360 



Garden and Forest. 



[September ig, 18 



of one of the Eucalypts a peculiar formation wliich appeared 

 to be a gigantic gall." Discovering it to be a hive, he pro- 

 ceeded to cut down the tree — a specimen which measured 

 seven metres in circumference — and upon tasting the honey 

 discovered, to his surprise, that it " possessed the characteristic 

 odor and flavor of the Eucalyptus essences." Samples sent to 

 France excited the greatest interest. It was found upon 

 analysis to contain about sixty-two per cent, of the purest 

 sugar, and more than seventeen per cent, of the essential con- 

 stituents of the Eucalyptus — eucalyptol, eucalyptene, cymol 

 and terpene — all of which play an important part in the thera- 

 peutics of to-day. Attempts to produce a similar honey by 

 chemical processes have proved vain, as the ingredients 

 gradually separate and volatilize off. The honey itself, there- 

 tore, is believed to be destined to become an important me- 

 dicinal article, for, given in small quantities, it has already 

 proved very etficacious as a mild stimulant and a remedy for 

 diseases of the throat and respiratory organs. Its antiseptic 

 qualities make it valuable also in such diseases as typhoid, and 

 it promises to replace, to a large degree, cod-liver oil. Unfor- 

 tunately, the bees which produce the Eucalyptus honey are 

 natives of Australasia only, and all attempts to acclimatize 

 them in Algeria and France have been unavailing. In one 

 Algerian district, where the tree has been naturalized, all the 

 flowering crops were cut off, a year or two ago, to ascertain 

 whether the bees of that country could not be forced to make 

 honey from Eucalyptus blossoms ; but the only result was the 

 starvation of the bees, and for the present, at least, the sole 

 source whence the honey can be obtained is Australasia. 

 Here, however, it is said that its production will Lie undertaken 

 as a regular industry. 



Notes. 



The new Strawberry, " Early Princess," is highly com- 

 mended by fruit-growers in Minnesota. 



Monsieur H. C. Baillon, the distinguished French botanist, 

 has recently been promoted to the grade of officer in the Or- 

 der of the Legion of Honor. 



Mr. Charles Nichols, Superintendent of the Fairmount Ceme- 

 tery, Newark, who is President of the Association of American 

 Cemetery Superintendents, states in a recentletterthat the mem- 

 bership of the Association has been nearly doubled this year. 



The extent to which horticulture is pursued for pleasm^e 

 merely in Belgium, is shown by the membership list of the 

 Ghent Horticultural Society " Harmonic." In the City of 

 Ghent alone it counts 2,000 members, and of these only 30 

 are professional gardeners. 



The largest Secjuoia yet found has lately been discovered, 

 says the Amador, California, Sentinel, near the headwaters of 

 the Kameah River, on a small basin surrounded on every side 

 by a wall of rugged rocks. The hunter who found it in this 

 almost inaccessible little valley reports that the tree's circum- 

 ference at a point as high as a man could reach was 160 feet. 



Professor Buckhout, of the State College, Pennsylvania, has 

 planted two small plots of ground with forest trees for trial 

 purposes, in connection with the Experiment Station of which 

 Dr. Armsliy is Director. One of the plots is on Tussey Moim- 

 tain, rough and stony, and fairly representing the land which 

 must be dealt with in re-foresting the mountain districts. The 

 other is on the college grounds. 



Colonel Pearson writes that the Bordeaux Mixture has 

 proved an efficient preventive of the black rot of the Grape, 

 as well as of Grape mildew. The formula for the mixture, 

 as used this year, is, copper sulphate, six pounds ; lime, four 

 pounds, with water to make twenty-two gallons. The lime 

 and sulphate are dissolved separately in hot water, and mixed 

 afterward. With the Eureka Sprayer, made at Vineland, 

 one man can spray five acres a day. If experience corrobo- 

 rates these results elsewhere, the Grape crop of the country 

 can be saved from these two diseases at a trifling expense. 



Mr. A. S. Fuller states, in Orchard and Garden, that 

 although white varieties have long been known among the 

 native Blackberries, Black Caps, and, in rare instances, among 

 the low bush Huckleberries and Juneberries, there is no 

 record of an albino of our wild red Raspberry {Rttbus strigo- 

 sits). Two or three years ago, however, a white Raspberry 

 was detected in McKean County, Pennsylvania, ami Mr. 

 Fuller announces that it has fruited with him this sum- 

 mer, the berries being about the same size as the common 

 wild Raspberry ; but of a mild flavor, and, in color, almost 

 white, with a slight yellowish tinge when fully ripe. 



