512 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 409. 



Equally destructive pests may effect a landing in some of 

 our seaports on the fruits and vegetables which we receive 

 from the West Indies and from South America, as well as 

 upon the decorative or other plants imported. We have 

 an association of economic entomologists, and this body 

 ought to be able to frame a bill to establish a quarantine, 

 not only against injurious insects, but against the conta- 

 gious diseases of plants. There is also an organization 

 made up of the officers of the experiment stations and the 

 professors of the agricultural colleges, whose natural 

 duty would seem to be a general oversight of the in- 

 terest of agriculture and horticulture. The subject in ques- 

 tion ought to be worth careful study by a body which 

 represents the entire nation, and we see no good reason 

 why a national quarantine bill should not be framed and 

 introduced before the close of the present session of 

 Congress. 



Thomas Andrew Knight. 



WE have already published one or two of the five- 

 minute talks with which Professor Bailey, of 

 Cornell University, prefaces his lectures on Evolution. 

 One of his students again sends the following from her 

 notes as worthy of permanent record : 



Thomas Andrew Knight, one of the first and greatest 

 of our botanical philosophers, was the forerunner of Dar- 

 win, who may be considered the second of our great horticul- 

 tural philosophers. Knight was born in 1759 «^"d died in 1838. 

 He was educated at Oxford, and he lived at Elton and Down- 

 ton Castle, England. He devoted his whole life to agriculture, 

 but he also conducted experiments upon the crossing of plants, 

 made various studies on the physiology of plants and the like. 

 Nearly all of his writings have been productive of great good 

 in after years. Tlie first essay which he ever prepared is one 

 upon the decay of fruit-trees and the causes therefor. This 

 was written in 1795. As a means of averting the decay of the 

 trees, he advised raising new varieties by crossing. He was 

 the first man, so far as I know, who advised the use of cross- 

 fertilization for the purpose of producing new varieties, and 

 for the purpose of improving existing ones. A similar work 

 was taken up by Darwin and made him famous. The teach- 

 ings of Lord Bacon were leading sources of information when 

 Knight began to write. Bacon was convinced that crossing in 

 animals and plants is capable of yielding great results, but he 

 was ignorant of the exact process. His opinions, which were 

 current when Knight began his work, were as follows : "The 

 compounding and mixture of plants is not found out, which, 

 nevertheless, if it be possible, is more at command than that 

 of living creatures ; wherefore it were one of the most noble 

 experiments touching plants to find this art ; for so you may 

 have a great variety of new plants and fiowers yet unknown. 

 Grafting doth it not : that mendeth flie fruit, or doubleth the 

 flower, but it hath not the power to make a new kind — for the 

 scion ever overruleth the stock." 



Knight was first brought to notice by Sir Joseph Banks, who 

 was interested in agriculture, and whose name has comedown 

 to us as one of tlie leading scientists and naturalists of his 

 time. Sir Joseph was interested in the Royal Agricultural 

 Society, the members of which had drawn up a set of queries 

 to which they desired answers from various districts, and 

 Banks hit upon Knight as being the person to whom these 

 queries sliould be addressed. Banks soon found that Knight 

 "was not only eminently qualified to effect the immediate 

 object in view, but that he had made observations, and de- 

 duced theories from them, calctilated to throw much light on 

 the more abstruse subject of vegetable physiology." 



Knight was the first to make experiments to determine why 

 roots go down and stems go up. In 1803 he made tlie acquain- 

 tance of Sir Humplirey Davy, who afterward became a very 

 warm friend, and witti whom a correspondence began which 

 was of great benefit to both persons and continued until the 

 deatli ot the latter in 1829. The Horticultural Society of Lon- 

 don was established in 1804. The first active president was 

 Thomas Andrew Knight, who was elected in 1811 and served 

 until the time of his death in 1838. The golden age of the 

 society was covered by the period of his administration. 



Knight was the first man to propose the theory that the 

 variation of plants is due to excess of food-supply. He also 

 produced a great number of new varieties of plants by cross- 

 fertilization, and among Cherries we have the Elton at the 

 present time, the Downton and others. 



