I20 



Garden and Forest. 



[March 6, i? 



The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society has fixed the dates 

 of its exhibitions for the current year. An exhibition of bulb- 

 ous and other spring plants will be held on the 2d, 3d and 4th 

 of April when prizes of $100, $75 and $50 will be offered for 

 the best collections of Orchids in bloom; and from the nth 

 to the i6th of November a Chrysanthemum show will be held, 

 wlien prizes of $iod, $85, $65 and $50 will be awarded for the 

 best collections of twelve plants in twelve varieties. 



The seeds of Araucaria inibricata are eaten in Chili as an 

 after-dinner dainty, and with this custom is connected the 

 origin of the oldest specimen of the tree in Europe. Towards 

 the end of the last century, Menzies, the surgeon on Van- 

 couver's ship, while dining with the Governor of Chili, pre- 

 served some of the Araucaria seeds which were olfered him, 

 and sowed them in pots on the voyage home. Five of them 

 germinated, and one of them still stands near the green-houses 

 at Kew. 



In the collection of products from Lee County, Florida, now 

 on exhibition in the Semi-tropical Exposition at Ocala are 

 some remarkal)le Bamboos, grown near Fort Myers, which are 

 large enough for fence-rails. This giant Grass survived the 

 freeze of 1886, and it is probable that tlie cultivation of the 

 Bamboo will be as profitable there as it has proved in southern 

 California. As far north in Florida as Jacksonville a slender 

 species, which reaches a height of twenty-five feet, survives 

 the winter and is very useful as a decorative plant. No doubt 

 it would serve more utilitarian purposes, and it has been sug- 

 gested by Mr. A. H. Curtiss that if cut into proper lengths- and 

 woven together with two courses of wire, it would make a 

 cheap, light and durable fence. 



An excellent illustration of fruiting branches of the small 

 Japanese Orange, known in this country as the Satsuma, 

 from photographs taken in Japan, is published in a recent 

 issue of the Pacific Rural Press. Of this plant Professor 

 Georgeson recently wrote to Orchard and Garden: "The 

 Japanese oranges are as different from our idea of an orange 

 as they can well be, separating from the peel almost as easily 

 as a grape, dividing into sections at the slightest pull, each 

 section like a separate fruit, dissolving its piece into your 

 mouth with a flavor of cherries, leaving no pulp behind, very 

 good, excellently good they are. They, the latest of her fruits, 

 add the crown of excellency to the already overflowing cornu- 

 copia of this 'Beautiful Land of the Sunrise.'" The Satsuma 

 is now grown quite largely in Florida, where it is considered 

 the hardiest of oranges, and during the last two or three years 

 many thousands have been planted in California. 



The Common Council of Philadelphia has authorized, with- 

 out a dissenting vote, the Mayor of that city to negotiate for 

 the purchase of Bartram's Garden to serve as a pulilic park — 

 the simplest method, on the whole, of putting into practical 

 execution the scheme lately advocated in Garden and 

 Forest. The plan, however, should be extended so that 

 some stable corporation, like the Academy of Natural Sciences 

 or the University of Pennsylvania, may have control of tiie 

 management of the new park. The fact that the people of 

 Philadelphia are securing a series of small parks is largely 

 due to the public-spirited and tireless efforts of Mr. Thomas 

 Meehan, the well-known horticulturist, who has been a mem- 

 ber of the city government for several years, and who has 

 recently been re-elected by a sweeping majority. Many gen- 

 erations of Philadelphians will have good reason to remember 

 with gratitude his disinterested efforts for the improvement 

 and happiness of his fellow men. 



The Gardeners' Chro7ticle condense?, from one of our consu- 

 lar reports an account of the isolated British settlement on 

 Norfolk Island, in the south-western Pacific, about midway 

 between the north cape of New Zealand and New Caledonia, 

 and about 380 miles from each. The island is about five 

 miles long by three broad, with a total area of 8,600 acres. It 

 is just outside the tropics, the extremes of temperature are 

 never reached, the climate is most equable, and the thermom- 

 eter never ranges higher than 84° in the summer and never 

 lower than 46'' in winter. At one time the. island was densely 

 wooded with the native Pine (Araucaria excelsa) and other 

 trees, l)ut now it is covered with open, park-like downs, inter- 

 spersed with this Pine. Originally used as a penal settlement, 

 it was in 1856 made over to the descendants of the famous 

 mutineers of the Bounty, who had increased and multiplied 

 beyond the sustaining power of Pitcairn Island, and who were 

 presented with Norfolk Island. The soil is exceedingly fer- 

 tile, being composed of a dark chocolate loam, or decomposed 

 basalt. There is a complete absence of frost, and almost 

 every temperate and sub-tropical plant grows in luxuriance. 



