28 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 3C8. 



The location of the new establishment is close to the fortifica- 

 tion ditch and between the Bois de Boulogne entrance at La 

 Muette and the Porte Dauphin — the main entrance from the 

 Champs Elysees. 



This, however, is but a material improvement. Much more 

 interesting subjects have been under discussion during the 

 last fortnight, and it has been determined to make a complete 

 pomological collection on some grounds belonging to the city, 

 in quite a different location — the Bois de Vincennes. These 

 two municipal establishments will then be opposite each other, 

 east and west of Paris, and quite close to the walls of the city. 

 All Frenchmen who are more than fifty years of age, and 

 interested in pomology, will remember the pomological col- 

 lections at the Pepimere du Luxembourg. There our best 

 professors gave their lectures to a large audience of profes- 

 sional and amateur pupils. The collection of Grapes was 

 specially large and celebrated. The reduction in the area of 

 the Luxembourg grounds caused the much-regretted disper- 

 sion of the collections ; and these grounds, which before the 

 Revolution had contained the celebrated nurseries of the Peres 

 Chartreux, who were, in fact, the first originators of the col- 

 lections, retained but a limited number of fruit-trees, almost 

 exclusively Pear-trees. 



It seems to be a happy thought of the Parisian authorities to 

 renew the tradition ot patronage given by the French capital 

 to horticultural studies. As far as the present projects are 

 elaborated, space and financial resources will be granted for 

 the pomological collection, special attention being given 

 to the Vine. The grounds will need some improvement, but 

 these obstacles are of small moment when we consider the 

 unlimited resources of this city in workmen and machinery. 



The city has already established a school of arboriculture in 

 the Bois de Vincennes, quite near to the Porte Daumesnil. In 

 this place are cultivated all the ornamental trees and shrubs 

 that are used in the parks, squares and avenues of Paris. In 

 fact, many other beautiful and interesting trees and shrubs 

 have been gathered there by the learned director of the school, 

 Professor Chargueraud, and were it not for its lack of size 

 and the inferior quality of the soil, the Ecole d'Arboriculture 

 could be made an arboretum of the highest character. A well- 

 selected orchard, although limited in size, is part of the school, 

 and some forty young people receive there very good horticul- 

 tural instruction almost free of charge. 



The new grounds for the pomological collections will be 

 just opposite the Ecole d'Arboriculture, and it is thought by 

 many of the City Council that some space should be reserved 

 for floriculture, and that a general faculty for teaching horti- 

 culture should be founded in connection with these new es- 

 tablishments. Vincennes and Neuilly are close to the Porte 

 Daumesnil, near which a number ot market-gardeners live, 

 and instruction in the cultivation of vegetables would naturally 

 become a part of the programme of the contemplated school. 

 Anything that distinctly promotes horticulture or any of its 

 branches in France will be a public boon. 



The elections are just over at the French Horticultural Society. 

 The First Vice-President, Monsieur Henri de Vilmorin, was 

 re-elected for two years. Some slight changes were made in 

 the staff of the society, the newly elected ones being actual 

 horticulturist . Amateurs and scientists are replaced by intel- 

 ligent men who make a business of horticulture. No doubt, it 

 is best for a national society to have a fair proportion of its 

 members chosen from every class. 



Botanists will be glad to know that the Abbe Delavay, who 

 has collected so many new plants and seeds, is again in west- 

 ern China. Some new discoveries are to be looked for, unless 

 he is prevented by his failing health, which has been much 

 shaken by his long residence and apostolic work in China. A 

 good many Chinese plants have also been received at the Jar- 

 din des Plantes as dried specimens from other French mission- 

 aries in western China, and a number of species are soon 

 to be described. 



The taste for dendrological collections is, fortunately, not ex- 

 tinct in France, but I can only speak here of one experiment of 

 cultivation in pure sand, made near the sea-shore in Brittany, 

 by an amateur. It had been asserted that no garden could be 

 made near St. Malo, and that no tree or shrub, except the 

 Tamarisk, could survive there. But, notwithstanding many 

 outspoken predictions of failure, our friend began many trials 

 with native and exotic plants. He has succeeded beyond all 

 expectation, and has now a good selection of trees in his gar- 

 den. The gray foliage of Populus Bolleana towers above a 

 dark green mass of Monterey Cypress, while Elaeagnusangus- 

 tifolia and other species of this genus, with the common and 

 purple Barberries, give a rich variety of color. Even a lawn 

 was created in the clear sand by planting young seedlings of 



Bupleurum fruticosum and cutting the shoots evenly at some 

 six inches from the ground. To me this seems an achieve- 

 ment worth putting on record. 