Dr. Richard Wettstein, according to the Gardeners' Chroni- 

 cle, has published in the Proceedings oi the Imperial Academy 

 of Science of Vienna the results of his observations on the 

 leaf structure of various reputed hybrids, such as Pitms 

 Rhcetica x, a hybrid between P. ni07itana and P. silvestris j P. 

 Neilreichianax , between P. nigricans and P. silvestris ; and 

 also various Junipers. The anatomical characters of the 

 foliage of the hybrids in every case are intermediate between 

 those of the reputed parents, and hence lend confirmation to 

 the opinion that the forms examined are really of hybrid 

 origin. 



The production of the true Attar-of-Rose was long confined 

 to the Orient, the Levant and the more southerly Balkan 

 provinces. But during recent years the Roses best adapted 

 for the purpose have been largely planted in the more south- 

 westerly parts of Europe, and oil of a good quality has been 

 there produced. One firm in South Germany, for example, im- 

 ported, not long ago, 15,000 plants from Bulgaria ; but the 

 opportunity for such purchases will not again occur. The 

 Bulgarian government, alarmed at the prospect of a competi- 

 tion which would seriously impair one of the most considera- 

 ble sources of the country's revenue, has made more string- 

 ent a long-existing law against the exportation of Roses, fixing 

 as a penalty the confiscation of the seller's real estate. 



Mr. C. G. Pringle has completed the collection of wood 

 specimens of the peculiar trees of the lower Rio Grande valley 

 for the Jesup collection in the New York Museum of Natural 

 History, and has now returned to Chihuahua for the purpose 

 of continuing his investigation of the flora of the Sierra Madre. 

 He has succeeded in securing for the museum fine specimens 

 of Helietta parvifolia, Kcebcrlinca, Condalia obovata. Acacia 

 Jle.xicaulis, the Ebony of the Mexican Boundary, A. Greggii, A. 

 Farnesiana, Pithecolobium brcvifolinm, Fra.xinus cuspidata, 

 Leuccena piilntruknta, Cordia Boessieri, Parkinsonea Texana, 

 P. aculeata, of the undescribed Palmetto which abounds 

 on the lianks of the Rio Grande below Brownsville, and of a 

 very fine new Poplar, which is probably quite generally dis- 

 tributed from Saltillo, in Mexico, to southern New Mexico and 

 Arizona. Mr. Pringle was able to secure for the Kew Museum 

 a large trunk of the gigantic Yucca filif era. 



" A very beautiful dinner-table decoration," says The Gar- 

 den, " was lately arranged entirely with three varieties of sin- 

 gle Roses. In some of the slender upright glasses were 

 flowers in various stages of Posa inacrantha, and in others 

 of Hebe's Lip, while below were bunches of the exquisite and 

 delightfully fragrant R. Brunonis. The flowers, having been 

 cut in the proper stage, lasted well for two days." Arrange- 

 ments such as this, of a single kind of flower or of two or three 

 closely related kinds, are certainly in much better taste as 

 table decorations than the masses of mixed blossoms we often 

 see, especially when the summer flower-garden offers its end- 

 less varieties for our use ; and delicately shaped and colored 

 flowers like single Roses, with their correspondingly dainty 

 foliage, are better in place than the coarser or showier flowers 

 which are usually considered "more effective." Neither in 

 the linen, the glass nor the china with which we furnish our 

 tables is showiness considered the most desirable quality ; nor 

 should it be in the flowers we employ. 



When the English 'took possession of the island of Cyprus 

 it was annually ravaged by grasshoppers to sucli a degree 

 that its crops were hardly worth consideration. In five years, 

 and at a cost of only some $300,000, the insects were almost 

 destroyed, and it now costs but $8,000 a year to keep the land 

 free from their ravages. The method used to such good 

 effect is now being tried, with results which promise to be 

 equally satisfactory, in Algiers and Spain. When a column 

 of grasshoppers is known to be apprc^aching, a screen formed 

 of cotton cloth, about sixty yards in length and one yard in 

 width, is stretched in front of it, sometimes in a straight and 

 sometimes in a V-shaped line. Along the upper edge of the 

 cloth a strip of oiled or varnished stuff is sewn, over which 

 the insects cannot crawl ; and in front of it great pits are dug, 

 the borders of which are encircled by strips of zinc slanting 

 downward. These pits are soon filled with the grasshoppers, 

 which are trampled down by bare-footed natives, and buried 

 under earth with which disinfectants are often mixed. Ac- 

 cording to Le Genie Civil, it is estimated that this year four 

 hundred millions of grasshoppers were thus destroyed in 

 Algiers by the middle of June. It is needful that the screens 

 should be spread in the early morning, when the insects, be- 

 numbed by the night cold, are unable to fly over it, and that 

 men should be employed to keep the column as compact as 

 possible. 



