June 26. 1895. 



Garden and Forest. 



259 



be in the cost of the finished product, which might make it too 

 Iiigh-priced. But with the constantly increasuig- demand for 

 delicacies of this sort there ought to be a satisfactory market 

 for meritorious goods. 

 Redlands, Calif. William III. Tisdale. 



Meetings of Societies. 



Convention of Nurserymen at Indianapolis. 



'T'HE twentieth annual convention of the American Nur- 

 ■*■ serymen's Association was held at Indianapolis on the I2th 

 and I3tli of June. About 150 members were present, a larger 

 attendance than was expected, as there are few nursery hrms 

 in Indiana. But Indianapolis proved to be a good gathering- 

 place, and although the central Mississippi states were most 

 fully represented, there was a good attendance from the east 

 and south. 



In welcoming the nurserymen to Indiana, Governor Matthews 

 urged the importance of reforesting various parts of the state, 

 and called attention to his advice upon the subject in his last 

 message to the Legislature. Professor F. M. Webster, of the 

 Ohio Experiment .Station, read a vigorous paper upon the San 

 JosiJ scale in the east, in which he gave a history of its intro- 

 duction here and a brief account of its habits. The greater 

 part of the paper, however, was a discussion of the necessity 

 of greater care in the dissemination of nursery stock, and the 

 need of stringent laws for the suppression of such pests in the 

 future. He boldly criticised the action of certain nurserymen, 

 whose names he mentioned, for their neglect to take radical 

 measures to stamp out the scale on their grounds. The asso- 

 ciation endorsed this criticism by a formal vote of approval. 

 Professor Bailey, being called upon, said that he, himself, had 

 little fear of the scale, for he had observed that insects do little 

 harm if they are dead, and we have a ready means of killing 

 this pest with a strong wash of whale-oil soap. Neither was 

 he in favor of laws for the suppression of insects of this kind 

 or of the general types of fungous diseases. It would be next 

 to impossible to frame practicable laws that would be effective ; 

 and inasmuch as the enforcement of such laws rests almost 

 wholly upon public knowledge and sentiment, he would prefer 

 to trust to the diffusion of knowledge than to the enactment 

 of law. 



The Japanese Plums were warmly commended by W. F. 

 Heikes, of Alabama, who found them to be hardy and pro- 

 ductive. He seemed to prefer Abundance and Burbank, but 

 thought well of Willard, Yellow Japan, Normand and Kerr. 

 R. C. Berckmans, Georgia, spoke in the highest praise of these 

 Plums, as a class, for the south, and also said that they are 

 receiving commendatory reports of them from customers in 

 south Africa. Other persons, from Illinois and other parts of 

 the Mississippi valley, reported that these Plums bloom too 

 early and lack hardiness. It was evident from the discussion 

 that the varieties and nomenclature of these fruits were not 

 well understood. 



«A thoughtful paper upon " The Testing and Introduction of 

 New Varieties of Fruits" was presented' by C. L. Watrous, of 

 Des Moines, Iowa, in which it was urged that greater attention 

 be given to the adaptabilities of varieties to particular geo- 

 graphical regions, and that the indiscriminate introduction of 

 novelties should be curtailed. Every distinct life zone or geo- 

 graphical area has needs which can, undoubtedly, be best met 

 by varieties which originate in that area. Mr. Watrous does 

 not believe that varieties can be thoroughly tested before they 

 are introduced, because to test them in all places is virtually 

 to introduce them. The remedy for the present flood of un- 

 satisfactory varieties is more thoughtful care, on the part of 

 introducers, respecting the varied needs of the different parts 

 of our great country. 



Professor L. H. Bailey, in speaking of " Reflective Impres- 

 sions of the Nursery Industry," said that the stpple varie- 

 ties of the nurseries are not necessarily the best varieties for 

 the fruit-grower. The nurseryman's ideal of a variety is one 

 which is a good grower when young, but many of the poorer 

 growers are the best bearers and often give the most profita- 

 ble fruit. Every one is ready to admit, probably, that the Bald- 

 win Apple has been planted too freely, and the Canada Red 

 and other wayward growers too little. The trouble is that our 

 conception and definition of a first-class tree — that is, a first- 

 class tree in the nursery, for sale — are at variance with truth. 

 We define a first-class tree to be one which is straight, smooth, 

 tall and stocky, but very many good varieties will not grow 

 that way. A truer definition would be that a first-class tree is 

 one which is healthy and well-grown, and which has the char- 

 acteristics of the variety. The speaker thought it time for the 

 nurseryman to begin to educate the people to the necessity of 



choosing varieties with reference to their ultimate behavior, 

 rather than to place so much emphasis upon the mere forni 

 or comeliness of the young tree in the nursery ; but the first 

 means of spreadmg this knowledge is the growing of a wider 

 range of varieties which are adapted to particular needs and 

 areas, for, at the present time, the buyer finds only a compara- 

 tively small list of established varieties from which to select. 

