504 



Garden and Forest. 



[TiECEMBER 12, lb88. 



Notes. 



During the year whicli ended on April ist, 1888, tlie Gov- 

 ernment nurseries of Berlin distributed 105,778 young trees 

 and slirubs, to be used in adorning the city and its suburbs, 

 and 82,686 flowering and foliage planls. The nurseries 

 which supply plants for the use of the city now contain 

 nearly 4,000,000 specimens and are steadily being enlarged. 



At a meeting of the New York Academy of Science held on 

 December 3d, at Columbia College, Dr. H. N. Jarchow read a 

 paper on the training of foresters in Europe, and the eco- 

 nomic success that has been attained in forest culture there, 

 and Professor E. B. Southwick, Secretary of the New York 

 State Forestry Association, gave a brief history of what had 

 been accomplished by that body. 



Among the interesting plants detected by the Abbe Delavey 

 in Yun-nan, and recently sent to France, there is a Fig 

 {Ficiis Ti-Kotia), with edible fruits of the size and color 

 of a Lady Apple, according to the Revue Horticole, which 

 grow and ripen under groimd. The plant is a shrul.i, with 

 trailing, semi-subterranean branches, and large obovate-ellip- 

 tical leaves. The Figs are called by the Chinese who eat 

 them Ti-Koua or eartli gourd. 



A collector recently sent out by Dr. Dieck, a well-known 

 German nurseryman and dendrologist, reports that the Rose 

 hitherto sold in Europe as the true source of attar, and called 

 " Rose de Kazanlik," is not to be found in the vicinity of Ka- 

 zanlik at all. The true Roses for the production of attar, he 

 says, are Rosa alba siia-'colens and a variety of Rosa Gallica. 

 Specimens of these plants he has been enabled to send to 

 Germany, in spite of the strict laws which now prevail in the 

 Danubian provinces against the exportation of attar-producing 

 Roses. 



It is well known that the slopes of Krakatoa, in the Strait of 

 Sunda, and the regions around its base, were wholly desolated 

 a few years ago by a terril>le volcanic eruption, which covered 

 them so deeply that all seeds as' well as vegetable growths 

 were destroyed. Almost immediately, however, it Is said, 

 Nature began to repair her ravages in a way that most inter- 

 estingly illustrates her processes in early geological epochs. 

 Fresh water Algce soon covered the wide stretches of cinders 

 and pumice-stone, forming a glutinous layer in which seeds 

 could take root; and a couple of years after the eruption Ferns 

 and Phanerogams had everywhere established tliemselves, 

 the species being similar to those which take possession of 

 newly formed coral islands. 



An important Iiorticultural exhibition will be held next year 

 in Berlin, and will be open to all nations. The schedule of 

 prizes contains 235 classes of stove or warm house-plants, 

 yjl classes of green-house and hardy plants, besides classes 

 for fruits, vegetables, nursery stock, tools and machines used 

 in horticulture; and there will be a section in which the classes 

 include the morphology, anatomy and growth of plants; physi- 

 ology, useful and poisonous fungi ; officinal and economic 

 plants, plant geography, etc. The exhibition is expected to 

 bring out the close relations which exist between architecture 

 and horticulture. Visitors to Berlin, moreover, will have an 

 opportunity to examine some of the finest examples of land- 

 scape gardening which can be seen now in Europe. 



The attendance at the annual meeting of the American 

 Forestry Congress, held at Atlanta last week, was unusually 

 large, and the papers read and the discussions of topics pre- 

 sented were of the most instructive character. The officers 

 elected for the year were : President, Governor J. A. Beaver, 

 Pennsylvania; Vice-Presidents, H. G. Joly, Quebec; J. D. W. 

 French, Boston ; Charles Mohr, Mobile ; Herbert Welsh, 

 Philadelphia; George H. Parsons, Denver; Recording Secre- 

 tary, N. H. Egleston, Washington ; Treasurer, Charles C. 

 Burney, Philadelphia. Mr. B. E. Fernow, Chief of the For- 

 estry Division of the Department of Agriculture, was com- 

 pelled to decline the office of Corresponding Secretary, 

 which he has most acceptably filled since the organization 

 of the Congress, and J. B, Harrison, of New Hampshire, was 

 chosen as his successor. 



