January 9, 1895.] 



Garden and Forest. 



19 



winter. Nymphaea pygmea, the yellow N. helveola and 

 some seedlinsjs of the Egyptian Lotus are also wintered in 

 this section. The latter, which usually flowers in two years, 

 have not yet bloomed here, though they are past three years 

 old. 



During the recent cold wave the plants escaped any injury 

 in the sudden drop from thirty degrees to six degrees, and 

 after two weeks of freezing weather they continue to flower 

 luxuriantly. The sashes are, of course, very close to the 

 flowers, and the snow, after melting and freezing fast, cannot 

 well be removed without damage to the glass. Blankets were 

 thrown over the snowfall of a fortnight ago, and it thawed off' 

 in two or three days, with no injury even to the buds. The 

 tops of the pots are from two to si.x inches below the surface 

 of the water, the older plants requiring sufficient depth of 

 water to float the leaves. The depth of water is not consid- 

 ered a material detail, and while Mr. McElvery uses pots, he 

 prefers pans for young plants. The soil in the pots is one-half 

 good garden-soil and one-half cow-manure. Better success is 

 had with fresh manure, although it causes a green scum, and 

 is likely to ferment and throw the bulbs out of the pots. The 

 scum is removed by overflow a few times at the beginning of 

 the season, when there is no further trouble. This is done by 

 laying a hose in the water, and thus gently floating the sur- 

 face, rather than playing a hose into the pond from above, with 

 the effect of dissipating the scum through the water. 



Behind the ladder which leads into the furnace-pit, an ex- 

 cavation of thirty-six cubic feet gives room for a ton of coal, 

 and at the side of the furnace-pit a door opens into a glass- 

 covered cold pit, seven by ten feet. Here many garden-plants 

 are successfully wintered, and, among others, Amaryllis, 

 Imantophyllums and Azaleas come into flower. In a large 

 collection of the best Crinums, tender varieties, as C. Kirkii, 

 C. ornatum and C. amabiie, do especially well, and flower pro- 

 fusely in an average temperature of fifty degrees. The 

 entrance to the boiler-pit is covered with a trap-door, and an 

 extra, heavier door is provided for more complete exclusion of 

 cold and rain. The only other provision against weather 

 is a padding of straw along the sides of the tanks, which is 

 boxed in with boards. 



The development of tills successful winter pond has come 

 about through intelligent practical experiments, and no less 

 intelligent and affectionate interest in the plants themselves. 

 The expense of changes in piping, etc., has added considera- 

 bly to the cost of these frames as they now stand, but Mr. 

 McElvery estimates that wilh the digging, bricklaying and 

 cementing done by home-labor, the entire cost for frames of 

 similar size need not exceed $125.00. This includes the walls, 

 piping, sash and boiler. A ton of nut-coal lasts over two 

 months, and a water-garden on the south or south-west side 

 of a greenhouse, with connecting pipes from the greenhouse, 

 could be run at even less cost for fuel than is this separate 

 plant. 



Altogether, this is a most instructive experiment, and it 

 shows how much can be done with a small expenditure of 

 money by one who really loves flowers. Mr. McElvery has 

 proved that it is just as easy to have choice Water-lilies in the 

 winter-time as any other flowers, and that they can be grown 

 quite as cheaply as any of the ordinary inhabitants of the 

 greenhouse. Indeed, they are grown at even less outlay, after 

 the first cost of the pond, than, perhaps, any other class of 

 flowering plants, and they practically take care of themselves, 

 the main work connected with their cultivation being to get 

 rid of the surplus plants. Mr. McElvery would doubtless give 

 further details relating to the arrangement of his tanks and 

 cultural directions to any one interested in the subject. 



Brooklyn, N. Y. M. B. C. 



Recent Publications. 



Timber-lrees, Native and Foreign. By the late Thomas 

 Laslett. Second edition, completely revised, vi'ith numerous 

 additions and illustrations, by H. Marshall Ward, Professor 

 of Botany in the Royal Indian Engineering College, 

 Cooper's Hall. Macmillan & Co., London and New York. 

 1894. 