 Pans. 



A". 



Local Climates in California. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — During the holiday week I went up the mountain-side 

 immediately behind the town of Ukiah. The weather was 

 perfectly clear, although there had been a rain-storm a few 

 days before ; the thermometer stood at about twenty-five de- 

 grees, Fahrenheit ; the mud was frozen hard and frost crystals 

 showed everywhere in the loose soil. At about 200 feet above 

 the level of the town I reached a belt where, instead of frost, 

 there was a dew and an air like that of spring. This belt was 

 about a quarter of a mile wide, and perhaps the difference in 

 altitude of its two borders was 300 feet. Above this I came 

 again to frozen ground and frost crystals. At both edges of 

 this belt the line was so sharply drawn that two rods rarely in- 

 tervened between the frozen and the frostless ground. The 

 soil at this point of the hill-side, though of good quality, is not 

 cultivated, but half a mile to the southward a grove of twenty- 

 five Orange trees, which are now loaded with good fruil, is 

 flourishing near the lower edge of the warm be It. On Christmas- 

 day a correspondent wrote from Sky Ranch, which is north of 

 this place and 1,600 feet above the sea-level, that his Strawber- 

 ries and Raspberries were in bloom and showing ripe fruit ; 

 that the leaves were still green on his deciduous trets ; that 

 Limes, Lemons and Oranges were thriving. 



These thermal belts I shall not try to explain, and eastern 

 people are often puzzled over the statement that oranges 

 ripen sooner one hundred miles north of San Francisco than 

 in southern .California. The northern Citrus belt, as it is 

 called, is only a repetition, on a large scale, of this phenome- 

 non which I have described — namely, a belt lying within cer- 

 tain altitudes on the mountain-slopes. It is only within recent 

 times that these warm zones have been studied closely, but 

 better acquaintance with them has demonstrated the fact that 

 they exist throughout the northern part of this state, and that 

 in many places where the Citrus and other tender fruits will 

 not live in the valley climates, there are points near at hand in 

 the same latitude where they are safer from frost than they 

 are several degrees farther south. As yet these facts are put 

 to comparatively little practical use, but as the country be- 

 comes more thickly settled it is not improbable that these 

 elevated warm lands will be much sought for. It will be very 

 important to know how much these belts vary in altitude 

 from year to year, if, indeed, they practically vary at all, and 

 whether the cutting down of the woods and other changes in 

 the earth's surfaces which are made by man will have any 

 effect upon them. 



Ukiah, Calif. Carl Purdy. 



Recent Publications. 



Maize : A Botanical and Economic Study. By John W. 

 Harshberger, Ph.D. Philadelphia : 1893. 



This is the second part of the first volume of Contribu- 

 tions from /lie Botanical Laboratory of the University of Penn- 

 sylvania, and its one hundred and twenty-five beautifully 

 printed pages, with maps and plates, summarize in conve- 

 nient and systematic form our knowledge of Indian Corn. 

 The evidence that the plant originated in a region of re- 

 stricted limit somewhere north of the Isthmus of Tehaunte- 

 pec and south of the twenty-second degree of north latitude 

 and more than 4,500 feet above the level of the sea, is 

 marshaled in a very convincing way by Mr. Harshberger. 

 Eminent botanists have claimed that the cereal is indige- 

 nous to the Eastern Archipelago ; others hold that Chii a 

 is its original home ; others, still, consider Japan the place 

 of its origin, but the arguments when thoroughly sifted 

 amount to little, and the elaborate array of evidence from 

 archaeology, history, ethnology and philology which is 

 here adduced to show that Maize is of American origin is 

 substantiated by facts from botanical and meteorological 

 science. It is ingeniously argued that the Mayas first cul- 

 tivated Maize, and since it is probable that this people did 

 not emerge from savagery until after the Christian era, the 

 beginning of its cultivation is therefore fixed after that date. 

 From them it probably passed southward through the 

 Isthmian tribes to Peru and Chili, and was carried by the 