Mr. Meehan tells the readers of the Country Gcntlcjiian that 

 in an old Indian village of Alaska, the people used to carve their 

 genealogies on huge poles before their doors, by means of 

 hieroglyphics. One generation cut its crow or its bear, or 

 whatever the tribal style may be, on it ; and so on, one above 

 another, generation by generation, to the top. They do not 

 do it now, but the moss-grown and neglected old poles, some 

 two feet thick and perhaps twenty feet high, are still stand- 

 ing. On the tops of these poles. Hemlock and Spruce trees 



have sprouted and grown ; great bushy trees, ten or fifteen 

 feet high, and as handsome as any seen in a nursery. In 

 some cases the roots have gone down through the old poles, 

 twenty feet or more, to the ground, splitting the poles open 

 and exposing the roots, which perhaps will be, when the old 

 poles rot away, real trunks to support the trees. 



It is said that American competition has greatly interfered 

 of late years with the resin industry of the districts of the 

 Gironde in France, at one time the chief support of a large 

 portion of the inhabitants. About a third part of the land in 

 the department once consisted of barren sandy wastes 

 called La7ides upon ^\■hich nothing but Pines would grow. 

 Pinus maritima was planted in large quantities, and despite 

 the recent falling off of the trade in resin, it still aft'ords 

 many sources of revenue, the most important of which is 

 the furnishing of pit-props for use in the English mining 

 districts. One hundred and seventy-five thousand tons of 

 these props are annually exported. Young trees are also 

 sent to England in large quantities to be employed in paper 

 making" ; railway sleepers and telegraph poles are sup- 

 pilied for many parts of France, and an illuminating oil is 

 made from the resin, which readily finds local liuyers, as it 

 burns well, is even cheaper than kerosene, and, moreover, 

 is non-explosive. 



According to a correspondent of The American Architect 

 and Building News, seven crops of forage are annually gathered 

 from the plains of Lombardy. The district is naturally well 

 watered, the great reservoir of the Alps being near at hand 

 and a number of rivers traversing it on their way towards the 

 Po. But a natural supply of water would not suffice, dur- 

 ing the long, hot summer of Italy, to preserve the plain in 

 such a phenomenal state of fertility. A vast expenditure of 

 labor and skill has for ages been devoted to works of irriga- 

 tion. At least as early as the twelfth century they were well 

 under way, under the direction of the monks in a branch 

 house of the monastery of Clairvaux, which had been estab- 

 lished by St. Bernard near Milan. During Renaissance times 

 they were carried on by some of the greatest architects of 

 Italy, Leonardo da Vinci, for example, having conceived the 

 idea of connecting the Mincio and the Tessina by means of a 

 canal. And to-day the whole plain is a net-work of canals 

 and reservoirs which cannot be exhausted liy the fiercest 

 drought. 



Among recent devices for preserving timber is that advo- 

 cated by Filsinger. who recommends impregnating the wood 

 with a weak solution of aluminium chloride. Another sug- 

 gestion is, that a solution of gutta-percha, obtained by a mix- 

 ture of two-thirds gutta-percha and one-third paraffine heated 

 together until the .gum melts, shall be forced into the cells of 

 timber from which the air has been previously exhausted. The 

 gutta-percha, as it cools, hardens and completely fills the cells. 

 But the latest suggestion is that of Von Berkel, who proposes 

 first to impregnate wood with a saturated solution of lime 

 water or milk of lime. The board is then dried and placed 

 in a vacuum cylinder and impregnated with a mixture of 

 silicic acid and mineral oil or some other fatty or Ijituminous 

 substance, by pressure applied for a considerable time, when 

 a process of petrifaction takes place and a kind of asphalt rock 

 is formed within the wood cells. The industrial value of this 

 invention has not been demonstrated yet, although the possi- 

 bility of using water gas for these purposes, of which Von 

 Bcrkel's plan appears to be only a modification, has long been 

 recognized. 



There seems to be no end in England to the making of hor- 

 ticultural societies. The attention whicli the English give to 

 minor branches of the art is shown by the flourishing exist- 

 ence of a National .Auricula Society and a National Carnation 

 and Picotee Society, both of which hold well-attended annual 

 meetings and large exhibitions. Speaking of the Auricula, 

 Tlie Garden recently quoted from a book published in 1764 to 

 prove that even at this time this flower was high in public 

 favor. Indeed, the author of the book in question said of the 

 Auricula that it was "formerly the pride of English gardeners 

 and florists," whose success in raising new seedling varieties 

 greatly excited the envy of their Dutch rivals. But there could 

 have been nothing to complain of in his own time, for he de- 

 clared that he had known good new seedling Auriculas to sell 

 for seventy guineas apiece. As 77^,? Garden remarks, "When 

 we consider the value of money in those days as compared 

 with the present, this does seem an enormous sum, for there 

 could have been no gambling with so perishaljle a plant as 

 there was with the Tulip in tiie days of the Tulip mania in 

 Holland." A single guinea is now considered a very high 

 price for a new Auricula in England. 



