September 25, 1895.] 



Garden and Forest. 



389 



appeared. Fruits are now setting. The other kinds will 

 behave in the same way, very likely. r- i- 



Santa Barbara, Caiir. i' ■ travceschl. 



Notes from the South-west. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — While the north and east have been suffering from 

 drought, the summer of 1895 has been memorable as a wet 

 season m the south-west. We always e.xpect a more or less 

 extended drought during the warm montlis, though usually 

 this does not set in early enough to prevent fair crops and fine 

 fruit. This year, however, there have been constant rains 

 here for the last six months. 



This wet weather has affected variously the farm, orchard 

 and flower garden. It is estimated that at least fifty per cent, 

 of the wheat in this section spoiled in the stacks. Much hay 

 was ruined also, but the crop as a whole was so great that the 

 loss was not felt. Of corn, our staple crop, the yield will be 

 tremendous. 



Showers by night and sunshine by day have given us the 

 finest fruit I ever saw. The hills of this particular range of the 

 Ozarks are full of Huckleberry-bushes. The leading fruit- 

 buyer of our little town considers it an e.xtra-good year when 

 he buys 400 gallons of this luscious native fruit. This year he 

 bought nearly 1,100 gallons, and refused 200 more for lack of a 

 market. The astonishing increase was brought about (i) by 

 the mammoth size the fruit attained, the largest berries reach- 

 ing almost the size of small cherries ; and (2) the long period 

 of ripening, which was over a period of nearly seven weeks, 

 instead of the usual month. Blackberries were brought in 

 from the valleys by the tubful. Apples and plums rotted from 

 lack of buyers. Peaches, which our growers think prefer dry 

 weather, have been below the average in size and quality. All 

 other fruit has been surpassingly fine. Our pears have often 

 weighed sixteen and eighteen ounces ; from one tree I gath- 

 ered more than a peck that would average three-fourths of a 

 pound apiece. The Ozarks may well boast of being one of the 

 best fruit regions in the world. The fruit crop of this year is 

 a revelation of what irrigation would do for us in ordinary 

 years. Our land is so rough and mountainous that irrigation 

 would of necessity be expensive, hut with such an object- 

 lesson before us there is little doubt that it would pay. 



In the flower garden many of the annuals and bedding-plants 

 were drowned out while yet small and feeble. Naturally, such 

 exceptional weather has brought about some exceptional re- 

 sults. Crinums we always grow in the open ground in sum- 

 mer. Usually they bloom three or four times in the season 

 with us. This year the leaves have grown to prodigious 

 length, but not a flower-stalk has appeared. Hybrid perpetual 

 Rose-bushes have grown to a height of eight and nine feet, but 

 the flowers have been less plentiful than usual. In general 

 the tendency has been toward an abnormal growth in length 

 of shoots. Some shrubs have grown as much in height this 

 season as in the previous four seasons put together. Yester- 

 day we measured a summer's shoot of Snowball that was 

 eight feet long. Paulownia imperialis, a strong specimen 

 of which we grow as an annual shrub, cutting it to the ground 

 each spring, so that new and fast-growing shoots are thrown 

 up, has reached a height this year of over seventeen feet. 



Take it, all in all, it has been a season whose like we may 

 never see again. We have some curiosity as to whether these 

 quick, soft growths will harden into ripened wood that will 

 endure the winter. 



McDonald County, Mo. Lora b. La Alance. 



Rhus Poisoning. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — I have read with interest your articles on the Poison 

 Ivy, but none of the remedies which have been suggested by 

 your correspondents have been set forth with any confidence. 

 My inference is that science has as yet discovered no certain 

 preventive or cure for this affliction. I venture, however, to 

 say that the common Houseleek has proved very helpful to 

 me. Some time ago I was severely poisoned, and a friend 

 with whom I was stopping in the country advised me to get 

 some Hen-and-Chickens, which I afterward learned was the 

 common name for SempervivumTectorum, a plant often found 

 in old country gardens. The directions were to take the fleshy 

 leaves, put them in a bag made of old thin muslin, and after 

 bruising them to a pulp lay the bag on the affected parts. I 

 did not follow this direction closely, but merely crushed the 

 leaves and spread them with the juice over the irritated places, 

 with the result that the pain diminished, the poison ceased to 



spread and the pustules soon dried up. It may be that some 

 persons are more susceptible to this remedy than others are, 

 just as some persons are more susceptible to the poison, but 

 it is worth trying. 



