300 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 226. 



is that we have lost all the Trumpet Narcissus, usually very 

 hardy here, while the double form of N. poeticus is better 

 than usual. ^ ^, 



SI. Stephen, N. B. J- VrOOJ/l. 



Notes. 



We have received a few Mowers from Rea Brothers which 

 are labeled Achillea Mongolica. They are long-stemmed, 

 white semi-double flowers which are said to bloom earlier thati 

 either A. ptarmica or A. serrata. 



The delicate and fragrant flowers of Clematis crispa have 

 been opening for a week, and they will continue to appear 

 every day until the time of heavy frosts. This is one of the 

 climbers which can be recommended for every garden. 



Robinia Neo-Mexicana is flowering this year in the Arnold 

 Arboretum, probably for the first time in cultivation in Amer- 

 ica. It is a small tree, a native of the southern Rocky Moun- 

 tain region, and the only representative of the genus in western 

 America. 



Mr. James MacPherson writes from Trenton, New Jersey, 

 to the American Florist, that a bulb of the variety Superbum 

 of Lilium Wallichianum, planted out last year on a steep bank 

 and covered with a little litter, has survived the winter and is 

 now growing strongly. 



In speaking of the readiness of the various Columbines to 

 vary and hybridize, Mr. T. D. Hatfield writes of a giant form of 

 Aquilegia Canadensis which has the perfect flower of the type 

 but shows in a striking way the habit of A. vulgaris. This 

 plant is usually three feet in height. 



The second instalment of Professor Coulter's Mamial of the 

 Plants of Western Texas, embracing the Gamopetalse, has ap- 

 peared, forming Number 2 of the second volume of the Con- 

 tributions from the United States National Herbarium, published 

 by the authority of the Secretary of Agriculture. 



Dr. H. T. Bahnson, of Salem, North Carolina, sends us 

 flowers of a new seedling Nymphasa. They belong to the 

 same type as those of N. alba, a light shade of pure pink in 

 color, with petals numerous and very broad. The flowers are 

 bold, as large as those of N. alba candidissima, and quite 

 distinct. The new variety is evidently a desirable one. 



By ministerial decree a committee, consisting of Comte de 

 Choiseul, President; Edward Andrg, Vice-President, and Henri 

 L. de Vilmorin, Secretary, has been appointed by the French 

 Government to represent French horticulture at the Chicago 

 Columbian Exposition, and Monsieur Andre has been en- 

 trusted with the duty of preparing the plans for the garden of 

 the French section of the exhibition. 



Professor Penhallow writes to the American Geologist of two 

 specimens of fossil wood whicli were recently exhumed from 

 difterent places in Manitoba. Microscopical examination 

 shows that they are identical and that they possess characters 

 approaching both Larix occidentalisand L. Americana, but are, 

 in other respects, quite distinct from both. The specific name, 

 L. Churchbridgensis, has been given to this fossil tree which 

 seems midway between the Larches named above in the 

 qualities of its wood. 



The white form of Wistaria multijuga has been flowering 

 profusely this year in Mr. Hunnewell's garden at Wellesley, 

 Massachusetts, as well as in the Arnold Arboretum. It is a 

 beautiful plant, perfectly hardy, and produces racemes of 

 flowers varying from two feet to thirty inches in length. 

 These appear after the flowers of the Chinese Wistaria have 

 fallen and when the leaves are fully grown ; they possess, 

 moreover, a delicate fragrance hardly distinguishable from 

 • that of the flowers of the common Locust (Robinia Pseuda- 

 cacia). 



At the tenth annual convention of the American Seed Trade 

 Association, held in Hartford last week, a communication was 

 received from Mr. F. H. Mason, American Consul at Frankfort- 

 on-the-Main, in which he stated that threatening letters from 

 this country have been received by German seedsmen in- 

 tended to prevent them from making an exhibit of their 

 products at the World's Fair in Chicago. The association at 

 once passed a resolution condemning all efforts of this sort 

 and declaring that none of its members have ever participated 

 in any such a movement. They expressed a hearty desire to 

 have at Chicago the fullest representadon of all the products 

 in the world connected with their business. 



The death is announced of Jacques Julien Margottin, a man 

 known by name wherever Roses are cultivated, as his reputa- 

 tion as a rosarian, especially as a producer of new varieties, 

 has extended throughout the world, and his nurseries at Bourg- 

 la-Reine have long been famous for the collections of his 

 favorite flower. In the long list of Roses which originated in 

 his establishment the best known at the present time are Jules 

 Margottin, Gloire de France, Triomphe de I'Exposition, Duke 

 of Cambridge, Lord Palmerston, Madame Van Houtte, Belle 

 de Bourg-la-Reine, Jean Goujon, Louis Margottin, Souvenir 

 de Poiteau, Charles Turner, Triomphe de France, Gloire de 

 Bourg-la-Reine and Henrietta Pettit. 



