August 14, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



385 



GARDEN AND FOREST, 



PUHLISHEU WEEKLV DV 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Thibunh Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargkint. ^ 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE TOST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, il 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



EuiToKiAi. : — A Literalure Worth Indexing. — Lawn Plants for Dry Countrios. — 

 A Storage Reservoir in Arizona 



How to Mask the Foundations of a Country House 



Florence Ni<jlitini!;ale's Home (illustrated) 



The Art of Gardeniiig;. VIH Sirs. Schtiyler Van Rensselaer. 



Notes Upon Some North American Trees. — V. (illustrated), 



Professor C. S. Sargent. 



Nkw ok Liitle Known Plants: — The Chinese Quince 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter IV. Goldring. 



Cultural Department : — Plantine Strawberries .■ E. IVillianis. 



Transplanting Herbaceous Perennials F. H. Hors/ord. 



Root Cuttings W. H. Taplin. 



Diplarrhena Mora;a W. E. Endicoit. 



Vanda Hookeriana John Weathers. 



Named Hollyhocks — Viola pedata E. O. Orpct. 



Insects and Manure T. H. Hoskins, M.D. 



The Forest : — The Forest Vegetation of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, 



C (j. Prhtgle. 

 Correspondence : — Palms from Seed Theo. L. Mead. 



Dig Potatoes Early Professor B. D. Halstead. 



Ribbon Grass Dr. E. Lewis Sturtevant. 



Insensibility to Odors F. M. Gallaher. 



Recent Publications 



Notes 



Illustrations: — Leuciena pulverulenta. Fig. 122 



The House of Florence Nightingale at Lea Hurst 



38s 

 386 

 387 

 387 



389 



390 

 39° 

 391 

 391 

 392 

 392 

 392 



393 

 394 

 394 

 394 

 395 

 395 

 396 

 389 

 391 



A Literature Worth Indexing. 



WITHIN the past three weeks we have received cis 

 many reports of state horticultural societies, each 

 one a stout volume, and each containing papers of genuine 

 and permanent value. In most cases the states print these 

 books as public documents and distribute them free within 

 their respective limits. Add to these reports the bulletins 

 from the experiment stations, the official reports of state 

 entomologists and botanists, the proceedings of such bodies 

 as the pomological and viticultural societies, and the asso- 

 ciations of seedsmen, nurserymen and florists, and we be- 

 gin to realize how rapidly the volume of this literature is 

 increasing. In fact, if one were in the way of securing 

 all these books, he would soon find the shelves of his 

 library filled with works on horticulture and agriculture. 



We do not speak of this to question the wisdom of 

 this distribution. As a matter of fact, these reports are 

 year by year growing better, as increasing popular knowl- 

 edge on the subjects discussed makes a demand for the 

 more thorough treatment of them by men of special training. 

 But it is none the less plain that they could be made 

 much better without serious difhculty, and the information 

 they contain could be made much more accessible, and 

 therefore more widely useful. These books should be 

 more carefully edited, and much that is of ephemeral or 

 local interest, like the average "address of welcome," for 

 example, should not be allowed to cumber their pages and 

 add to their expense. The only way to secure careful 

 editing is to pay for it, and, as the secretaries of these socie- 

 ties do not now receive adequate salaries for the duties 

 demanded of them, an increase of their salaries is the obvi- 

 ous suggestion. If the money expended for printing and 

 publishing and mailing thousands of pages of useless mat- 

 ter were paid to judicious men for editing out of these 

 docuinents all that is not worth preserving, this important 

 literature would at once take a higher rank. 



