604 



Garden and Forest. 



[December io, iJ 



Notes. 



The Massachusetts Horticultural Society will offer $3,800 

 next year in prizes for flowers and plants. 



Fifty-six Chrysanthemum shows in as many towns and cities 

 have been reported so far this year in the American Florist. 



The death is announced of the German landscape-gardener, 

 Niepraschk, the author of many important parks and gardens 

 in different parts of Germany, and in recent years Director of 

 the Garden of Flora at Cologne. 



Not less than $1,600 was taken from the sale of tickets to the 

 Chrysanthemum exhibition recently held in Boston by the Mas- 

 sachusetts Horticultural Society. Financially this was one of 

 the most successful exhibitions ever given by this Society, the 

 receipts being double those of last year at the corresponding 

 exhibition. 



Pierre Tschihatheff, the distinguished traveler and naturalist, 

 has recently died in Florence. He is known by his French 

 translation of Grisebach's " Vegetation der Erde," which he 

 enriched with many original notes, and by his great work on 

 the natural history of Asia Minor. It was for him that the 

 Pyrethrum, now used successfully in dry countries to form 

 turf in the place of grass, was named. 



Our figures of the Aristolochia this week will recall the in- 

 terest which was excited by the flowering in Kew last spring of 

 Aristolochia Goldieana. The plant was described as so small 

 that it could be crumpled in a man's hand, while the great 

 white-tubed dower was too large to conceal in a peck measure. 

 The interior of the flower was strangely beautiful, too, with its 

 pencilings of purplish chocolate on a ground of old gold. Aris- 

 tolochia longecaudata, mentioned last week, is one of the most 

 distinct and handsome of the unilabiate group. 



Tuberous Begonias, Herbaceous Paeonies and Chrysanthe- 

 mums are to be added next year to the list of flowers for which 

 the so-called prospective prizes are established by the Massa- 

 chusetts Horticultural Society. These prizes are offered for 

 the best seedling raised by the exhibitor and shown for three 

 years consecutively. Many seedling plants, notably Chrysan- 

 themums, produce good flowers at their first blooming, and 

 then deteriorate, and eventually prove worthless. Under the 

 plan adopted by this Society the raisers only of well tried varie- 

 ties are rewarded. 



There were 136 seedling Chrysanthemums shown at the 

 Philadelphia exhibition, and, according to John Thorpe, who 

 acted as one of the judges, one out of every five had genuine 

 and distinct merit. It may be added that Mr. Thorpe speaks 

 with disrespect of that "scale of points" which had been de- 

 vised to secure an accurate estimation of the quality of Chry- 

 santhemums. He says that the judges made only one mistake, 

 and that was in a case where they attempted to cipher out the 

 value of a Chrysanthemum by a sum in arithmetic. After that 

 the "scale of points" was discarded. 



A correspondent of the American Architect and Building 

 News, while confessing that no definite solution of the build- 

 ing problems involved in the "World's Fair" at Chicago has 

 yet been arrived at, says that, " according to the best authori- 

 ties, the Committee now expects to report with suggestions for 

 buildings substantially as follows," as regards those in which 

 our readers are most interested : " Agriculture, 1,200 feet long 

 by 400 feet wide, with annex for power-house " ; and "Viticul- 

 ture, Horticulture and Floriculture, to be built in the form of 

 a cross, each of the four wings being 200 by 150 feet, and the 

 central rotunda 200 feet in diameter. An annex for heating 

 boilers is also suggested for this building." 



The Popular Science Monthly, quoting from a lecture on 

 museums by Dr. G. Brown Goode, says that the earliest gen- 

 eral collection shown to an American public was formed by a 

 man named Arnold, at Norwalk, Connecticut, prior to the 

 Revolution, and consisted of birds and insects. It first 

 awakened an interest in scientific matters in President John 

 Adams, who visited it several times "as he traveled from Bos- 

 ton to Philadelphia, and his interest culminated in the founda- 

 tion of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences." But, it 

 is added, the history of American scientific museums had its 

 true beginning ^-ith the establishment of the Academy of 

 Natural Sciences in Philadelphia in 1812 and the New York 

 Lyceum of Natural History. 



'The Builder recently described a little church at Greensted, 

 in Et?sex, England, which, although built of wood, has stood 



for a thousand years, and is still in constant use. Its chancel 

 is of brick, and seems to have been added in the sixteenth cen- 

 tury ; but the nave, which is thought to have originally been 

 the whole of the building, and to date from the latter part of 

 the ninth century, has only a plinth of brick, upon which rests 

 a sill supporting the walls, which are formed of planks so thick 

 as to be almost logs, about four and a half feet long and two 

 or three feet wide. These walls are windowless, light enter- 

 ing only through dormers in the roof, which is of shingles and 

 is not more than forty years old. 



