual, that this train- 

 ing of the eye and of the heart is necessary ; and for this 

 training there is no school so happy and so useful as a garden. 

 All children, or nearly all, take instinctive delight in gardens : 

 it is very easy to make this delight not merely an instinctive, 

 but an intelligent one; very easy to make the arrival of the first 

 Crocus, the observation of the wren's nest in the Ivy-hedge, of 

 the perennial wonders of frost and of sunshine, of the death 

 and the resurrection of Nature, of the deepest interest to a 

 young mind athirst for marvels." 



Monsieur Franchet publishes in the Revue Horticole of May 

 16th an important paper on the new species of Lespedeza 

 recently discovered in western and south-western China. His 

 remarks on the climate of this last region are of special inter- 

 est, as this is now botanically one of the most interesting 

 regions of the world from the great number of remarkable plants 

 it contains, some of which, too, seem destined to play an import- 

 ant part in the decoration of gardens. "The temperature of 

 the provinces of south-western China," Monsieur Franchet 

 says, "and particularly that of Yu-nan, is not in effect as high 

 as might be supposed if the question of latitude only is con- 

 sidered. In that region, which is absolutely continental, high 

 altitudes reduce the temperature, which might otherwise be 

 excessive on account of its neighborhood to the tropics. It is 

 easy to understand that a region broken in all directions by 

 mighty mountain chains, some of which, like the Tchang- 

 chan, reach twelve to eighteen thousand feet, as is the case with 

 several summits of the chain Li-kiang, and are covered by snow 

 and eternal ice, although it is placed between the twenty-sixth 

 and twenty-eighth degrees of north latitude, cannot have a 

 uniformly high temperature; in fact, the vegetation of Yu-nan 

 bears the mark of an exceedingly variable climate, although 

 certain valleys, on account of their position and direction, at- 

 tract heat and so become the refuge of a considerable number 

 of tropical species, while the slopes of the mountains exposed 

 to the north are occupied by a flora which resembles that of 

 temperate regions, and where forests of Rhododendrons and 

 of Oak are the prevalent features (Quercus Bungeana and Q. 

 dentata, both species of which grow also in the neighborhood of 

 Pekin). It happens, therefore, that the greatest surprises greet 

 the explorers of the vegetation of this region, who can in the 

 same day pass from the plants of the tropics to those of the 

 coldest regions of the world, gathering in the morning the 

 Ccesalpinia sepiaria, for example, and end their day before lit- 

 tle thickets of R/iododendron fragrans, the ordinary inhabitant 

 of the polar region." 



Catalogues Received. 



J. G. Bubacii, Princeton, 111.; Strawberries. — William Bull, Chel- 

 sea, London, S. W., Eng. ; Rare Plants and Orchids. — Dammann & 

 Co., San Giovanni a Teduccio, near Naples, Italy; Bulbs, Roots and 

 Orchids.— John Laing & Sons, Forest Hill, London, S. E., Eng. ; 

 Plants, Novelties Begonias, etc. — Pitcher & Manpa, Short Hills, 

 N. J.; Cypripediums. — James Veitcii & Sons, Coombe Wood, Kings- 

 ton Hill, Surrey, Eng.; Plants, including Novelties for 1890. — Thomas 

 S. Ware, Tottenham, London, Eng.; Choice Dahlias and Summer 

 Flowering Plants. — C. B. Whitnall & Co., Milwaukee, Wis.; Palms 

 and Ferns. — 13. S. Williams & Son, Upper Holloway, London, N., 

 Eng.; Orchids, Ferns, Palms, Stove and Greenhouse Plants. — Yoko- 

 hama Gardeners' Association, No. 21 Nakamura, Yokohama, Japan; 

 Plants, Shrubs, Trees, Seeds and Bulbs. 