Greenville, N. Y. R. A. 



Myrosma canngefolia (Calathea myrosma). 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — In the fall of 1S93, Dammann & Co., of Naples, offered 

 this plant with a glowing description of its merits as "a deco- 

 rative plant of high order, with Canna-like leaves and profuse 

 white flowers, and as being a valualile plant to cross witli the 

 popular dwarf Cannas." The plant has since then been offered 

 liere by dealers as the White Canna, with the same description. 

 Purchasers of the plants have since that time been interested in 

 the supposed treasure, which, however, refused to flower 

 under any treatment. Old plants have at last flowered, and it is 

 no great surprise to find them Hedychium coronarium, as the 

 plants have always given indications of being a Gingerwort 

 and not a Calathea. It is to be hoped that American florists 

 will no longer continue to disseminate this plant under an 

 entirjely false name and description. 



Elizabeth. N.J. /• N. Gerard. 



Recent Publications. 



Irrigation Farming. By Lute \^'ilco.x. New York : 

 Orange Judd Co. 



The practice of irrigation is as old as agriculture. In- 

 deed, it is an essential part of agriculture in many of the 

 most fruitful regions of the world, and it is certainly a 

 factor of growing importance in the cultivation of the soil 

 over a large portion of the western half of the United 

 States. Even in our eastern states the droughts which 

 come in one or another part of Ihe summer almost an- 

 nually, make it worth while to consider the question 

 whether it will not pay to take precautions against 

 these arid periods by some arrangements for supplement- 

 ing the summer rainfall. Where special crops, such as 

 Asparagus, Celery and Strawberries, are grown, it has 

 already been proved that irrigation, to a certain extent, will 

 pay in the east, and wherever land is situated with a con- 

 venient supply of water that can be distributed over its 

 surface the possible advantages of the practice are certainly 

 worth considering. This book was written in Colorado, 

 and, of course, the great bulk of it is a description of 

 methods and appliances adapted for use on the great plains. 

 But the various constructions that are here figured and 

 described, with the methods of applying water to vine- 

 yards, orchards, gardens and field crops, will be interesting 

 to any reader, and no tiller of the soil can read these chap- 

 ters without having his views broadened and gaining 

 ideas which he can put to practical use on his own land, 

 wherever it may be. 



Notes. 



New lemons, from Malaga, are already here; the first lot of 

 1,000 boxes sold at wholesale auction on Friday brought 

 $5.62)4 to $6. 37)4 a box. Some 50,000 boxes of this fruit are 

 expected here in the first week of October. 



Ipomceas, which were sent out last spring under the name 

 of the Imperial Japanese Morning Glories, have proved to be 

 about all that was claimed for them in robustness of liabit, in 

 the luxuriousness of their leaves, many of which are mottled 

 or checkered, and the rich marking and shading of their flow- 

 ers. We apprehend they will not differ from other Ipomteas 

 in the energetic way in which they reproduce themselves from 

 seed, and that land once seeded with them will continue to 

 produce them forever. 



Mr. J. H. Hale is Satisfied that the Japan plum in Georgia 

 will form a inore profitable market fruit even than peaches. 

 The trees are strong growers and come into bearing a year 

 alter planting ; in two years they yield half a bushel each, and 

 more, of course, as they grow older. The fruit as grown in 

 Georgia is very large and brilliantly colored, and has a tough 

 skin that makes it easy to ship. Such varieties as the Burbank, 

 for example, if picked while green, but fully grown, and 

 wrapped in paper, can be carried for two or three weeks and 

 will yet ripen into a rich, sweet fruit with fine color. The sea- 

 son of shipping ranges through June and early July. The 