Mr. Maries, the well known collector, gives in the London 

 Garden the following account of how Primula obconica was in- 

 troduced : " When I was traveling in central China I was much 

 puzzled how to bring out living plants 1,100 miles to the coast 

 at Shanghai. I, of course, took plants of the things I thought 

 were the best for garden purposes, but Ferns and herbaceous 

 plants were altogether out of the question. I thought, how- 

 ever, that many seeds would germinate if they were kept in soil, 

 so I collected surface soil from about Ferns and Primulas and 

 other plants. This was kept in an old wine box, and eventually 

 taken to Hong-Kong. I took this home twelve months after- 

 ward, and the soil was 'sown' in a glass house. The first 

 thing that came up was Primula obconica in large quantities, 

 several shrubs and a lot of Ferns. I have often seen remarks 

 in The Garden about the native habitat of Primula Sinensis. 

 This grows wild in all the gorges leading to the Yang-tse 

 River above Ichang. Where I stayed, there in a cave temple, 

 a few miles above Ichang, the clefts in the rocks above and 

 below the cave entrance were full of P. Sinensis in immense 

 tufts in full flower. This was in February." 



Some systematic experimental work has been carried on at 

 the Botanic Gardens of Georgetown, Demerara, since the semi- 

 nal fertility of Sugar-cane has been proved. It has been 

 established that propagation by seed in ordinary field cultiva- 

 tion will never be adopted, because in a great majority of 

 varieties two years are required from the time the seed is 

 sown before the seedlings mature, or fifteen to eighteen 

 months are needed from the time they are strong enough to 

 be planted out in the open ground. Besides this, the delicacy 

 and slow growth of the cane in its infancy is an insuperable 

 obstacle. The practical use that can be made of seedling cane 

 is in obtaining new varieties. These seedlings vary very 

 widely, and they have a marked tendency to improvement. 

 In many cases the advance in quality and size of the cane has 

 been remarkable. It is hoped by the Director of the Botanic 

 Garden that the canes maybe increased in size and weight and 

 that the sugar content may be increased also. It is not im- 

 probable that in addition to these essential qualities the cane 

 may be improved in habit of growth, resistance to drought, 

 degree of earliness, percentage of fibre, etc., so that it is not 

 impossible that a marked advance in sugar culture will be 

 made from these seedlings. 



The variety of uses to which the bark of the Cork Oak is put 

 in southern Europe, as indicated in a report of United States 

 Consul F. H. Schenck, will surprise most American readers. 

 "Although," he says, " what gives most value to cork are the 

 bottle corks, still it has other applications, some of considera- 

 ble importance, such as plates or slabs for use on boilers, 

 room carpets, the making of rugs, life-preservers, cork-dust 

 bricks, hats, album-covers, picture-frames, jewel-boxes, brace- 

 lets and other objects of adornment; soles for shoes and boots, 

 wheels of small dimensions for railroad cars, and the grease- 

 boxes of the wagons; and recently it is applied as ' Corcho lar- 

 minado,' or ornamental slabs, the invention of Don Buena- 

 ventura Reull, of Barcelona, which is employed to cover plane 

 surfaces and curves, employing them as carpets and for other 

 uses. They make, moreover, huts for those who work at 

 cork, and in Turkey they make cork coffins. In Italy they 

 make images and crosses, shoes, horse-saddles, horse-shoes, 

 arms, blacking, fortifications, furniture, soles for shoes, wad- 

 ding for mortars, and obtain lampblack for printing in the 

 United States, and the round or hollow cork is especially em- 

 ployed in the province of Valencia to husk rice. It is also 

 used for bee-hives, pans and pails to deposit or carry milk; in 

 ornaments in gardens, for relief maps to form the elevations, 

 for floats in fishing apparatus, for pails where they cool water 

 with ice or snow, etc. From the imperfect combustion of 

 cork is obtained Spanish black, a product much esteemed for 

 making printers' ink." To this we may add that artists in Italy 

 and Spain carve pictures in relief in cork which have much 

 the appearance of being moulded of terra-cotta; and that the 

 packers of fruit for export now seem to prefer a coarsely 

 granulated cork to the traditional sawdust packing. 



