5i6 



Garden and Forest. 



[December 19, iS 



the fftecf of Secretary Fernow's earnestness. He has now 

 reHnquished the Secretaryship, in order to have more time 

 for his official work. It is likely that the next meeting of 

 the Congress will be held in Philadelphia, if the people inter- 

 ested in forestry there so desire. 



Notes. 



From a note in The Gardeners' Chroiiic/e of a recent date it 

 appears that 2,300 varieties of Chrysanthemums are grown in 

 the garden of the Royal Horticultural Society at Chiswick, near 

 London. 



The readership in botany in the University of Cambridge was 

 last month conferred upon Mr. Francis Darwin, a son of 

 Charles Darwin, in place of Mr. Vines, now professor of botany 

 at Oxford. 



At the exhibition lately held in Paris of fruits and appli- 

 ances used in the manufacture of cider and perry, the first 

 prize for a collection of cider-apples and the second prize for 

 cider were carried off by English exhibitors. 



At the second meeting of " L'Orchidienne " held at Brussels 

 on November nth, first-class certificates were awarded to 

 Cypripcdiuin Harrisianiiiii polychromum, from Dr. Carnus; to 

 Aiisellia Afrieana aurea, from Madame Gibez; to Oneidiuin 

 Forbesii maximuin, from the Count of Bousies; to Vauda cwru- 

 lea and Cypripedium callosuin, from Madame de Cannart 

 d'Hamale; and to Cypripedium nitens super bum, from Mr. 

 Peelers. 



On a wall which divides the pleasure grounds from the 

 kitchen garden at Warnham Court, a residence in the south of 

 England, a fine specimen of Magnolia grandiflora has been 

 trained so that it covers a space about eighty yards in length. 

 A correspondent of a horticultural journal, describing it last 

 summer, said the profusion of bloom was such that on one 

 portion about a foot square he counted seven fully expanded 

 flowers and several buds. 



In some of the larger European botanical gardens — as, 

 for example, the University garden in Berlin and the one in 

 Heidelberg — the labels used for the trees are of zinc, with 

 the name stamped in intaglio and then defined with oil 

 paint. These labels are much cheaper than the porcelain 

 ones, more commonly seen, and are equally durable, need- 

 ing no care but the renewal, at long intervals, of the paint ; 

 and an additional advantage is found in the fact that they 

 can be made on the spot by unskilled workmen. 



Messrs. Tiffany & Co., of Union Scjuare, in this city, 

 have on exhibition a remarkable specimen of petrified wood 

 from the fossil forest of Coriza, in Arizona Territory. It is the 

 section of a large tree and measures thirty-six inches in height 

 by forty and a half inches in greatest diameter. The 

 character of the bark is well preserved, and tlie top, which 

 has been carefully polished, is very beautiful in its agate-like 

 colors, as well as interesting by reason of its clearly revealed 

 markings. It is said to be the largest fossil specimen that lias 

 been thus prepared. 



As this paper goes to press we learn that Senator Stanford 

 has decided to devote to the Arboretum connected with the 

 Leland Stanford, Jr., University, as much space as is needed 

 to contain every tree that can be made to grow in that climate 

 with the aid of irrigation. The trees are to be planted in 

 open order, and arranged with vistas and views, so that the 

 Arboretum will have the features of a pleasure-ground in 

 addition to its scientific cliaracter. Mr. Olmsted is to make 

 a design of the work and Mr. Thomas Douglas is to be 

 superintendent of the planting. 



The Largest Elm tree in Norway is supposed to be a 

 specimen of Ulmiis montana which stands in the parsonage 

 grounds of the little town of Eker, a few miles from Chris- 

 tiana. When it was examined by Schuebeler in 1871, while 

 he was preparing his Viridarium norvegicum, it measured 

 seventy-five feet in height and six feet in diameter. U. mon- 

 tana is the only species of Elm which grows wild in Nor\vay, 

 and it never attains the dimensions of U. campestris, the 

 species wliich produces most of the magnificent specimens 

 found in Germany and England. 



A Rose which flowers in the open ground in New England, 

 after the middle of November, is a plant worth a place in any 

 northern garden, even if its flowers do not possess the size or 

 all the substance of some more modern varieties. Such a 

 Rose is Hermosa, one of the Bourbon breed, which dates 

 back as far as 1840. It is an abundant and constant bloomer 

 throughout the summer and autumn ; and there are not 



many days during five or six months of the year, or until hard 

 freezing checks vegetation, wlien flowers cannot be gathered 

 from a well established plant. The flowers are pink and very 

 fragrant. The plants, like inost of the Bourbons, require 

 some slight protection at the north. 



