48 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 205. 



I 



and other parasitic plants. We shall look with interest to fur- 

 ther reports on this matter, and trust that they may be carried 

 on in the true scientific spirit, and without any attempt to es- 

 tablish previously formed judgments. 



Notes. 



At the last meeting of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society 

 the Honorable Ephraim W. Bull, of Concord, was made an 

 honorary member of the society. This was a well-merited, 

 though somewhat tardy, compliment to Mr. Bull for his distin- 

 guished services as the originator of the Concord Grape. 



The Executive Committee of the American Carnation Society 

 announces that its first annual meeting will be held at the Tift 

 House, Buffalo, New York, on the i6th of February. There 

 will be an exhibition of flowers of the older and newer varie- 

 ties, and many interesting papers on the Carnation, its diseases, 

 its history and its cultivation. 



A recent writer, in speaking of the town of Walmer, in Cape 

 Colony, says that the Christmas decorations in its little church 

 were the most beautiful she had ever seen. They consisted 

 simply of magnificent blue Water-lilies and the large pure- 

 white Arums, which the colonists unpoetically call "Pig-lilies," 

 combined with the glossy foliage of the Arums and a few great 

 Fern-fronds. 



The fruit crop of last year in Iowa was unusually good, and 

 the fruit-growers there feel much encouraged in spite of the 

 suffering of this industry from severe winters in recent years. 

 The display of apples at the meeting of the State Horticultural 

 Society last week was remarkable for its size and quality. The 

 society resolved to do everything in its power to make a cred- 

 itable collection ofTowa fruits for the Columbian Exposition 

 next year, and the Hon. C. L. Watrous, of Des Moines, was se- 

 lected to superintend the work. 



The most enthusiastic followers of the art of floral arrange- 

 ment in Japan, we are told, are priests, philosophers and men 

 of rank who have retired from public life. It has always 

 been regarded as a fitting occupation for learned and liter- 

 ary men, and not at all as an effeminate accomplishment, 

 although ladies of the aristocracy practice it as they do the 

 other arts. Some of the virtues which are said to spring from 

 an habitual practice of this charming art are "the religious 

 spirit, self-denial, gentleness and forgetfulness of cares." 



In a recent bulletin of the Michigan Experiment Station 

 a record is made of the test of the value of the practice 

 of transplanting Onion-seedlings. Seeds of several varieties 

 were sown in a hot-bed on the loth of April, and on the i6th the 

 plants were transplanted to the field. Seeds of the same sort 

 were on the same day sown in a parallel plat for comparison. 

 The soil was rich sandy loam, and the same care was given to 

 both tracts, with the result in every case in favor of the trans- 

 planted Onions. The variety known as Prize-taker yielded, 

 when transplanted, 54S bushels to the acre, while those not 

 transplanted yielded 216. The Rocca, transplanted, yielded 556 

 bushels against no when not transplanted, and Southport 

 yielded 296 bushels against 172. 



Professor Penhallow, of the McGill University, has reprinted 

 from the Canadian Record of Science his papers on the Flora 

 of St. Helen s Island, Montreal; and on the Flora of Caconna, 

 Province of Quebec, a flora which he finds of especial interest 

 from the fact that it contains several southern types obviously 

 near or at the extreme northern limits of their distribution, 

 and also many distinctively boreal species. The prevailing 

 arboreal vegetation of Caconna Island, which in realilv is not 

 an island, but is connected with the mainland by a low neck of 

 land not entirely submerged, even at high- water, is composed of 

 the Black and While Spruces, the Red Pine and White Pine 

 (this last very rare), the Larch and the Arljor-vit;c. The Sugar 

 Maple, the Banksian Pine and the Aspen are common, and the 

 Canadian Yew is often the most abundant undergrowth of the 

 forest. 



A new edition of Sir Joseph Hooker's Himalayan Journals, 

 edited by G. T. Bettany, has just been added to the Minerva 

 Library of Famous Books, published in London by. Ward, 

 Lock, Bowdcn & Co. This cheap edition of one of the best 

 books of scientilic travel ever written, which has long been out 

 of print, will l:ie a real boon to every student of science. The 

 illustrations are printed from the original jvood-cuts, and the 

 present edition, in one volume, is identical with the first un- 

 abridged edition, except that some of the appendixes of lim- 



ited general interest are omitted. The editor adds an inter- 

 esting sketch of the author of the Himalayan Journals ; these 

 were published in 1854, and the author, now the most distin- 

 guished English botanist, is very nearly at the end of his task 

 of describing the plants of India, for which he fitted himself 

 in the long and dangerous journeys of which these Journals 

 are the record. 