But three plants, or weeds, are so destructive to all other veg- 

 etation that a portion of every year is given by the whole com- 

 munity to their destruction ; but in spite of this they are in- 

 creasing. These are two Solanums and the Cassia Icevigata. 

 The whole island is parceled out into fifty-acre lots, held at a 

 peppercorn rent ; the original immigrants received fifty acres 

 each, and for some years each married couple received the 

 same grant ; this was reduced to twentj'-five acres. The na- 

 tive vegetation of the island is wholly peculiar. Besides the 

 famous Norfolk Island Pine already mentioned,, there is a 

 Tree Fern ( Alsophila excelsa) and a Palm ( Areca Baueri)\ 

 there are besides upwards of thirty different kinds of Ferns. 



A correspondent writing to the New York Tribune from 

 Ithaca, New York, gives the following recipe as the best for 

 poisoning English sparrows : "Dissolve arseniate of soda in 

 warm water at the rate of an ounce to a pint ; pour this upon 

 as much wheat as it will cover (in a vessel which can be closed 

 so as to prevent evaporation), and allow it to soak for at least 

 twenty-four hours. Dry the wheat so prepared, and it is ready 

 for use." It should be distributed in winter in places where 

 the sparrows congregate, but where domestic fowls will not 

 be endangered, and a quick decrease in their numbers is cer- 

 tain to follow. This is a somewhat exacter form of the advice 

 given by the United States Agricultural Department in its 

 Commissioner's report for 1887 ; and to explain the necessity 

 why it should be widely employed, the writer calculates the 

 rapidity with which English sparrows multiply where they 

 already exist, and spread further and further westward — cov- 

 ering the surface of the United States and Canada, he says, at 

 the rate of 500,000 square miles yearly ; and adds many 

 instances of their powers of depredation. In cities, we all know, 

 they do considerable damage, but how much is exemplified by 

 the fact that "the sexton of St. John's Church, in Providence, 

 Rhode Island, took 970 eggs and two cart-loads of nests at 

 one time from the Ivy upon the church," and that " the luxu- 

 riant Ivy formerly covering portions of the Smithsonian build- 

 ing at Washington was thus totally destroyed." Every farmer, 

 at least in the neighborhood of our eastern towns, is aware 

 what enormous injury sparrows inflict upon ripening crops ; 

 and it seems indeed as though concerted action should be 

 taken to prevent their becoming an intolerable pest through- 

 out the whole country. 



The great public parks in German cities are undoubtedly 

 the most artistic, in scheme and execution, which have been 

 laid out in recent years. It is a double surprise, therefore, to 

 find, from time to time, in German horticultural journals, 

 signs of bad taste exhibiting themselves in directions which 

 have no parallel, we believe, in other countries. For exam- 

 ple, one of the chief horticultural journals of Germany has 

 recently devoted many pages to the praise of artificially con- 

 structed ruins, and has given illustrations to show how they 

 may best be constructed. Of course, ruins which are essen- 

 tially picturesque objects, and speak as strongly to sentiment 

 as to the eye, are peculiarly beloved in the sentimental 

 Fatherland ; and artificial ruins are found there at almost 

 every step — in the parks of wealthy land-owners, in the gar- 

 dens of poets, on top of pretty hills fliat are laid out as public 

 promenades, and in the depths of rocky ravines. Now they 

 serve as studies or garden shelters, now as booths for the 

 sale of refreshments, and again as outlooks affording a pic- 

 turesque prospect. And, it must be confessed, they are 

 usually placed in exactly those spots where, if they were only 

 genuine, they would have the best possible effect. But the 

 fact that they are not genuine so degrades them in the eye of 

 sensible folk that they excite laughter or contempt rather than 

 the poetic sentiment they are intended to serve. Most trav- 

 elers believe, we fancy, that these artificial ruins are creations 

 of the earlier years of our century, when sentimentalism ran 

 riot in Germany, and expressed itself in a thousand other ludi- 

 crous ways. But it seems, from the evidence of the articles 

 to which we refer, that the taste for them is not yet extinct ; 

 and it is either amusing or distressing, according to one's 

 turn of mind, to read a serious discussion with regard to the 

 best ways of placing them, of utilizing them for one practical 

 purpose or another, and, especially, of making them "genu- 

 ine." Truth, we are told, shoifld always be considered in 

 their formation — they should be well built, of dignified ma- 

 terials, and a strict regard should be paid to the dictates of 

 style as revealed in the genuine ancient constructions. And 

 all this effort after truth is to be expended in undertakings, the 

 object of which is to embody a lie ! It is almost needless to 

 say that whatever may be the effort after truth in the matters 

 of detail, it is the lie which makes itself most clearly felt in 

 the result. 