A number of trees in North America are popularly called 

 Pitch Pines, a common appellation in this country for all 

 the species with two or three leaves in a sheath, thick 

 ridged bark and coarse resinous wood. The Pitch Pine of 

 Nevsf England and of the middle states on the Atlantic sea- 

 board is Pinus rigida, a common species at the north, but 

 in the south only found on some of the foot-hills of the 



Apalachian Mountains, reaching the extreme southern 

 limits of its range in northern Georgia. The wood of this 

 tree, except for fuel, has little value, although at the time 

 of the first settlement of the mountainous parts of the mid- 

 dle states, and before railroads made the transportation of 

 timber from one part of the country to another possible, the 

 trunks were sometimes hewn into sills and beams for 

 houses. In the first edition of Mr. Laslett's work we are 

 told that this tree is found spread over a wide tract of coun- 

 try between the Penobscot and Mississippi rivers and that 

 the wood is chiefly employed in shipbuilding. The wood 

 is carefully described, and tables showing the results of 

 experiments undertaken to test its strength are published. 

 We are told, too, that the' southern states produce the best 

 spars for masts, timber and plank, and that these are 

 shipped to England from the ports of Savannah, Darien 

 and Pensacola. In the present edition this chapter is 

 reprinted without change, except that the editor tells us that 

 Pinus rigida must be distinguished from the very dif- 

 ferent Pinus australis, called Pitch Pine in the southern 

 states. 



It is impossible to know, of course, whether the tables 

 relate to experiments made on the wood of Pinus rigida or 

 of Pinus australis ; presumedly, however, they relate to the 

 last species, for the wood of Pinus rigida probably rarely 

 reaches England, all the American pitch pine used in 

 Europe being the wood of Pinus palustris, of which Pinus 

 australis is a synonym. This confusion in the minds of 

 Europeans with regard to these two trees, one the most 

 valuable of all Pme-trees, and the other one of the least 

 valuable, is of ancient date, and year after year European 

 silviculturists import quantities of seeds of Pinus rigida 

 in the belief that they are to produce the trees that yield 

 the American pitch pine of commerce. Errors of this kind 

 die hard, but it was not to have been expected that such a 

 palpable one which has been exposed over and over again 

 in standard American publications would be perpetuated in 

 a work of such scientific pretensions as this. 



Timber and Timber-lrees deals primarily with timbers of 

 the British colonies, although this hardly seems the reason 

 for dismissing Pinus palustris, oneof the mostvaluable tim- 

 ber-trees of the world, with half a dozen lines ; but this short 

 paragraph enables the editor to insist, after having mixed 

 up this species with Pinus rigida, that " it must be distin- 

 guished from the northern Pinus rigida, etc., which is exported 

 under the same name." Nor does it seem possible that 

 any work upon timbers could have been written in these 

 days without some allusion to the California Redwood, or to 

 the Port Orford Cedar of Oregon, or to those most valuable 

 Japanese woods produced by two species of Chamascy- 

 paris and by Zelkowa Keaki. It seems strange, with our 

 ideas of botanical geography, to read of Picea Engel- 

 manni as an inhabitant of Canada and the northern states, 

 although this Rocky Mountain species does reach in a 

 comparatively depauperate form some of the mountain 

 ranges of British Columbia. 



Americans who have seen the great Live Oaks of the 

 south Atlantic coast region, with trunks six to eight feet in 

 diameter and immense limbs shooting out for a distance of 

 fifty or sixty feet, will be surprised to find this tree de- 

 scribed in a scientific work as a tree " of very moderate 

 dimensions when compared with the White Oak, its usual 

 height being only about thirty-five to forty-five feet, with a 

 diameter of twelve to eighteen inches." No specimens of 

 this wood could be obtained in England large enough for 

 testing, but Mr. Laslett judged from its appearance that it 

 was stronger than that of any other known Oak, although 

 in reality the wood bf eight other species of North Ameri- 

 can Oaks is stronger. "This has already been published 

 more than once; but, curiously enough. Professor Ward 

 appears to have overlooked the fact that the Government 

 of the United States instituted fifteen years ago a compre- 

 hensive series of tests to determine the value of the wood 

 of every North American tree, and that the results of these 

 tests were printed in elaborate tables in the ninth volume 



