I30 



Garden and Forest. 



[NrrMBBR 370. 



semble the scab and rot, and since the conditions for develop- 

 ing the fungi are the very ones which are most agreeable to 

 the insects, it is highly probable that much of the damage to 

 the potato-crop is in reality due to them. 



The Florida correspondent of The Country Genthman, in 

 speaking of the effects of the cold wave of February 7th on 

 the Orange groves of Florida, says that, according to a con- 

 servative estimate, all trees under ten years old, except those 

 in unusually favored situations, are dead to the ground or 

 within a foot or so of it. These will have to be cut off and 

 new trees grown from one or two of the sprouts that will 

 spring from the live stumps. The Orange, under favorable 

 conditions, is a vigorous grower and healthy roots will push 

 out a sprout which, in a single summer, will form a shapely 

 liead and put out fruit-buds the second spring. In older groves 

 the limbs up to one and a half inches in diameter are probably 

 dead, but as the bark on the trunk and larger limbs is prob- 

 ably sound, these groves will be returning good returns within 

 a decade. Of course, no one yet has any absolute knowledge 

 of the amount of damage to the trees. 



The project of making an interstate park which shall con- 

 tain The Dalles of the St. Croix is advocated both in Minnesota 

 and Wisconsin, the two states which own the land. It is pro- 

 posed that 250 acres in Wisconsin and no acres in Minnesota 

 shall be taken, and the property can be acquired now for a 

 comparatively small sum. The falls are not large, but the 

 rocky ledges which rise in an almost perpendicular wall on 

 either side of the stream, in some places to a height two hun- 

 dred and fifty feet, make a bit of highly picturesque scenery, 

 and the gray rocks here and there stained with brilliant colors 

 from the oxides of copper which they contain, or painted with 

 lichens and moss, have a rare beauty of their own. The Dalles 

 proper are about a mile in length, the river in its passage 

 through them averaging from fifty to three hundred feet in 

 width, with a depth of one hundred feet. It is said that a clear 

 title can now be obtained for all the land, and it seems to be a 

 wise plan to devote it to public use forever before its rustic 

 beauty shall have been entirely destroyed. 



In a review of the White Pine industry in the north-west since 

 1873 the North-western Litniberinan, after setting forth what 

 these great Pine forests have done in making possible the settling 

 of southern Minnesota, Iowa and the Missouri valley, shows that 

 from 1873, when the panic occurred which caused extreme 

 stagnation of business, the annual pine product of that region 

 had not reached four billion feet, and owing to the hard times 

 that amount of production was not reached until 1879, when 

 specie payments were resumed. Steadily increasing, the pro- 

 duction reached nearly eight billions of teet in 1884, when it 

 fell off a trifle, and then began to increase until 1892, when 

 it reached the enormous total of about nine billion feet. 

 During the last two years there has been a great decline in the 

 output of pine, especially in lower Michigan. The production 

 in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota is likely to continue for 

 some years, however, and then when the decline shall become 

 marked in that part of (lie field we may expect a rapid subsi- 

 dence of the northern White Pine industry. 



Specimens of discolored leaves of the La France Rose, 

 rrrovvn in Philadelphia, were lately sent to Professor Galloway, 

 of the Agricultural Department of Washington, for examina- 

 tion, with the request that he would determine, if possible, the 

 cause. Replying in the Florists' Exchange, he suggests that 

 since there was no fungus found, the injury may be due 

 to the action of some poisonous vapors. This was improba- 

 ble, however, since a poison vapor would naturally affect both 

 sides of the leaf, while the disfiguration in this case was con- 

 fined entirely to the upper surface ofthe leaves. It was, there- 

 fore, suggested that there might have been some injurious 

 substance in the water with which the leaves were sprinkled. 

 Professor Galloway quotes an interesting article from some 

 German periodical, in which it seems to be demonstrated that 

 Rose-leaves in an outdoor garden were injured by vapor from 

 asphalt which was washed out of the air by falling rain and 

 dropped upon the foliage. Careful study seemed to prove that 

 the slight quantity of iron held in the vapor in the form of iron 

 salts caused the trouble. Of course, the quantity must have 

 been exceedingly minute in this case, and, therefore, it maybe 

 possible for an almost infinitessimal percentage of iron in 

 water used upon plants to bring about this discoloration, 

 which is caused by the precipitation of the tannin held in the 

 sap of the leaves. Begonias and other plants which contain no 

 tannin, when subject to the same conditions, received no 

 injury. 



