314 



Garden and Forest. 



[July 3, iS 



THE will of the late Professor Reichenbach is a remark- 

 able one, and his object in imposing the conditions 

 which evidently appeared necessary to him in disposing of 

 his invaluable collections are not very apparent, although a 

 mistrust of the men into whose hands his cherished speci- 

 mens would have fallen had they been made available for 

 immediate use, was probably at the bottom of his deter- 

 mination to keep them sealed up for a quarter of a century. 

 The following translation of a portion of the will, which we 

 borrow from the Gardeners Chronicle, tells the story of the 

 Professor's desires, whatever may be the ultimate disposal 

 of the collection : 



" My herbarium and my botanical library, my instruments, 

 collection of seeds, etc., accrue to the Imperial Hof Museum 

 in Vienna, under the condition that the preserved Orchids and 

 drawings of Orchids shall not be exhibited before twenty-live 

 years from the date of my death have elapsed. Until this time 

 my collections shall be preserved in sealed cases. In the event 

 of the Vienna Institute declining to observe these conditions, 

 the collection falls under the same conditions to the Botanical 

 Garden at Upsala. Should the last-mentioned Institute decline 

 the legacy, then to the Grayean Herbarium in Harvard Uni- 

 versity, Cambridge, Massachusetts. If declined by that Insti- 

 tute, then to the Jardm des Plantes at Paris, but always under 

 the same conditions, namely, of being sealed up for twenty-five 

 years, in order that the inevitable destruction of the costly col- 

 lection, resulting from the present craze for Orchids, may be 

 avoided." 



It is certainly to be regretted that Cambridge was not 

 selected as the first recipient. In no other country are the 

 facilities for studying Orchids now so limited as they are 

 in America, and there is no other — if it is fair to judge by 

 the progress which has lately been made in the collection 

 and cultivation of these plants here — -in which a knowledge 

 of Orchids will be so necessary or where the students of 

 these plants could make a better use of the mass of ma- 

 terial which Professor Reichenbach has left. 



Since the above was written we learn that the authorities 

 of the Imperial Hof Museum have accepted the bequest of 

 Professor Reichenbach's botanical treasures, subject to the 

 conditions imposed in the will, so that there remains no 

 longer even the remote chance that they will find their 

 way to this country. 



A Mountain Meadow. 



MOUNT Rainier, which rises to a height of 14,444 feet 

 from the shores of Puget Sound, is the most beau- 

 tiful of the mountains of the United States, as it is the 

 most difficult to ascend, only two or three parties, pre- 

 vious to last summer, having succeeded in reaching the 

 twin craters which occupy the summit. In August last, 

 however, a party of nine men, including IMr. John Muir, 

 the well-known student of the Cordilleran glaciers, gained 

 the summit, and were fortunate in obtaining a large 

 number of photographs of the mountain, and of various 

 aspects of vegetation encountered during the journey. 

 Among these photographs is the one that is reproduced 

 upon page 319 of this issue. It represents an alpine 

 meadow covered with flowers of Erigeron salsuginosus. 

 We are indebted to Mr. Charles V. Piper, of Seattle, one of 

 the party who made this memorable ascent, for the photo- 

 graph, and for the following brief note, which he has 

 promised to supplement later with a fuller and more de- 

 tailed account of the flora of Mount Rainier. 



" This particular meadow on which we encamped lies be- 

 tween glaciers of the Nisqually and Cowlitz rivers, on the south 

 side of the mountain. It covers, probably, four square miles, 

 and ranges in altitude from 5,000 to 7,000 feet. The meadow 

 on the east side of the mountain, between the Cowlitz and 

 Natchess glaciers, is about the same size and differs but little 

 in vegetation. The other meadows on the main mountain are 

 much smaller and, with one exception, difficult of access. 

 The meadows on the summits of the surrounding lower 

 mountains are quite extensive, however. The timber on the 

 meadows is confined mainly to the crests of the ridges running 

 up the mountain, and consists of Abies siibalpijia. Tsuga Pai- 

 toniana, OiaincEcyparis Ntiikaensis, and a lew Pimis monticola. 



