August 13, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



399 



increased by other and more simple methods. It is not a ques- 

 tion of what is easiest or cheapest to the nurseryman, but what 

 is best from the general cultivator's point of view. 



Grafting', even although it sometimes does afford facilities of 

 increase, also acts indirectly in the very opposite way. For 

 example, if a choice shrub or a fine fruit-tree is worked on a 

 common stock, then the suckers are a source of trouble and 

 loss, but were* these desirable plants on their own roots 

 suckers would become a gain. In a word, a plant grafted on 

 a stock standard or half standard high becomes exceedingly 

 difficult of increase except by grafting ! This is a point worth 

 bearing in mind in connection with this question, and looking 

 at grafting from all points of view, I am convinced that we 

 should have had better fruit-trees and better and healthier and 

 more prolific varieties in our gardens to-day had grafting 

 never been invented. 



As to the delicacy of the Ribston Pippin Apple, I believe I am 

 correct in saying that a sucker of the original seedling tree is 

 still alive in the British garden in which it appeared a century 

 or two ago. When Mr. Parsons talks of "inherent weakness 

 of constitution" as a possibility in this case, it may be so or it 

 may not. To find out if this delicacy and liability to canker is 

 "inherent" or caused by unsuitable stocks, or grafting, Mr. 

 Robinson has gone back to first principles, and has now a 

 healthy little plantation of Ribston Pippins on their own roots, 

 and I think every nurseryman more especially should experi- 

 ment also in this direction, and while they keep on grafting stock, 

 give the purchaser at least a chance of seeing with his own 

 eyes a few specimens ungrafted. If I write and order a rare 

 shrub or tree ungrafted and it is sent grafted on something else 

 I submit I have a right to return it, just as I have to return a 

 grocer coffee mixed with chicory, when I had expressly or- 

 dered pure coffee. 



I have frankly stated my opinions on grafting after having 

 seen and experienced a good many of its evils, and I am glad 

 to know that my remarks have led to more careful methods 

 of observation on this and kindred subjects on the part of 

 amateurs and practical gardeners. This is a great gain since 

 the old times when grafting was considered to be an unmixed 

 blessing, and I hope that your Horticultural Experimental 

 Stations in America will take up the subject and carry it 

 further than any individual can possibly do. 



In conclusion, I should like to allude to the seedling Apple- 

 trees mentioned by Mr. Parsons as having sprung up over the 

 older settled parts of your country. A glance at Downing's 

 work will show how many of these are now established varie- 

 ties, indeed most of your best fruits are different from ours. 

 I presume the three Apple-trees mentioned by you on p. 352 

 are all seedling trees. The context seems to show that the 

 first is so and the last and largest tree, in Washington County, 

 is absolutely stated to be a seedling planted in 1791 or 

 1792. The trunk where it is smallest girths twelve feet two 

 inches, and the largest branch girths seven feet. I should 

 like to hear of a grafted Apple-tree a century old and of these 

 dimensions. 



Botanical Gardens, Trinity College, Dublin. F. IV. Burbidge. 



[American nurserymen are aware that evils result from 

 grafting when it is practiced without judgment, but they 

 do not therefore condemn all grafting ; nor will they be- 

 lieve that it is "always a makeshift." Indeed, it has been 

 shown in these columns that grafting serves many useful 

 purposes which cannot be attained so effectively by any 

 other known method. Perhaps more seedling Apple-trees 

 are grown in the United States for the purpose of obtaining 

 new varieties than in all the rest of the world, but Mr. Bur- 

 bidee does not need to be reminded that these varieties 

 cannot be perpetuated by seed. — En.] 



Periodical Literature. 



T N the August number of The Forum is an article on " The 

 *■ Possibilities of Agriculture," by Prince Kropotkin, in which 

 he attempts to show the fallacy of Malthus' theory that as 

 population increases the new comers will find no room at the 

 feast of Nature. It is hardly worth while to speculate as to 

 what humanity will do when it begins to feel overcrowded, 

 since that question is so remote that its decision may be left 

 to our descendants. But it may not be out of place to give 

 some of the examples which are used to illustrate the possible 

 increase in the productive power of the earth under intensive 

 methods. Thirty years ago twenty-two bushels of wheat to 

 the acre was considered a fair crop in France, while the pres- 

 ent average is, at least, thirty-three bushels on the same land, 



and in the best soils the crop is considered good only when it 

 yields from forty-three to forty-eight bushels, and occasion- 

 ally as much as fifty-five and a half bushels to the acre. Ex- 

 perimental farms in central France produce annually over 

 large areas forty-one bushels to the acre, and there are farms 

 in northern France which yield year after year from sixty-five 

 to sixty-eight bushels to the acre, and as much as eighty bush- 

 els have been obtained upon limited areas under special care. 



