3IO 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 388. 



says that at New Jerusalem, in that state, one of his neighbors 

 not long ago chopped down a Eucalyptus wliicli he had him- 

 self planted nineteen years before. The tree yielded four 

 cords of stove-wood, and it had measured sixty-three feet in 

 height, twelve feet three inches in circumference at the base, 

 and eight feet nine inches at eight feet above the ground. 



The grounds of the Berlin Industrial Exhibition, to be held 

 during the summer of 1S96, will, it is promised, be exception- 

 ally attractive. Their chief feature will be a large lake formed 

 by the flooding of the present great playgrounds of Treptow 

 Park. A promenade shaded by four rows of Plane-trees now 

 encircles the playground and will form an admirable border 

 for the lake, to create which 48,000 cubic metres of earth must 

 be removed. The water will be pumped up to heights over- 

 hanging the lake, whence it will fall into it by means of fine 

 cascades, finally flowing oft into the river Spree. But the 

 most interesting feature of the scheme is that the city authori- 

 ties have Stipulated that, when the exhibition is over, the play- 

 grounds must be restored to their original condition, which 

 will necessitate among other things the storing away of the 

 24,000 square yards of sod which now cover them. 



Blackberries are such strong-growing plants that they need 

 a good deal of moisture, and, therefore, the field where they 

 are set should be plowed and subsoiled to a depth of, at least, 

 twenty inches, and every clod should be broken very fine, so 

 that when the ground settles compactly it will hold a great 

 deal of water. The North Atnericaii Horticulturist points out 

 that it is a great mistake to leave off cultivation as soon as the 

 berry season is over, since the pickers will tramp the ground 

 hard, so that the water will evaporate quickly from the soil 

 and the plants will at once ripen up their wood. With the fall 

 rains a new growth will begin, which, of course, will be green 

 and sappy, and unable to endure a hard winter. The best 

 practice is to give frequent and shallovv cultivation from early 

 spring until the middle of August or the first of September. 



The July number of The Journal of Botany contains a 

 biographical notice, from the pen of Sir Joseph Hooker, of Dr. 

 David Lyall, who was surgeon on one of the English men-of- 

 war which, under Sir James Ross, explored antarctic regions 

 from 1839 'o 1842. Dr. Lyall died last IVlarch, in his seventy- 

 ninth year, after a long service as medical officer and naturalist 

 in the navy. Thirty years ago he was surgeon to the Land 

 Boundary Commission, under Sir John Hawkins, that surveyed 

 the boundary line between British Columbia and the United 

 Stales. It was on this expedition that he discovered the rare 

 alpine Larch-tree bearing his name, which is thus made 

 familiar to students of American trees. The scientific results 

 obtained by Dr. Lyall on this expedition are published in an 

 important paper in the seventh volume of the Journal of the 

 Linnaan Society. This contains an excellent botanical account 

 of the regions between the coast and altitudes of eight thou- 

 sand feet in the Rocky Mountains, in which the various zones 

 of vegetation in British Columbia are indicated and scien- 

 tifically portrayed. 



The forty-seventh volume of The Garden is dedicated to 

 Edouard F. Andr^, the distinguished French landscape-gar- 

 dener and the editor of the Revue Horticole. The dedication, 

 which is accompanied by a portrait, contains an interesting 

 sketch of his useful and laborious career, setting forth in detail 

 the vast amount of scientific, literary and artistic work which 

 IVlonsieur Andrg, who has only just passed his fifty-fifth year, 

 has already accomplished. A practical horticulturist who for 

 several years directed the horticultural works of the city of 

 Paris, an accomplislied scientific traveler in tropical regions 

 that before his time were practically unknown to the botanist, 

 an excellent botanist with an unrivaled knov.dedge of culti- 

 vated plants, a designer of most of the important parks, public 

 and private, that have been created in Europe during the last 

 thirty years, an excellent and faithful journalist. Monsieur 

 Andre has distinguished himself in all these varied fields of 

 intellectual and physical activity. Still as energetic as ever in 

 the development of his artistic and scientific career, and with 

 every prospect of many more years of usefulness before him, 

 it is pleasant to know that his eldest son, a distinguished en- 

 gineer, is following faithfully and successfully in his father's 

 artistic profession. 