Erigeron salsuginosus grows on the drier ground near the 

 timber, together with the following equally abundant plants: 

 Orthocarpus pilosics, Lupinus, sp., Anemoiie occidentalis, 

 Potentilla gelida, Valeriana, sp.. Polygonum Bis tor ta and Vera- 

 tru?n viride." 



Erigeron salsuginosus is widely distributed from Kotzebue 

 Sound and Unalaska, and along the high mountains as far 

 south as California, Utah and New Mexico. It was first 

 discovered by Dr. Richardson, of the Franklin Search 

 Expedition, on the salt plains of the Athabasca. It is a 

 handsome plant, with stout stems twelve to twenty inches 

 high, and solitary or a few corymbosely-disposed flowers, 

 with broad disks, and fifty to seventy purple or violet 

 rays half an inch or more long. There is an early figure 

 under Aster salsuginosus in \Sxq. Botanical Magazine, t. 2,942. 



Testing and Introducing New Fruits. 



THE following is the substance of a paper prepared by 

 Mr. C. L, Watrous, of Iowa, for the meeting of the 

 American Pomological Society at Ocala, Florida. 



This subject has claimed much interest of late and is yearly 

 assuming greater importance. The wonderful develop- 

 ment of the means of communication and of transportation 

 has brought the most distant lands nearer to us, practically, 

 than were adjoining states a half century ago, while the grow- 

 ing cheapness of printers' ink has made it easier to spread the 

 fame of a new fruit thousands of miles across land and sea 

 than it was only a few years ago to properly advertise one in 

 the next county. 



Again, vast regions of our country with conditions like none 

 hitherto known, have been settled by an eager, prosperous, 

 enterprising race, determined to have the best and willing to 

 pay for it. Furthermore, the universal custom of propagating 

 all fruits by budding, grafting, layering, and the like — that is, 

 by extending the life of the individual, to the exclusion of the 

 inethod of sexual reproduction by the creative effort of two 

 life germs from different individuals — has practically deprived 

 us of all benefits from the use of the natural method of adapt- 

 ing fruits to new or changing conditions by seedling produc- 

 tion, selection and the survival of the fittest. 



No distance across sea or land has been too great for trans- 

 portation. Neither has it been conceded that any change of 

 latitude or of longitude present reasonable grounds for distrust 

 of new corners. 



A single glance at some laws of climatology involved in 

 such work is all that time permits, but this glance will open 

 vistas into the domain of Nature that no pomologist's life will 

 be long enough to explore. It will be evident, at first thought, 

 that all maritime regions must have many similar conditions, 

 from the presence of the ever-changing, but also the ever- 

 steadfast, sea. A certain degree of moisture and of warmth 

 must always pervade the atmosphere near unfrozen water. It 

 further appears that the western shores of all continents have 

 softer climates than any other regions and are similar to each 

 other ; also, that the eastern continental shores bear a like 

 climatic resemblance to each other, although less mild than 

 either western shore ; and, finally, that the eastern and west- 

 ern coasts of the same contment are extremely dissimilar. 



The interiors of continents, besides differing greatly from 

 any maritime regions, also differ profoundly from each other, 

 each subject to comparatively sudden and violent changes, 

 and each, of course, subject to laws and conditions peculiar to 

 itself. The eastern continent is, in its northern part, a vast 

 plain, open to all ocean influence from the west, extending, 

 without any considerable barrier, from the most westerly cape 

 of France to the most easterly sand-spit of China, more than 

 6,000 miles. On the western Continent, on the contrary, all 

 long vistas are in northerly to southerly directions. There 

 are narrow marifime belts on the east and on the west, soon 

 interrupted by the Appalachian range near the eastern coast, 

 and by many ranges on the west, including the Coast range, 

 the Cascades, the Sierras and the lofty Rockies. 



The broad interior region of this continent, known as the 

 Mississippi region, swept by fierce winds north and south and 

 subject to extreme electrical disturbances, is quite unlike either 

 coast region, and also quite unlike any other known inland re- 

 gion of the earth. In this inland prairie region, not only do 

 fruits and plants, natives of California or of Europe, generally 

 fail, but also those from our Atlantic States as well. It was 

 supposed that fruits from Russia formed an exception to the 

 rule, but, with more extended experience, failures have mul- 

 tiplied and doubts gained force. At present there is not a 