At Whitley, England, from 77 to no tons of Beets have 

 been grown on an acre, and in France for fourteen con- 

 secutive years, on the same lot of land, forty tons of fodder 

 for ensilage — that is, the food of four cows at least — is obtained 

 from an acre. It is somewhat rashly assumed, too, that Mr. 

 Hallett, by a simple selection of grains, will soon obtain a wheat 

 which will yield the yearly supply of bread for a full grown 

 person on a score of square yards ! Under high cultivation 

 two and a half tons of hay in Flanders has been considered a 

 fair crop, but when irrigated with pure water these meadows 

 yield three or four times as much — that is, a money return of 

 from $120 to $280 an acre is obtained from soil which formerly 

 yielded only from $16 to $48 worth of poor hay; while below 

 Milan the nearly 22,000 acres irrigated with water from the city 

 sewers yield crops of from eight to ten tons of hay as a rule, 

 while occasionally some separate meadow will yield the enor- 

 mous amount of eighteen tons of hay to the acre — that is, the 

 food of more than three cows for a year. 



Proceeding to examples in horticulture it is stated that the 

 Paris market-gardeners are able to pay $126 rent to the acre 

 and make a good living. What attracts market-gardening to 

 the vicinity of great cities is the stable manure, and the value 

 of this is not so much due to the richness which it adds to the 

 soil as to the increased temperature which it supplies by fer- 

 mentation. Early vegetables pay best and the soil as well as 

 the air must be warm. But it is plain that this warmth can be 

 obtained more easily by pipe-heating, so that a few years ago 

 the Paris gardeners began to heat the soil by means of porta- 

 ble hot-water pipes. It is also stated here that the original 

 fertility of the soil is of little consequence to the best garden- 

 ers, since the soil is always actually made, so that it is now a 

 usual stipulation in the renting contracts that the gardener 

 may carry away his soil, and when he moves to another plot 

 he carries it away with his frames and water pipes and other be- 

 longings. 



The Island of Jersey is a land of open-field culture, and yet 

 it nourishes a population of two inhabitants to each acre and 

 the early Potato crop returns more than $300 to each acre 

 planted. Besides this, cereals and grass are grown for cattle, 

 and more than one cow is supported on each acre of grass- 

 land. In addition to the enormous amount of dairy products 

 exported, 1,500 milch cows a yeararesent away, so that an ag- 

 ricultural produce to the amount of $250 an acre of the entire 

 surface of the island, including the rocks, is obtained. 



The Island of Guernsey nourishes 1,300 souls to each square 

 mile of soil, which is less productive than that of Jersey, but 

 the land is given over to market-gardening and greenhouse 

 culture. These greenhouses are seen all over the fields and 

 on the steep slopes of the hills, the origin of this new depart- 

 ure being the production of grapes, which was started some 

 thirty years ago. Five hundred tons of grapes are annually 

 exported now, and yet the most important crops under glass 

 are ordinary vegetables like Tomatoes, Potatoes, Carrots, etc. 

 Three-fourths of an acre under glass and heated for three 

 months in the spring yields some eight tons of Tomatoes and 

 200 pounds of Beans as a first crop in April and May, to be fol- 

 lowed by two crops more in summer and autumn. In simple 

 glass and plank shelters Pea plants cover walls in places for a 

 length of a quarter of a mile and potatoes are dug in April 

 at the rate of five bushels to twenty-one feet square. 



Mr. Bashford, in the Island of Jersey, has vineries which 

 cover thirteen acres, and the money returns from them greatly 

 exceed those of an ordinary English farm of 1,300 acres. The 

 last year's crops were twenty-five tons of grapes, eighty 

 tons of tomatoes, thirty tons of potatoes, six tons of beans, 

 (the last three April-crops), to say nothing of subsidiary ones. 

 The cost of the houses is only $2.34 to the square yard without 

 taking into account the pipes, and all the work is done by 

 thirty-six men. A thousand loads of coke and coal are all the 

 fuel that is required. Besides these well constructed green- 

 houses, simple shelters which cost only ten cents a square 

 foot often help to raise surprising crops ready for sale by the 

 end of April. Altogether the glass house is no longer a lux- 

 ury, and grapes will soon cost in England no more than the 

 few pence they cost on the Rhine, because the labor in grow- 

 ing grapes in Northumberland, where a ton of coal costs but 

 three shillings at the mouth of the pit, is much less than the 