Experiments have shown that mild currents of electricity 

 may have a beneficial effect on the growth of plants, but, of 

 course, a heavy charge will kill a plant just as lightning will 

 kill a tree. Professor Dolbear, in the current number of The 

 Cosmopolitan, says that this quality of the electric currents has 

 been used to destroy weeds that grow by railroad-tracks and 

 on adjacent embankments. Without explaining the apparatus 



particularly, it is said that a metallic strip behind the car 

 stretching across the track a short distance above the ground, 

 is provided with many fine wires, which hang from it like the 

 loose teeth of a rake. Through these teeth the electricity is 

 discharged as the car moves forward, and every weed touched 

 by a live wire receives a deadly current which traverses the 

 roots to their very tips and kills the plant outright. Very 

 evidently a similar plan can be used for ridding cultivated 

 fields of Daisies, Chicory or other plants when their stems 

 reach above the grass about them. A two-wheeled vehicle, 

 like a horse hay-rake, carrying a battery, could be driven 

 across a field so as to kill every plant with which the metallic- 

 conductor should come in contact. In this way acres of valua- 

 ble land could be rid of coarse weeds in a day, with the assur- 

 ance that no plant fairly struck would ever start into life again. 



In the fifty car-loads of California fruits sold here last week 

 were Egg, Columbia, Quackenbos, Magnum Bonum, Brad- 

 shaw, Burbank and Bulgarian plums. Peaches from California 

 are as yet neither plentiful nor showy. Nectarines from the 

 Pacific slope sell for $2.00 to $2.50 a crate, wholesale, and the 

 best Bartlett pears average $2.00 a box. Large quantities of 

 peaches continue to come from Georgia, as many as sixty-two 

 car-loads reaching this market in two days. The best peaches 

 now seen here are some large and handsome Elbertas from 

 that state. Troth, York and Rivers peaches are already here 

 from Maryland and Delaware, and a few premature ones from 

 New Jersey. There has been a glut of apples and pears 

 owing to the shipment of large quantities of windfalls and 

 immature fruit, and prices for choice hand-picked apples and 

 pears have suffered in consequence. Summer pippins of the 

 highest grade have brouglit but $1.25 to $1.50 a barrel at 

 wholesale, and Red Astrachans but sixty cents a crate. Le 

 Conte, Bartlett, Jargonelle, Catherine and Bell pears are abun- 

 dant, and cost from seventy-five cents to 52.00 a barrel. 

 Moore's Early grapes from the Carolinas sell for fifteen cents 

 a pound at retail, fancy Delawares commanding liigher prices. 

 No grapes from California are yet in the market, although a 

 sm.all shipment of a seedless grape known as the Coverley 

 was sent from Palm Springs about the middle of July. This 

 is a little tropical valley on the edge of the great Colorado 

 desert, about one hundred miles east of Los Angeles, and the 

 grape is small, sweet and firm enough to bear transportation 

 well. It grows in large clusters and makes a fine appearance, 

 and a recent dispatch to the New York Tribune says that it is 

 rapidly coming into favor as an early market grape in southern 

 California. Red and black currants, raspberries, blackberries 

 and huckleberries are abundant, and cost from ten to fifteen 

 cents a quart. 



Oneof the most famous of tlie beautiful Renaissance villas 

 of Italy is the Villa Lante, which stands about two miles north- 

 east of Vilerbo, on the edge of a village called Bagnaia. For- 

 tunately, it is always accessible to visitors, for, says a recent 

 writer, it is "the one in which the best qualities of all the 

 others are united in a faultless whole," and its gardens are in 

 a better state of preservation than is often the case. "The 

 approach," we are told, " is up a narrow, dingy street, which 

 ends at the entrance to the villa. The latter is comparatively 

 small and is built on an incline which is a continuation of the 

 grade of the street. In the centre of the first level a bronze 

 fountain with four upright male figures plays in the middle of 

 a square marble basin. The garden surrounding it, which is 

 itself inclosed by tall hedges, is of the same proportions as 

 the basin. From this level, two ramps, built in the approved 

 Roman fashion, ascend to another on which stood the two 

 little palaces of the estate, both alike and placed one at either 

 side, say, a hundred and fifty, perhaps two hundred, feet of 

 ground between. On the terrace that occupies this central 

 space, a semicircular fountain in three stages abuts, and on 

 either side staircases lead higher up. Another fountain is dis- 

 covered on this second terrace, another appears on the third, 

 still another adorns the fourth, and, finally, at the top, a wide 

 basin with fountains above it reveals the source of the spark- 

 ling water that goes merrily down to the bronzes. It does not 

 go through subterranean passages or through prosaic pipes. 

 It flows from fountain to fountain through richly wrought 

 stone channels ; it falls from one basin to another, and wfiat 

 you see as you stand beside the highest of these many recep- 

 tacles is a perfect arabesque of hoary stone with countless jets 

 of silvery water gleaming in the sun. You see a succession of 

 steps, inclines, balustrades and urns, all heavily decorated, all 

 covered with flowers and vines, all shadowed, in spite of the 

 sun, by magnificent Oaks, descending with indescribable pomp 

 to the gateway far below. No words could picture the lovely 

 scene." 