The season for Cuba pineapples, which opens here about 

 the middle of April, is already anticipated by advance lots of 

 this fruit in shipments of 100 to 300 barrels. As many 3327,000 

 barrels arrived in a single week during last May. The variety 

 now beginning to come is the Red, or Strawberry pineapple, 

 and this will be in season here until the last of June. It ismost 

 abundant and in best condition in May, when it is in greatest 

 demand for preserving and for making extracts, its rich flavor 

 rendering it specially suitable for this use. The Sugar-loaf 

 pineapple, which comes early in June, continues through July. 

 Good pineapples now cost twenty-five to thirty-five cents each 

 at retail. Florida oranges seem to hold a place entirely their 

 own, for even the sliortage of 2,000,000 boxes of this fruit has not 

 made any extraordinary demand for other oranges, or materially 

 increased their prices. Seedling oranges from California sell 

 as low as $1.50 a box at wholesale, and from this the merchant 

 must deduct ninety cents for freight charges. Navel oranges 

 sell at $2.75 to $3.25 by the box. Sicily oranges have been sell- 

 ing at serious loss to importers, and fruit which cost $1.87 a 

 box in Sicily, with expenses for cartage, insurance, commis- 

 sion, etc., to be added, is sold here at auction for $1.25 to 

 $1.75, which means a loss of fifty to seventy-five cents a box. 

 Nearly 44,000 crates of cranberries had been received in this 

 market at this time last year, and about as many crates have 

 been handled here this year, but only 25,000 barrels, as against 

 51,000 barrels a year ago. The price this season reached 

 $14.00 a barrel at wholesale, fully double that of ordinary 

 seasons. 



Another of the Nestors of American botany has gone. This 

 time it is Isaac Sprague, for nearly half a century the most 

 skillful and prolific botanical draughtsman in America, who 

 died at his home in Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts, on the 

 15th instant. Isaac Sprague, the son of Isaac Sprague and his 

 wife, Mary Burr, was born in Hingham, on September 5th, 

 181 1. His father, a cooper by trade, was an intellectual man ; 

 his mother was known for her remarkalile judgment and com- 

 mon sense. The younger Isaac Sprague served his appren- 

 ticeship as a carriage-painter with an uncle, spending his holi- 

 days and spare hours learning to draw and paint. In 1834, 

 having come into possession of a copy of Nuttall's Orni- 

 thology, he began to study birds, all his leisure moments during 

 the next ten years being devoted to making himself acquainted 

 with their habits and structure, and in drawing birds and 

 plants. In 1840 Audubon came to visit a friend at Hingham 

 and was much impressed with Sprague's bird pictures, and 

 three years later, at Audubon's request, he passed a month 

 with him in New York, which led to his being invited to join 

 the great naturalist in an expedition to the upper Missouri to 

 assist in making drawings and sketches. A lark discovered 

 during this expedition was named by Audubon Alauda 

 Spraguei. In 1844, at the request of Professor Asa Gray, 

 Sprague visited him in Cambridge ; beginning about this 

 time his botanical work, with drawings, for Gray's Text-book 

 of Botany, and a series of large botanical charts used by Pro- 

 fessor Gray to illustrate a course of lectures in the Lowell 

 Institute. 



In 1845 Sprague established himself in Cambridge and de- 

 voted his time to scientific work. At this time he made the 

 very successful outline drawings for Mr. Emerson's Trees and 

 Shrubs of Massachusetts, a work which, in a second edition, he 

 illustrated at the end of his active career with beautiful colored 

 drawings. In 1848 the first volume of Professor Gray's Genera 

 Flora America: Boreali-Orien talis, a work intended to illustrate 

 the genera of North American plants, appeared. Unfortu- 

 nately, lack of support brought the undertaking to a close at 

 the end of the second volume ; the plates, two hundred in 

 number, were drawn in outline by Mr. Sprague with elaborate 

 analytical details and were far superior to any botanical draw- 

 ings that had been made in America at that time. They must 

 be considered Sprague's most important work and are still 

 models of their kind. His pencil illustrated Torrey's Planta 

 Fronontiatiic, and all of Dr. Gray's classical memoirs on the 

 plants collected by Charles Wright and others on the south- 

 western borders of the United States, and his report on the 

 plants collected in the Wilkes Expedition. His published 

 plates give, however, but a slight idea of Sprague's industry, 

 and he has left portfolios filled with drawings of birds, insects 

 and plants, and innumerable sketches. 



Spraguea, a beautiful little herb of the foothills of the Sierra 

 Nevada, was dedicated to him by Torrey in token of the ap- 

 preciation the masters of botanical science in America held 

 for this modest, retiring and industrious man, a true naturalist 

 and lover of nature, to whose skillful pencil much of the value 

 of their work was due. 



