490 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 406. 



in 1892, by John M. Holzinger. The report contains fig-ures of 

 Cardamine Leiberejii, a species from the Kootenai country, 

 here first described, and of the rather obscure Viola orbiculata, 

 a plant first collected by David Douglas more than sixty years 

 ago. 



In the botanic garden at Vienna there has been for many 

 years a Buckthorn shrub named Rhamnus hybrida, which 

 sprang from a cross between R. alpina and R. Alaternus. One 

 of the parent species, R. alpina, has deciduous leaves, which 

 are green in summer and wither and drop in the autumn. 

 The other has evergreen leaves, which last through the winter 

 and remain on the branches for two years. The hybrid pos- 

 sesses leaves which do not fall off in the autumn, nor do they 

 last fresh and green for two years, but they maintain their 

 verdure through one winter and fall in the spring when the 

 new shoots are sprouting from the buds. 



Some interesting experiments in subirrigation in the green- 

 house have been made at the Ohio state station and put on record 

 in Bulletin 61, in which the advantages of growing Lettuce in 

 this way are very plainly seen. We have already discussed 

 this matter at length in former numbers, but any one who 

 desires to learn about the details of the methods should send 

 for this bulletin to the station at Wooster, Ohio. One point is 

 worth noting here. It is generally understood that good head 

 lettuce cannot be grown on heavy soil by surface-watering, but 

 with subirrigation this soil can be utilized, and, therefore, this 

 manner of watering greatly enlarges the possibilities of Lettuce 

 cultivation. 



Part VII. of Bulletin No. 9 of Minnesota Botanical Studies 

 contains an important paper on the genus Cypripedium with 

 reference to Minnesota species, by Henrietta G. Fox. This is 

 illustrated by a map of North America showing the distribu- 

 tion of the genus Cypripedium on the continent, and by plates 

 of Cypripedium arietinum, C. Reginffi (C. spectabile), C. can- 

 didum, C. hirsutuni, C. acauleand C. parviflorum. The present 

 number also contains articles on the Poisonous Influence of 

 the various species of Cypripedium, by D. T. MacDougal ; Tree 

 Temperatures, recorded by Roy W. Squires ; on Some Hepati- 

 ca=" of Minnesota, by John W. Holzinger, and a Study of some 

 Minnesota Mycetozoa, by E.P.Sheldon. 



Mr. John Muir has been expressing some vigorous opinions 

 as to the mismanagement of the Yosemite Valley, and he 

 argues that the state of California should cede the valley back 

 to the UnitedStates Government, sothatitwiU no longer be the 

 prey of partisan politics. Mr. Muir declares that the pasturing 

 of horses and the growing of grain have exterminated the beau- 

 tiful flowers and shrubs which once made the level floor of 

 the valley so attractive. Within the boundaries of the Yose- 

 mite National Park, this growth, which had been killed out by 

 sheep and cattle, has been renewed under the guardianship of 

 the national cavalry, but in the valley itself there has been 

 constant deterioration because the commissioners are merely 

 politicians with no taste and no intelligent appreciation of the 

 beauty of natural objects. 



Emperor and Cornichon grapes are still coming from Cali- 

 fornia, four car-loads reaching this city during last week. 

 Advance shipments of California Navel oranges are already 

 on the way eastward. Some Havana oranges have arrived, 

 and small lots from Mexico. Arizona oranges are forwarded 

 as far eastward as Chicago, where their good qualities make a 

 ready market for this fruit. The first of the new crop Valencia 

 oranges reached this port yesterday. Jamaica oranges are, 

 however, the main dependence at this time. The season for 

 importing Almeria grapes is nearing a close. The total re- 

 ceipts in New York this year amount to 150,000 barrels, 35,000 

 more than came here last season. These grapes are of infe- 

 rior quality this year, and prices have accordingly ranged 

 low. The last sale of the season, announced to take place 

 to-day, comprises a cargo of 10,000 barrels. High prices are 

 maintained for cranberries on account of the short supply. 

 Nearly 2,500 barrels of this fruit were received in our mar- 

 kets last week and twice as many crates, and extra-large 

 varieties commanded $10.00 a barrel at wholesale. 



