280 



Garden and Forest 



[Number 490. 



commercial orchards planters remember that the market 

 prefers yellow-fleshed peaches to white-fleshed ones, even 

 though the latter are of better quality. Peaches like Moun- 

 tain Rose and Bilyeu's October are white-fleshed, it is true, 

 and they are planted, but this is because of their produc- 

 tiveness. A cling-stone peach should be avoided as one 

 avoids an enemy. The only clingstone planted largely in 

 Pennsylvania orchards is Alexander, and this is tolerated 

 because it is the earliest to ripen. 



Notes. 



Tender asparagus is scarce and sells at twenty-five cents a 

 bunch. Sweet corn, from New Jersey, is as yet immature, 

 and the best seen last week came irom North Carolina. 

 Tomatoes seem uncommonly poor, and, although they now 

 come from near-by fields as well as from the south, they 

 are too costly for general use and are sold by the pound and 

 quart. Many are sun-burned and blistered. The first Lima 

 beans, from Florida, were offered last Saturday. 



The annual report of the City Parks Association of Philadel- 

 phia has just come to hand, and it seems to be a record of 

 considerable success in the useful work of securing open 

 spaces, planting trees, providing playgrounds and saving, so 

 far as can be, the natural beauties of the land over which the 

 city is extending. Since the establishment of this association 

 something like thirty pieces of ground have been secured, 

 ranging from thirty acres in size, downwards, and it is hopeful 

 that the disused burial grounds of the city will soon be 

 thrown open for public use, and that funds for the proper 

 development and management of the recently acquired 

 grounds will be obtained. 



According to the Washington Star more than 20,000,000 pack- 

 ages of seeds have been 'distributed by the Department of 

 Agriculture this season, at an expense of 5130,000, each mem- 

 ber of Congress having 40,000 packages to dispose of. There 

 were more than a million packages of flower seeds, nearly 

 half a million packages of field seeds, and, of course, vege- 

 table seeds in great variety. Thirty-two kinds of beans, 

 twenty-three kinds of cabbages, thirty of lettuce, and nine- 

 teen of muskmelons indicate the wide range covered by the 

 list. The entire amount of seed distributed would have 

 planted more than three hundred and fifty square miles, the 

 largest distribution ever attempted by the Department. The 

 Star might have added that this is one of the most disgraceful 

 swindles ever perpetrated by a civilized government. 



A correspondent of The Gardeners' Chronicle praises several 

 named hybrid Hemerocallis which have been produced by a 

 Mr. Yeld, of Clifton, Yorkshire, from crosses between different 

 species of this genus. Some of these are described as valua- 

 ble plants, and one of them, a hybrid between H. flava and H. 

 Sieboldii, is said to be remarkably showy and distinct. It 

 grows vigorously, has sturdy flower-stems thirty inches high, 

 each bearing eight or ten orange colored flowers four inches 

 in diameter and three inches long. The buds are a brownish 

 purple and highly polished, and this color is retained on the 

 outer segments after the flower has fully expanded. The pro- 

 lific character of the plant may be estimated from the fact that 

 in a space about two feet square forty flower-stems were car- 

 rying something like 360 flowers. The different species of 

 Hemerocallis are so beautiful that they offer a most promising 

 field for the hybridizer. 



Mr. W. Botting Hemsley states in Knowledge that the charac- 

 teristic form of the tall-growing Gum-trees of Australia is a 

 massive trunk, branchless to a great height, and a compara- 

 tively small crown, with the ultimate branches slender and 

 drooping. In some species the bark is smooth and polished 

 like that of the Beech ; in others it flakes off, as in the Plane- 

 tree. The Blue Gum, Eucalyptus globulus, although it is less 

 than half a century since its value began to be realized, proba- 

 bly has a more extensive literature than any other tree. E. 

 amygdalina, in its fullest development, is probably the tallest 

 of trees. A prostrate tree of this species was found to be 420 

 feet long and 295 feet up to the first branch, where the trunk 

 was four feet in diameter, and at 360 feet it was still a yard 

 through. The Karri, E. diversicolor, and the Jarrah, now 

 used extensively for street paving in London, are both trees of 

 enormous magnitude. There are many records of trunks 

 between twenty and thirty feet in circumference at five feet 

 from the ground, and Mueller mentions a buttressed Jarrah- 



tree which girthed sixty feet at six feet from the ground. It 

 may be added that a cubic foot of green Jarrah wood weighs 

 seventy-five pounds, and when dry about sixty pounds. 



