February 37, 1895.] 



Garden and Forest. 



89 



ideas in the matter. Disks of Spruce were cut from the region 

 of Moosehead Lake, in Maine, and from eastern slopes of the 

 Presidential range, in New Hampshire, and sent to the United 

 States Forestry Division for testing their strength. When ex- 

 amined by the Division most of these disks which show the 

 full number of rings to correspond with the cold seasons have 

 eighty rings outside of all the perceptible thin rings. 

 Evanston, III. Austin Cary. 



[To substantiate his view Mr. Cary sends a table, com- 

 piled from his own notes, on the measurement of these 

 disks. It is only necessary to add that the figures substan- 

 tiate what has been said. In most cases the widest one of 

 the zone of narrow rings measures half a millimeter, the 

 narrowest ones about a quarter of a millimeter, while the 

 nearest ring on the inside or the outside of the zone averages 

 a full millimeter in width. — Ed.] 



Meetings of Societies. 



The American Carnation Society. — I. 



THE annual meeting of this society, which was held last 

 week in Horticultural Hall, Boston, was only its fourth 

 one, but the number of delegates and visitors and the size and 

 completeness of the exhibition would have done credit to an 

 association of much greater age. Mr. Eugene Dailledouze, 

 the President, frankly stated that the hope of obtaining new 

 varieties was the life of the organization. Both llowers and 

 plants had been improved much in the past, but still they were 

 in search of others superior to anything yet possessed, and, so 

 long as they were inspired by the prospect of success in this 

 direction, the society would continue vigorous and progressive. 

 All the best commercial Carnations are worth a good deal 

 apart from their exhibition value, and Mr. Dailledouze offered 

 some suggestions as to the best way of finding out the full 

 merits of new plants as all-round varieties. He advocated the 

 plan adopted by the Chrysanthemum Society of appointing 

 reputable judges in different parts of the country wliere 

 Chrysanthemums are produced largely, who, without favor or 

 prejudice, can pronounce judgment on new plants at their 

 homes. Judges at these Carnation centres should see the 

 plants at least twice during the season while they are growing, 

 so that they can report at the annual meetmgs as to their habit 

 and general qualities. This would enable the judges to ob- 

 serve the weak points of a plant as well as its good ones. No 

 one can estimate the merits of a plant simply from seeing a 

 cluster of its flowers on an exhibition table, 'i'he President 

 also suggested the offering of gold and silver medals for new 

 varieties, and advised that no medals should be given for a 

 variety unless it had been tested in five or six distinct localities 

 and reported on at the annual meeting. This would give an 

 idea of its general usefulness and decide whether it had more 

 than local value. Persons who are testing new varieties, and 

 writing of them, ought to describe the house in which the 

 plants are grown, the composition of the soil, any special con- 

 ditions of their cultivation and the varieties which they most 

 resemble in good or bad habits. He gave many examples of 

 plants like Mrs. Fisher, Lizzie McGowan and Tidal Wave, 

 which are not good in some parts of the country, while they 

 are extremely useful in others. In his opinion fifty blooms at 

 least of a new variety should be shown when competing for a 

 prize. This requirement ought to be no hardship, because no 

 one would think of disseminating a new variety unless he had 

 a thousand plants of it, and if fifty exhibition blooms caimot 

 be secured from that number of plants the variety is not wor- 

 thy of being put on sale. He also advocated the showing of 

 plants of new varieties as well as their cut flowers, so as to 

 afford an opportunity for observing their habit and character 

 of growth. He also thought that new varieties which had been 

 grown under glass all summer, when exhibited, should be put 

 in a separate class from those which had grown out-of-doors. 

 He did not agree with the statement that certain plants should 

 be grown for cut flowers, and others should l:>e used for cut- 

 tings. A Carnation is in its best possible condition when pro- 

 ducing the best flowers, and cuttings from such stock ought 

 to be the best that can be secured. No science can be dis- 

 played in growing Carnations for cuttings, but the test of skill 

 lies in producing good flowers. No poor or half-grown plants 

 ever throw first-class flowers. 



In Mr. Lonsdale's paper, which discussed alphabetically 

 sixty-seven different varieties, noting their good and bad quali- 

 ties and pedigrees, and explaining why some had been super- 

 seded and others had remained popular, he stated that several 



varieties had been so long before the public as to discredit the 

 prevailing opinion that a variety of Carnation is necessarily 

 short-lived, and that new ones must be constantly produced 

 simply to take the places of those which die out. Buttercup 

 had been grown, for example, for nearly twenty years, and it 

 is still in the front rank. This is a variety with which Mr. 

