6i6 



Garden and Forest. 



[December 17, 1890. 



the state and the small outlay needed for planting, young 

 on hards should be set as fast as the old ones show signs of 

 failing, and the supply of vigorous, bearing trees kept up. 



It was thought that the rapid development of the country to 

 the north and west beyond the range of profitable Apple-cul- 

 ture must give a market for Kansas apples at paying prices for 

 a Ion;/ time to come. S. C. M. 



Notes. 



Another use has been found for the bark of the Cork 

 Oak. It seems that in Europe "cork concrete," made of 

 ground cork mixed with a cement that is called "liegine," is 

 somewhat extensively used in building. It is said to be as 

 strong as the porous terra cotta which is known as " terra cotta 

 lumber," to be better in its capacity for holding nails, and also 

 as a non-conductor of sound, and almost equally fire-proof. 



We have received a photograph of a superb specimen of 

 P/ialcenopsis Schilleriana grown by John Hosken, Esq., O.C., 

 The Dale, Toronto, Ontario. The plant carries seventy-five 

 fully expanded flowers. A visitor who has seen it states that 

 the flowers show great substance and breadth of petal, while 

 the leaves were nearly two feet in length. The plant grows at 

 will in a perforated pot, and a large tank under the bench near 

 it is constantly full of water. 



The annual meeting of the American Forestry Association 

 will be held on Tuesday, December 30th, at the Department of 

 Agriculture, Washington. At the morning session officers for 

 the ensuing year will be elected and general business trans- 

 acted ; in the afternoon there will be another session for dis- 

 cussion and business; and in the evening a session will be held 

 at the National Museum conjointly with the American Eco- 

 nomic Association, where papers on the proper treatment of 

 forests on the public lands of the United States will be read 

 and discussed. It is particularly desired that as many of the 

 Vice-Presidents as possible will be present. 



A fine mass of the beautiful and fragrant, rose colored 

 flowers of Luculia gratissima was sent to a recent meeting 

 of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society from Mr. Hunne- 

 well's gardens at Wellesley. This handsome evergreen 

 shrub is a native of the temperate regions of the Himalaya 

 and has long been a favorite in English gardens. It is particu- 

 larly valuable because it flowers at a season of the year when 

 flowers are scarce. Luculia gratissima, nevertheless, and this 

 is true, too, of the second species of the genus, the still more 

 beautiful L. Pinceana, is very rarely seen in this country. Both 

 species can be successfully cultivated in pots, although they 

 do best when planted out in a border in a moderately warm 

 greenhouse. 



Popular Science News gives a report of the meeting of the 

 British Association for the Advancement of Science, held re- 

 cently at Leeds, from which it appears that a large part of one 

 day was devoted by the biologists to a consideration of the 

 subject of teaching botany in schools, introduced by an able 

 paper by Professor Marshall Ward. Botany, he urged, should 

 be taught, not in order that names and facts may be commit- 

 ted to memory, but that habits of accurate observation may 

 be acquired by the pupil, and great principles and laws 

 grasped which in future may be applied under any special 

 conditions. In these views he was supported by the eminent 

 biologists present, who, one and all, agreed that it is time to 

 leave the blind worship of facts, and, instead of measuring a 

 scholar's progress by the amount of dogmatic information 

 imbibed and put into an examination paper, to look to his 

 understanding of the relation between facts and the intelli- 

 gence with which he describes what he sees. 



A Tribune correspondent writes that 10)000 tons of fresh, 

 dried and canned fruits have been sent overland by rail from 

 California during the season, and this enormous amount does 

 not include what went by express. As much of the finest 

 perishable fruit was expressed, this probably amounts to 100 

 car-loads. The value of these overland fruit-shipments is 

 roughly estimated at $10,000,000. Of prunes California shipped 

 15,000,000 pounds, and of raisins 40,000,000 pounds. Four 

 thousand car-loads of oranges will be sent east this winter, an 

 increase of 800 "car-loads over last season. The first car-load 

 shipment of oranges this season went from northern Cali- 

 fornia, where five years ago it was declared that Oranges could 

 not be grown except in gardens protected by hedges. This initial 

 shipment came from Oroville, Butte County. A new feature 

 this year is the shipment of early winter vegetables to the east, 



the railroads having made a favorable rate. Especially in Los 

 Angeles and other southern counties this promises to be a 

 great industry. 