Payne Knight was an older brother of Thomas Andrew and 

 became a famous Greek scholar and poet. 



California Fruits. 



A PAPER read by D. M. Rowley, editor of The California 

 Fruit Grower, before the State Fruit Growers' Conven- 

 tion at Sacramento, gave some statistical compilations which 

 are not quite as dry as figures usually are. In reviewing 

 the trade in fresh deciduous fruits he noted that the earliest 

 shipment eastward in the season of 1895 was two car-loads 

 of cherries, sent on the 8lh of May, although shipments of 

 the same fruit had been made by express as early as the 

 17th of April, and auction sales of California cherries began 

 in Chicago on the 13th of May. From the 8th of May to 

 the end of October 4,435 car-loads were shipped altogether. 

 Of these, 1,473 car-loads went to Chicago, 928 to New York, 

 279 to Boston, 176 to Omaha, 148 to Denver, 124 to Minne- 

 apolis, 109 to St. Paul and 42 to London, England. Twenty 

 other cities are named as receiving less than a hundred car- 

 loads during the year, but since there are about one hun- 

 dred cities in this country which contain more than 40,000 

 inhabitants, and more than two hundred cities with a popu- 

 lation of 30,000, it is not surprising that nearly 700 car-loads 

 were sold in cities and towns not designated — that is, at 

 points unknown to any one but the shipper. 



The freight rate of a car carrying 24,000 pounds to 

 Chicago from California is $300, and this is regarded by 

 railroad men as reasonable when the distance and charac- 

 ter of the service is considered. Refrigeration charges are 

 extra, I90, for example, from Sacramento to Chicago, 

 making a total of $390 a car to that city. From this it ap- 

 pears that the freight and refrigeration on the 1,400 cars 

 sent to Chicago would amount to more than half a million 

 dollars. The freight rate to New York is $360 and the 

 refrigerating charges $130, a total of I490 a car, so that 

 transportation charges on California fruit to New York 

 amounted to more than $450,000 during the year. Taking 

 the average charges paid for freight and refrigeration for 

 shipiTients to Chicago and New York it appears that the 

 vast sum of $1,931,480 was paid for the transportation of 

 fresh fruits from terminals in California to eastern cities, 

 and this does not account for the local freights paid by 

 shippers before they reach the main line of the Southern 

 Pacific Railroad Company. Of course, the commissions, 

 cartage and other expenses connected with the shipping 

 business at the eastern end of the line would greatly swell 

 this amount. It ought to be added that shipments from 

 Californialastyearweresmallerthan they have been since the 

 year 1891. In 1894 the grand total was 179,576,500 pounds. 



Among varieties of fruits, peaches took the lead in quan- 

 tity, amounting to 1,288 car-loads for the year; of pears 

 there have been 1,167 car-loads, of grapes 910 car-loads, 

 of plums 390 car-loads, of cherries 177 car-loads, of apricots 

 167 car-loads, of apples, so far, but 95 car-loads, of prunes 

 75 car-loads, of quinces 13 car-loads, and of nectarines 4 

 car-loads. The climate of California not only enables 

 one to work out-of-doors all the year round and makes 

 long seasons for fruit-growing, but it is also a good place 

 for curing fruit, as the enormous increase in the amount of 

 cured fruit bears witness. Exclusive of raisins and dried 

 grapes, California has averaged during the last five years 

 an annual production of more than eighty million pounds 

 of dried fruit — that is, nearly \y^ pounds of this product to 

 every man, woman and child in the United States. Alto- 

 gether, in the five years from 1P90 to 1894 inclusive, count- 

 ing the fresh deciduous fruits, citrus fruits, dried fruits,' 

 canned fruits and raisins, the enormous total of 2,308,298,400 

 pounds has been produced. The unestimated quantities 

 of fresh and dried fruits produced east of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains are, of course, additional to the California output, as 

 also the hundreds of cargoes of bananas, oranges, lemons, 

 pineapples, raisins, prunes, currants, figs, etc., received 

 from foreign countries, and iihe enormous amount of fruit 

 consumed in the United States can hardly be realized. 