In the horticultural papers of Germany frequent complaints 

 are made that too little regard is paid to mere beauty by those 

 who judge plants and reward their growers at public exhibi- 

 tions. Novelty and singularity are too highly esteemed, it is 

 said, and when the judge is a professional florist he is too apt 

 to think exclusively of the plant's practical qualifications — to 

 consider simply whether it is a strong and prolific grower and 

 can be turned to practical account for commercial use. Of 

 course these considerations must always be largely taken into 

 account, but there is truth in the remark that pure beauty as 

 such lias likewise a right to recognition. Nor is the need that 

 it should be more highly esteemed confined to Germany only. 



The use of benzine has been found effectual in France in 

 destroying the white grubs (thelarvteof the May or Dor Bug), 

 which often do immense damage, especially in dry seasons, to 

 lawns, Strawberry plants, seedling trees and other nurserv 

 stock. Holes are made in the ground infested with the grubs 

 with one of the sharp iron dibbles used sometimes in trans- 

 planting small plants, and the benzine is poured into them. 

 Fifty grains of benzine are used to the scjuare yard and 

 care is taken to insert it above the plane of the feeding ground of 

 the grubs. In an experiment recently made by one of the 

 French forest officers, and reported at a meeting of the National 

 Agricultural Society, the grubs on twelve acres were destroyed 

 at a cost of only $3.20 an acre. 



The London papers report an interesting lawsuit lately won 

 by Sander, the well-known Orchid grower of St. Albans, 

 against the Duchess of Montrose, to recover the amount of 

 his bill for plants and various services connected with fitting up 

 the conservatories at Tifton Lodge, near Newmarket. One 

 item of the bill was for 1,000 Orchids which were furnished at 

 a guinea a plant, the seller being allowed to select what plants 

 he chose. The interesting features of the whole case centred 

 in the letters written by the Duchess's gardener to the man- 

 ager of the St. Albans Nurseries, and produced during the 

 trial. The tone of this correspondence, and the intimations 

 which it contains, should make those persons who know some- 

 thing about their own gardens congratulate themselves that 

 they are not entirely in the hands of their gardeners. 



Attention is called in the European journals to the fact that 

 Magnolia Soulangeana, one of the hybrids between M. con- 

 spicua and M. purpurea, bloomed this year in England during 

 the month of September. The second blooming of this 

 plant is not, however, an unusual occurrence in this country. 

 A few flowers appear almost every year during August and 

 September, and this year the trees were quite covered with 

 them. The flowers are much smaller, however — scarcely 

 half the size of those which appear in spring — and they do not 

 expand fully. It is rather a curious fact that neither of the 

 parents of this hybrid, or other hybrids of similar origin, 

 notably M. Norbertiana, show any tendency to produce 

 autumn flowers. The Japanese M. stellata has been known 

 to flower in the autumn in this country, but not commonly or 

 abundantly. 



The Society of Amateiu" Photographers has recently held an 

 exhibition of the work of its members at its rooms on Thirty- 

 sixth Street, where welcome evidence was given of a growth 

 in artistic feeling, as well as in the mere knowledge of photo- 

 graphic processes. Miss Catherine Weed Barnes sent some 

 excellent rural views ; Mrs. A. F. Arnold, a picture of Man- 

 groves in Florida, which was really remarkable for good com- 

 position and effective portrayal of the trees, and Mr. David 

 Williams, a large number of subjects most intelligently chosen. 

 Lieutenant C. P. Howell contributed a series of small pictures 

 taken in China, some of which were interesting, or, at least, 

 very amusing, from a horticultural point of view. They repre- 

 sented figures, apparently of life size, in which only the heads 

 and hands were visible, the other portions being thickly draped 

 with growing vines. In one, a branch had been trained as a 

 standard and passed through the outstretched hand of the 

 figure to develop above it into an open umbrella. Of course 

 one cannot call such oddities works of horticultural art, but 

 it was certainly worth while to reproduce them for western 

 eyes, as nothing could be more singular or more Chinese in 

 effect — which means something very difterent from Japanese 

 in effect — than a row of these figures, standing in large pots in 

 the most grotesque and humorous attitudes, clothed in their 

 rather ragged and prickly-looking vesture of vines. 