In a recent number of the University of Calif ornia Magazine, 

 Mr. Charles H. Shinn, in writing of the lavish way in which the 

 best parts of the California forests have been cleared away, 

 states that in the Comstock mines alone enough timber has 

 been used to build all the houses needed for a city of 50,000 

 inhabitants. He has seen the bottom of a cafion crowded for 

 miles with the trunks of pines from each one of which a few 

 flume-blocks or a log of butt-timber had been cut, while the 

 rest was left to decay. Not to mention the thousands of acres 



of the most magnificent coniferous timber known to man 

 destroyed by fires which have burned out the soil itself into 

 great pits, it is stated that the waste of timber in the Redwood 

 districts has been even more appalling than it has been in the 

 Sierras. More than once the world's record for the number of 

 feet cut in a day has been broken by some one of the saw- 

 mills of the coast Redwoods. So much lumber is still pro- 

 duced by rival millmen that it has not paid for cutting, and 

 some of the large California firms of lumbermen have become 

 bankrupt. Enormous trees that represent from 800 to 1,000 

 years of symmetrical growth have been sawed up with no 

 profit, or with actual loss, when, if they had been left to stand 

 a few decades longer, the profit might have been a thousand 

 dollars an acre. At the time of the American occupation of 

 California the forests covered, perhaps, 50,000 square miles. 

 Half of this has been cut over or is inaccessible, or consists of 

 species of less value than those which have heretofore been 

 cut. It is often asserted that California still has twenty mil- 

 lions of magnificent forest land, but the truth is that there is 

 left hardly fifteen million acres, and much of this has been cut 

 away. 



The early and untimely death of George M. Dawson at 

 Halifax is announced. Mr. Dawson was born in Piclou, Nova 

 Scotia, on August ist, 1849, 3"d was the son of Sir J. William 

 Dawson, principal of the McGill College, of Montreal, and 

 a distinguished geologist. He was appointed geologist and 

 naturalist to the North American Boundary Commission in 

 1873, and two years later published a report on the country 

 traversed between the Lake of the Woods and the Rocky 

 Mountains. In 1875 he was appointed a member of the 

 Geological Survey of Canada, and has been chiefly engaged 

 ever since in surveying and exploring western British America, 

 and in 18S7 was placed in charge of an expedition sent to the 

 Yukon River by the Dominion Government. As one of the 

 Behring Sea Seal Fishery Commissioners he passed the sum- 

 mer of 1891 in Alaska, investigating the facts connected with 

 this industry. In 1893 Mr. Dawson was elected President of 

 the Royal Society of Canada, and in January, 1895, director of 

 the Geological Survey of Canada. Mr. Dawson was specially in- 

 terested in trees and their distribution in British America, and 

 many important facts relating to them have been gathered 

 during his long journeys in the north-west provinces and 

 British Columbia. Mr. Dawson was the author of many 

 memoirs, principally geological, and several years ago he 

 published in The Canadian Naturalist an important paper on 

 the distribution of the trees of British Columbia, and botanists 

 have looked forward with confidence to increased activity in 

 the botanical and dendrological investigations of the survey 

 under his direction. 



The death is announced at Charleston, South Carolina, on 

 November 19th, of Francis Peyre Porcher, M. D., LL.D., the 

 distinguished physician and botanist. He was born in St. 

 John's, Berkeley, South Carolina, on the 14th of December, 

 1825, and was graduated from the South Carolina College in 

 1844 and from the Medical College of the State of South Carolina 

 in 1847. At the time of his death he occupied the chair of 

 IVIateria Medica and Therapeutics in this institution. Dr. Por- 

 cher was one of the editors of the Charleston Medical Journal 

 and Review, and was a voluminous writer on medical sub- 

 jects. During the War of Secession he was surgeon in charge 

 of Confederate hospitals at Norfolk and Petersburg, Virginia, 

 and at this time published his Resources of the Southern Fields 

 and Forests, the work by which he is best known to botanists. 

 This was prepared and published by order of the Surgeon- 

 General of the Confederate armies in order to make known the 

 botanical and other valuable properties of southern plants and 

 their availability for use in a country shut off from communi- 

 cation with other parts of the world. He also published a 

 Medico-Botanical Catalogue of the Plants and Ferns of St. 

 John's, Berkeley, South Carolina; A Sketch of the Medical 

 Botany of South Carolina, and The Medicinal, Poisonous and 

 Dietetic Properties of the Cryptogamic Plants of the United 

 States. 



George Lawson, Professor of Chemistry for the last thirty 

 years in Dalhousie College, Halifax, died in that city on Novem- 

 ber loth. Professor Lawson was an authority on the botany of 

 the Maritime Provinces and the author of several papers on 

 Canadian plants, published principally in the Transactions of 

 the Royal Society of Canada, which he once served as Presi- 

 dent. Professor Lawson practiced scientific agriculture on his 

 large farm in the neighborhood of Halifax, where he resided 

 during the summer months, and for several years before his 

 death was Provincial Secretary of Agriculture. 