But perhaps the most serious defect of these books is 

 their lack- of proper indexing. A hasty examination of 

 each of the three reports alluded to at the beginning of this 

 article disclosed many things to which we might often 

 have occasion to refer, but it would be necessary to search 



through the books, page by page, before the desired pas- 

 sage could be re-discovered. More than a year ago it was 

 suggested in these columns that the work of making a 

 full topical index of these reports was one not unworthy 

 of the Department of Agriculture. Since then an officer 

 has been appointed by the Secretary, whose duty it is to 

 collate and classify the bulletins of the experiment stations 

 as they appear, to make a condensed statement of progress 

 in the various lines of investigation, and to publish this 

 periodically, with notes for unscientific readers. Beyond 

 question, this new office is capable of wide usefulness. 

 The indexing of state and society reports would not natu- 

 rally, however, come within its scope, and yet we cannot 

 but hope that the Department of Agriculture will find some 

 way to accomplish this work. This is the only agency 

 through which it is likely to be undertaken. 



In the June number of Harpers Magazine, Professor 

 George H. Darwin writes of an important discovery relat- 

 ing to the constitution of Saturn's rings. This discovery 

 was made forty years ago by M. Edouard Roche, but it 

 has taken all these years for the scientific world to discover 

 the discoverer and his works. M. Roche patriotically 

 gave his memoirs to the Academy of Sciences of Mont- 

 pelier, where he was professor, and there they were pub- 

 lished — practically buried, that is ; for so many learned 

 but local societies are publishing papers that none but the 

 largest libraries can collect them all, and no one can hope 

 to read them all. Unless, therefore, scientific memoirs are 

 issued at such centers as London or Paris, years may pass 

 before their merits are recognized. Accident directed Pro- 

 fessor Darwin to the work of this man of genius, and he 

 could not find a single English mathematician who had 

 read M. Roche's papers. We can hardly imagine any 

 great horticultural discovery buried in a state report, but 

 suggestions of great practical moment might easily be lost 

 in this wilderness, which is now trackless and rapidly 

 growing more dense and more extensive. It would be 

 worth while, we repeat, for the Department of Agriculture 

 to explore and make it accessible. 



The inhabitants of dry regions like central and 

 southern California, where Grass will not grow in the 

 summer without irrigation, would welcome with grateful 

 appreciation any plant which would keep green under 

 these arid conditions, and furnish them with something 

 like a lawn or stretch of greensward. In the issue of 

 Garden and Forest for March 13th, 1889, M. Charles H. 

 Naudin, director of the gardens of the Villa Thuret who 

 has an unrivaled knowledge of dry-country vegetation, 

 suggested the names of two or three plants which he 

 thought might answer this purpose. In a personal letter to 

 the editor of this journal, M. Naudin again alludes to the 

 subject, and we quote his interesting statements in regard 

 to two other plants which maybe used to furnish lawns for 

 California. Our readers are aware that it is a species of 

 Pyrethrum which is successfully used as an insecticide 

 under various names, so that the effect upon mosquitoes 

 of P. Tchihatchewii is not altogether surprising. 



"I think Pyrethrum Tchihatchewii \\^o\x\ils\.\cciiQ(S.\\\ Cali- 

 fornia. It has done remarkalily well here, and makes a 

 beautiful sward, without watering, wherever the soil is not ot 

 too poor a quality. Perhaps it will do as well in California, 

 especially where the soil has been tolerably well tilled. 

 Besides its ornamental uses, this plant, which is a native of 

 Asia Minor, serves here as a destroyer of mosquitoes. It 

 asphyxiates them, so that they are harmless for several liours 

 at a time. We dry the heads when the plant is in flower, and 

 ill the evening burn them on a red-hot iron plate, or other- 

 wise. The essential thing is to produce a smoke which can 

 circulate through the apartments. The pests fall insensible, 

 and it l:)ecomes possible to sleep in peace. 



" Another plant, which might succeed even better for 

 grass-plots, and which is very suitable to dry soil, is Lippia 

 caiiescens, or L. repcns, a little plant which roots as it creeps 

 in every direction along the grotmd, and nniitiplies very 

 rapidly. It is a nativ^e of the dry regions of Peru, which 

 explains its ability to resist drought." 