The eleventh part, the last to reach us, of the American 

 edition of the sumptuous Liiidenia, or Iconography of Orchids, 

 conducted by the Messrs. Linden, of Brussels, with the assist- 

 ance of Em. Rodigas and R. A. Rolfe, contains portraits of 

 Cattleya X Hardyana, var. Laversinensis, a supposed natural 

 hybrid between C. aurea and a variety of C. gigas, imported ■ 

 several years ago from New Granada. The flowers are fra- 

 grant, with light rosy mauve sepals and petals, and a deeper- 

 colored lip. Several forms of what are doubtless the same 

 hybrid, differing slightly in the color and markings of the flow- 

 ers, have appeared in different collections. The one which 

 Monsieur Linden has selected for his beautiful plate first flow- 

 ered in Baron Rothschild's gardens at Laversine, in France. 

 The other figures in the number are of Rodriguezia pubescens, 

 yErides suavissimum, and Disa grandiflora, the magnificent 

 terrestrial Orchid from South Africa, a now well-known plant, 

 but hardly surpassed in the beauty andshowiness of its flowers 

 by any other Orchid. Lindenia is a store-house of information 

 which cultivators of Orchids will find invaluable. The illus- 

 trations are not surpassed by those of any other work of the 

 same character and scope. 



In a paper prepared for the American Pomological Society, 

 Professor W. F. Massey calls attention to the peculiar advan- 

 tages of the mountain-region between the Blue Ridge and the 

 Alleghany Ridges in western North Carolina for the cultiva- 

 tion of apples : " The wonderful capacity of these elevated 

 valleys and mountain-slopes for the production of apples of a 

 size, beauty and flavor unknown in the same varieties grown 

 elsewhere, is rapidly coming to be acknowledged since the great 

 displays made by this section at the Centennial Exposition and 

 at the meeting of this society in Baltimore in 1877. The trees 

 are larger, more vigorous and longer-lived than in most other 

 places. In one orchard, in Haywood County, there are more 

 than 100 trees averaging nine feet in circumference of trunk. 

 Trees of this size are common in most of the mountain coun- 

 ties, and they are in the most luxuriant health. In the ele- 

 vated valleys about Waynesville, in Haywood County, the 

 Yellow Newtown Pippin grows to the same perfection as on 

 the mountain-sides in Albemarle County, Virginia, where it is 

 known as the Albemarle Pippin. In the summer of 1890 there 

 was scarcely any fruit in all the country east of the Mississippi 

 River and in all other parts of this state. In these mountains 

 not only were the Apple-trees loaded with fruit, but Peach- 

 trees were breaking down with their crop. That there are 

 extensive belts on these mountain-sides where early autumnal 

 and late vernal frosts are unknown, is a well-attested fact, and 

 this renders the culture of fruit there more certain than in any 

 other section of the eastern states." 



In the Government report of crops for last year there are 

 some valuable lessons as to the prices of farm-products. The 

 crops were almost without exception large, and under such 

 circumstances prices are always reduced. Singularly enough 

 this decline in prices is often greater in proportion than the 

 increase in production, so that the surplus depresses the total 

 value of the crop. For example, in 1890 the supply of pota- 

 toes per capita was smaller than it had been for many years, 

 and therefore the price per bushel ranged very high ;' never- 

 theless the inferior quality in most of the districts where pro- 

 duction is the largest prevented farmers from securing the 

 advantages of these high prices. Last year the crop was enor- 

 mous and the acreage planted large, so that there has been a 

 heavy decline in prices. This decline has lieen so serious 

 that while the country produced 100,000,000 bushels more 

 . than it did the year before, the aggregate value of the crop is 

 less than that of i8go by $20,000,000. On the other hand, the 

 wheat crop was twenty per cent, greater in 1891 than in 1890, 

 and yet the price per liushel slightly exceeds that of a year 

 ago. The reason for this is that, although the crop is largely 

 beyond the requirements of home consimiption, there is an 

 extraordinary demand for it abroad which has sustained the 

 prices. The aggregate value of the present wheat crop is 

 about $179,000,000 greater than that of last year, and the enor- 

 mous corn crop, in spile of the fact that it is twenty per 

 cent, less per bushel than it was last year, is worth to farmers 

 at December prices about $80,000,000 more than the crop 

 of 1890. 