The recognized method of destroying weevils and other 

 seed-infesting insects which cause serious loss to seed and 

 grains both for sowing and for food purposes, is to treat them 

 with the fumes of carbon bisulphide at the rate of one pound 

 to a hundred bushels. This chemical is a colorless liquid, but 

 when exposed to the air the sulphur and carbon separate, each 

 uniting with the oxygen, forming carbon oxide and sulphur 

 dioxide, the latter of which is a very poisonous gas with a dis- 

 agreeable odor. To ascertain whether seeds treated with this 

 chemical lose their germinating capacity an experiment was 

 made by the Division of Botany m the Department of Agricul- 

 ture, in which seeds were exposed to a saturated atmosphere 

 of carbon bisulphide for forty-eight hours. They were then 

 placed in a germinating chamber in which check lots of 

 untreated seed were also tested. The result was that the ger- 

 minating percentages of almost all the seeds treated and un- 

 treated were the same, although in barley, rye, wheat, corn, 

 crimson clover, millet and rice this extreme treatment caused 

 some injury. The varieties which were damaged by an 

 exposure of forty-eight hours were then put to another test of 

 twenty-four hours' duration, and the result seems to be that in 

 general the seeds of cotton, peas, beans, buckwheat, oats, the 

 cabbage family and cow peas will endure severe treatment 

 with the fumes of carbon bisulphide without losing their ger- 

 minating quality to any appreciable extent, while on the other 

 hand seeds of corn, wheat, rye and crops belonging to the 

 grass family, except Kaffir corn and oats, should be treated 

 with caution, since a deterioration in vitality is likely to result 

 from excessive exposure to the gas. 



The great quantities of beautiful California cherries which 

 have made so bright a showing on the fruit-stands for a month 

 past are steadily decreasing, and only small consignments of 

 Oregon, Royal Anne, Black Republican, Black Tartarian and 

 Black Bigarreau came last week in fifty-two car-loads of fruits 

 from the Pacific coast. Bartlett pears are now of good size, as 

 are Clapp's Favorite, and good California peaches are fairly 

 plentiful and include such varieties as the favorite' early Alex- 

 ander, the juicy white-fleshed Hale's Early, Governor Garland, 

 the choicest of all the early peaches, and having delicious 

 flavor and fragrance ; Briggs' Red May, a standard early sort 

 since 1870, and the highly flavored yellow St. John. There 

 were Royal, Silverskin, Moorpark and Blenheim apricots, and 

 some showy large Red Astrachan apples. Plums and prunes 

 were never so plentiful here and so varied in color and 

 form, and this fruit comprises the bulk of the great quantity 

 now arriving. Among the popular and highest-priced varie- 

 ties now in season here are the medium-sized, dark purple 

 Tragedy prune, with rich, sweet yellowish green flesh ; the 

 French Peach plum, large, roundish, with shallow suture, and 

 varying in color from salmon to brownish red ; the reddish 

 flattened Simoni plum, with deep cavities at base and apex, 

 and apricot-yellow flesh of aromatic flavor ; Burbank, a very 

 large, nearly globular plum, rich cherry-red in color, slightly 

 mottled with yellow and freely dotted with the same color, 

 having a distinct flavor. Ogon, Abundance, Parsons' Early, 

 Clyman, Royal Plative, St. Catherine, Wickson, Purple Duane, 

 Washington, Pedro, Hungarian, Yosabi, Satsuma and Botan 

 are all seen and make a remarkable display of color and form. 

 Fresh figs are also more abundant than in any former year, 

 and sell as low as 60 cents a dozen. The leading late varieties 

 of peaches are now coming from Georgia, but these are hardly 

 up to the average in quality, owing to curculio sting, and some- 

 times to decay. Exceptionally large Georgia peaches known 

 as Belle sell for $1.00 a basket holding twenty of the fruits. 

 Strawberries, raspberries, currants and other small fruits 

 proved very perishable during the hot days of the past week, 

 and while good fruit cost the householder ordinary prices, 

 large quantities of soft berries were bought up by makers of jams 

 and syrups at unusually low rates. Lemons advanced $[.00 a 

 box as a result of the hot weather, and the best Palermos 

 brought $5.12/4 wholesale at auction. Nearly 200,000 boxes of 

 this fruit are on the way from the Mediterranean, but only two 

 cargoes are expected here this week, so that if the heat con- 

 tinues even higher prices are certain. The shortened supply of 

 bananas from Cuban ports has been made good by extra ship- 

 ments from Central America, and during June 561,000 bunches 

 were sold in this city to retail dealers, an increase of 31,000 

 bunches over the amount handled in the same month a year 

 ago. A few of die delicate little Lady-finger bananas were 

 among these importations and are occasionally seen in the 

 fancy-fruit stores. 