 Lonsdale had never been successful until three years ago, 

 when he began to keep it under glass all the time, and since 

 then it had done admirably. He thought that many other 

 varieties wiiich had failed indifferent places might show them- 

 selves of great value when treated in the same way, just as 

 Roses and Chrysanthemums are. Some remarkable prize- 

 winners, like Grace Battles and Edna Craig, are now rarely 

 seen because they are subject to disease. One variety, named 

 Sea Gull, which won a gold medal at New York three years 

 ago, when it defeated Lizzie McGowan and sold for a good 

 price, was found on trial to be so worthless that it was never 

 sent out. This shows the need of some radical change in the 

 method of judging novelties. 



Professor Halsted, of Rutgers College, read a paper on the 

 fungous diseases which attacked Carnations, describing the 

 rust, the leaf spot, the black speck, the ring mold and bacte- 

 riosis. He had specimens of each of these principal enemies 

 of the Carnation placed under the microscope so that they 

 could be studied and detected. He stated that there were 

 other diseases which attacked the Carnation, but these five 

 were those which were to be expected and which must be con- 

 tended with. He recommended every grower to keep on hand 

 a good description of each of these diseases and to examine 

 every affected plant with a hand lens, or, if possible, with a com- 

 pound microscope. 



Mr. John N. May's new seedlings, Maud Dean, Lena Saling and 

 Dean Hole, which we have already described in this journal, 

 received certificates of merit. Certificates were also given to 

 Storm King and Meteor, exliibited Ijy the Cottage Gardens, 

 Queens, New York ; to Aramazinda and Triumph, exhibited by 

 E. G. Hill & Co., of Richmond, Indiana, and to Delia Fox, ex- 

 hibited by Myers & Santman, Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania. 

 The committee commended the last firm for sending a plant 

 of Delia Fox to the exhibition, and a plant, too, which had 

 been grown on a bench and not in a pot, so that they could 

 judge very well of its character for commerce. The exhibition 

 was admirable in quality, and, besides the Carnations, there 

 were enough Palms, Orchids and other plants contributed by 

 Mr. John L. Gardiner, Mr. N. T. Kidder and others to serve 

 the purpose of general decoration. In the class for one hun- 

 dred blooms the plants which won were : Alaska, white ; Wil- 

 liam Scott, light pink ; Tidal Wave, dark pink ; Jubilee, scar- 

 let ; Ferdinand Mangold, crimson ; Buttercup, yellow ; Minnie 

 Cook, variegated. For fifty blooms, the prizes were gained 

 by Storm King, white ; William Scott, light pink ; Jubilee, 

 scarlet ; Meteor, crimson ; Bouton d'Or, yellow, and Helen 

 Keller, variegated. A special premium, offered by the Flor- 

 ists' Exchange for a vase of llowers showing tlie best culture, 

 was given to Edwin Lonsdale for a group of variegated flow- 

 ers of Helen Keller. In the report it was stated that the pre- 

 mium was awarded to Mr. Lonsdale because the variety was 

 difficult to grow to such perfection, and, therefore, it sliowed 

 the highest color. Equally well-grown plants were shown by 

 Dailledouze Brothers and H. K. South worth, the latter with the 

 yellow-flowered Buttercup. The other leading prizes were 

 taken by W. E. Chitty, Dailledouze Brothers, E. G. Hill & Co., 

 William Nicholson, H. K. Southworth, C. W. Ward and Fred 

 Dorner. 



New York was selected as the place for holding the next 

 annual meeting. Fred Dorner, of Lafayette, Indiana, was 

 elected President ; John N. May, of Summit, New Jersey, 

 Vice-President ; A. M. Herr, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Sec- 

 retary, and Charles H. Allen, of New York, Treasurer. A 

 committee, consisting of A. M. Herr, Edward Lonsdale and 

 Robert Craig, were appointed to revise the list of Carnations, 

 to strike out the names of varieties no longer grown, and pre- 

 pare a new working list. 



For lack of space our notes on some of the new varieties, 

 and on a few of the standard sorts as well, are postponed until 

 next week. '^ 



Notes. 



Following the example of the common garden Pea, a sport 

 of the Sweet Pea seems to have abandoned its climbing habit 

 and developed a dwarf variety which grows only five inches 

 high, making a low tuft of short branches, which bear white 

 flowers for an unusually long period, and in such quantities as 

 to cover the plant. The plant is named Cupid, and Burpee 