A bill authorizing the Governor of Massachusetts to appoint 

 three persons to be known as the Metropolitan Park Commis- 

 sioners has recently been enacted. It provides that these com- 

 missioners, who are to serve without compensation, shall 

 consider the advisability of laying out ample open spaces for 

 the use of the public in towns and cities in the vicinity of Bos- 

 ton, with authority to make maps and plans of such places, 

 and collect all information necessary for acquiring, laying out 

 and maintaining them. Tlas is the bill which originated with 

 the Trustees of Public Reservations, and its object is to pro- 

 vide some means by which the Middlesex Fells, the Blue Hills, 

 and other tracts of wild unimproved land in eastern Massa- 

 chusetts may be acquired for the benefit of the public. 



The splendid Gladioli which now ornament all American 

 gardens, from the finest to the humblest, when summer is at 

 its height, are, as every one knows, natives of the Cape of 

 Good Hope, greatly improved and infinitely diversified by cul- 

 tivation. But perhaps it is not as generally known that the old- 

 fashioned hardy species, bearing a few small rose-red or rarely 

 white blossoms, which our grandmothers loved long before its 

 showier cousins became the fashion, is of European origin, 

 and is, indeed, a familiar field-flower throughout central and 

 southern Europe. In those parts of southern France where 

 the festival called the Fete Dieu is still publicly observed, its 

 varieties are more generally employed than any other flowers 

 to decorate the canopies borne in the processions and the little 

 shelters where they halt. 



" Nothing is more common," recently wrote Mr. Grant Allen, 

 "than to see classical pictures of the Alma-Tadema school — 

 not, of course, from the brush of the master himself, who is 

 impeccable in such details, but fair works of decent imitators 

 — in which Caia or Marcia leans gracefully in her white stole 

 on one pensive elbow against a marble lintel, beside a court- 

 yard decorated with a Pompeiian basin, and ovei-grown with 

 Prickly Pear or 'American Aloes.' I need hardly say that, as 

 a matter of plain historical fact, neither Cactuses nor Agaves 

 were known in Europe until long after Christopher Columbus 

 had steered his wandering bark to the sandy shores of Cat's 

 Island, in the Bahamas. But this is only one among the many 

 pardonable little inaccuracies of painters, who thrust scarlet 

 Geraniums from the Cape of Good Hope into the fingers of 

 Aspasia, or supply King Solomon in all his glory with Japanese 

 Lilies of the most recent introduction." It is well, of course, 

 to have attention called to such anachronisms in art. But per- 

 haps Mr. Allen will realize how difficult it is to be accurate in 

 matters outside one's own special province when his notice is 

 called to the amusing little architectural blunder he perpetrates 

 in the paragraph we have quoted. It would be hard for either 

 Caia or Marcia to lean, gracefully or ungracefully, against a 

 marble lintel, since the dictionary defines lintel to mean "a 

 horizontal piece of timber or stone over a door, window or 

 other opennig." What Mr. Allen meant to say was probably 

 sill or jamb ; and, doubtless, what the painter of King Solomon 

 meant to paint was a Lily, not of Japan but of Palestine. 



Catalogues Received. 



William Bull, 536 King's Road, Chelsea, London, S. W., England ; 

 New, Rare and Beautiful Plants and Orchids. — The Cossipore Prac- 

 tical Institution of Horticulture, Floriculture and Agricul- 

 ture, Raja's Park, No. 69 Gun-foundry Road, Cossipore, near Cal- 

 cutta ; Ornamental and Rare Plants. — IL GusMUS, Klagenfurt, Austria ; 

 Flower Bulbs and Roots. — ^John Laing & Sons, Forest Hill, London, 

 S. E., England ; Plant Catalogue of Ilardy Perennials, Alpine and 

 Border Plants, Florists' Flowers, etc. ; Catalogue of Tuberous Bego- 

 nias. — PiLKiN'GTON & Co., Pearmount Nursery, Portland, Ore.; Orna- 

 mental Trees and Plants. — Sherwood Hall Nursery Co., Menlo 

 Park, Cab; Trees, Plants, Seeds and Bulbs. — James Veitch & Sons, 

 544 King's Road, Chelsea, London, S. W., England ; General Catalogue 

 of Plants and Novelties for 1892. 