It is not generally known, says a writer in Nature, that the 

 Chinese grow the Chrysanthemum as a standard tree, espe- 

 cially for selling. They graft it upon a stalk of Artemisia. 

 There is a species of Artemisia that grows wild and covers the 

 waste ground round Pekin ; it springs from seed every year, 

 and by the autumn attains to a tree eight to ten feet high, 

 with a stem one and a half inches thick. The Chinese cut it 

 down, and, after drying it, use it as fuel ; the small twigs and 

 seeds are twisted into a rope, which is lighted and hung up in 

 a room to smoulder for hours; the pungentsmell of the smoke 

 drives out the mosquitoes. This plant, after being potted, is 

 cut down to about three feet, and used as the stock, the twigs 

 of Chrysanthemum are grafted round the top, and it quickly 

 makes a fine tree, the flowers grow and open, and as the stock 

 soon withers the whole tree dies, and folks say, " Another in- 

 genious fraud of the Chinamen." A favorite style of growing 

 Chrysanthemums is in the shape of a fan, with eight or ten 

 flowers in different parts of it. If the flowers are not grown on 

 the plant, they are tied on, which also does for selling. The 

 winters in Pekin are very cold and last about four months, 

 and having no glass houses the Chinese gardeners do not have 

 the chance of producing such a variety or such fine flowers as 

 their European brethren, but in the case of Chrysanthemums 

 they have many curious and beautiful varieties. 



M. Charles Andrd, in Le Journal des Orchidees, gives an 

 account of his experiences when on a botanical expedition by 

 the shores of the River Amboan, which, though interesting to 

 read when safe at home, gives a good idea of the unexpected 

 dangers often incurred by botanical collectors. M. Andre was 

 in search of Ccelogyne asperata and happened to be in a Dyak 

 hut when the natives were sorting rice preparatory to sowing 

 it. In the evening a noisy procession entered the hut, and the 

 females who were among them laid with much ceremony 

 large bouquets and garlands of the longed-for Orchid on and 

 around the stores of rice. Such was the quantity of the 

 blooms that the perfume was so powerful as to drive the ex- 

 plorer out of the house to spend the night in his boat. He 

 afterward heard that seed-time as well as harvest is an impor- 

 tant season to the natives, who are dependent on their crops, 

 and that he had witnessed rejoicings caused by the abundance 

 that year of the C. asperata blooms, which were believed to 

 herald an equally fertile harvest. When, some time later, 

 M. Andre returned to the spot with (among other treasures) a 

 load of the all-important Orchid, he found himself the subject 

 of passionate grief and hatred, and that his only chance of 

 safety was in a generous distribution of money and tobacco 

 and a speedy flight. He had, in the opinion of the Dyaks, 

 committed an act of sacrilege in gathering plants sacred to 

 them, and whose lives they believed were in some way con- 

 nected, with their own. 



In " The Resources of Southern Oregon," collected and pre- 

 pared by the Southern Oregon State Board of Agriculture and 

 recently published at Salem, there is an interesting account of 

 the forests and forest-trees of southern Oregon from the pen 

 of Mr. E. W. Hammond, of Wimer. The forests of southern 

 Oregon are composed chiefly of conifers, containing some of 

 the noblest and most valuable trees known to man, and al- 

 though these forests do not occupy comparatively a very large 

 area, being confined principally to the Cascade range of moun- 

 tains, with an average width of about thirty-five miles, and to 

 the coast ranges with an average of about thirty miles, they 

 contain vast quantities of timber. The whole area covered in 

 the state by these two forest-regions Mr. Hammond estimates 

 as 16,000 square miles. "These large forest-areas," he says, 

 "secure an abundant flow of water in the streams both in 

 summer and winter, even in the driest season. Their simply 

 commercial value, if the timber should he cut from them and 

 sent to market, would have been sufficient to have paid the 

 national debt twice over at the highest figures — that is, at $10 

 per 1,000 feet, the lowest price at the mills of the coast pine and 

 fir lumber, it would amount to $4,000,000,000, for it is esti- 

 mated by competent judges, after a careful survey of the 

 whole region, that the quantity of the merchantable timber 

 yet standing in the two great forests of the state amounts to no 

 less than 400,000,000,000 of feet." Mr. Hammond's note of warn- 

 ing against the wanton and useless destruction of these forests 

 now going on cannot certainly be too often or too loudly 

 sounded. The welfare of the north-western states depends 

 more upon the preservation of these forests than upon any 

 other one thing. 