 Some of the barrenness of orchards may be due to the want 

 of proper selection of buds or cions when the trees are prop- 

 agated. Every tree has an individuality or habit of its own, 

 and it is not natural for some trees to bear as heavily as others! 

 Cions tend to perpetuate these individual characteristics. He 

 would therefore discourage the use of buds or cions taken 

 from nursery stock, and he suggested that it might be a safe 

 stroke of business for a nurseryman to propagate his stock 

 from bearing trees of known history, and to let the fact be 

 known. 



N. H. Albaugh, Ohio, spoke upon Peach Culture, empbasiz- 

 mg the miportance of good, clean, yearling stock, and careful 

 attention to digging out the borer. A Peach-tree mav be ex- 

 pected to give a good crop when four years planted. The 

 Sneed is undoubtedly the earliest peach known, a conclusion 

 which was sustained by other members. It is over a week 

 earlier than the the Alexander or Amsden. It is thought to 

 be an offshoot of the Chinese Cling type. Specimens from 

 Tennessee were on exhibition. Mr. A. Willis, of Kansas, after 

 having tried many ways of increasing his retail nursery trade, 

 found that the most effective way is to send a live agent after 

 orders. This conclusion seemed to meet with the approval of 

 the association. 



^ The officers for the ensuing year are Silas Wilson, Atlan- 

 tic City, Iowa, President; George A. Sweet, Dansville New 

 York, Vice-President ; George C. Seager, Rochester New 

 York, Secretary ; N. A. Whitney, Franklin Grove. Illinois, 

 Treasurer. The association meets next year in Chicao-o. 



The Boston Rose and Sti-awberry Show. 



"n OSES in eastern Massachusetts have been unusually poor 

 -^^ this year. The season has been a trying one to them as 

 It has to all sorts of hardy plants. The drv summer of 1804 

 was followed by a cold winter, introduced in November by an 

 ice and wind storm of unparalleled severity that worked havoc 

 with trees and shrubs. Great heat in the early days of Mav 

 when the thermometer recorded over ninety degrees, Fahren- 

 heit, was followed in the same week by killing frosts, which 

 were probably the direct cause that the flowers' of hybrid Per- 

 petual Roses were not abundant and well formed in tliat part 

 of the country. The severest drought that eastern Massachu- 

 setts has felt in the month of June has not improved the Roses 

 and gardeners have certainly every excuse for their lack of 

 success this year. But if the flowers were poor, there was all 

 the more reason why they should have been tastefully and 

 properly displayed. The Massachusetts Horticultural Society 

 has long enjoyed the deserved reputation of keeping well up 

 with horticultural progress, and it is a new departure for it to 

 take a long step backv/ard. Twenty years ago the society 

 inaugurated in this country the system, which had previously 

 been adopted in England and France, of requiring exhibitors 

 of roses to arrange tlieir flowers in boxes covered with moss 

 which hid the tin tubes that held the flowers, and furnished 

 the best possible background to display the form and color of 

 the individual blooms. This plan, which is practiced in all 

 foreign exhibitions, made the Boston Rose shows attractive 

 and popular, and did a great deal to stimulate the cultivation 

 of the queen of flowers all over the United States. After a 

 number of years some Massachusetts exhibitors objected to 

 the cost of the boxes and the trouble of procuring the moss, 

 and persuaded the society to assume the responsibility of sup- 

 plying these adjuncts to the exhibitions. This year the com- 

 mittee of arrangements, finding that it required some trouble 

 and foresight to secure a good supply of fresh moss, did away 

 with the boxes altogether, and allowed exhibitors to show thei'r 

 flowers in small glass vitses. Under these conditions the best 

 roses in the world, in competition with the ordinary lots 

 shown in Boston last week, would not have been worth' look- 

 ing at if these had been arranged on moss. As it was, flowers 

 half-drooping on their stems, facing some in one direction and 

 some in another, the small wliite' paper labels almost indis- 

 Unguishable on the white cloths of the tables, sometimes in 

 iiont and sometimes behind the vases, or with no labels at all, 

 did not make an interesting or instructive exhibition. 



Among flowering plants the best and most conspicuous ex- 

 hibit was a lage bank of well-flowered, healthy Orchids, prin- 

 cipally Cattleya Mossias and Miltonia Phalasnopsis, exhibited 



