January 24, 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



3i 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C- S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 1894. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Article: — The Improvement of Cultivated Plants 31 



Notes for Mushroom-eaters. — I Professor W. G. Far low. 32 



Exotic Trees and Shrubs for Florida Gardens.— I H. Nehrling. 33 



New or Little-known Plants :— Lonicera Korolkowii. (With figure.) 



C, S. S., O.Stapf. 34 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter W. Watson. 34 



Cultural Department : — Spraying Fruit-trees for Fungoid Diseases, 



Dr. Charles Parry, 36 



Roses W.H. Taphn. 37 



Greenhouse Climbers Plantsman. 37 



Iris Palestina J. N. G. 38 



Correspondence : — Rust of Carnations . . IV. C. Sturgis. 38 



Forest-lands for Investment Dietrich Brandts. 38 



Meetings of Societies:— The Nebraska State Horticultural Society 39 



Notes. 40 



Illustration : — Lonicera Korolkowii, Fig-. 4 35 



Q ( 



The Improvement of Cultivated Plants. 



l OME months ago, in speaking of the proper work of 

 ^3 experiment stations, we ventured the opinion that some 

 of the elaborate comparative tests made of different varie- 

 ties of fruit and vegetables might be left to individual cul- 

 tivators. The proper region for station effort lies beyond 

 the field which can be effectively worked by ordinary farm- 

 ers and gardeners. In all problems which demand trained 

 observation, scientific accuracy, costly apparatus and the 

 accumulation and classification of data which it requires 

 years to gather and sound judgment to interpret, the expert 

 scientists of the stations ought to be able to investigate 

 effectively and report intelligently, while to answer such 

 questions would be impossible for ordinary farmers and 

 fruit-growers. Any grower of Strawberries, however, is 

 competent to test a dozen or so of the best varieties on 

 his own land every year, and to decide for himself as to 

 their comparative value for his purposes. Indeed, he will 

 be compelled to decide for himself at last, because the 

 results of one or two seasons' trial on the station-grounds, 

 which may differ entirely in soil and exposure from his 

 own, furnish no guarantee whatever that the plants will 

 behave with him as they did when reported on. Of course, 

 the labors of the stations in this field are not actually use- 

 less ; nevertheless, it seems clear that organizations of 

 trained workers can render agriculture a higher service by 

 devoting themselves to the discovery of the broader truths 

 of science upon which the successful practice of agriculture 

 and horticulture must always be based. 



We have recently received a letter from an officer in one 

 of the stations, in which, after alluding to our position on 

 this point, the writer asks if we do not consider the im- 

 provement of fruits and vegetables an object to which the 

 experiment stations could profitably address themselves. 

 Beyond question it is. But the testing of a hundred varie- 

 ties of Tomatoes or Strawberries every year at several dif- 

 ferent stations has not enriched our horticulture with any 

 improved fruits or vegetables, so far as we know, and has 

 done little to popularize any new plants which originated 

 elsewhere. But when any station begins some systematic 

 experiments in the breeding of new plants, and perseveres in 



the work long enough to establish any principles, we may 

 hope to receive some instruction. This is a work which re- 

 quires some knowledge of the laws of heredity and variation, 

 and since no decisive answer to the inquiries made of nature 

 can be obtained until after a series of years, this certainly 

 is a field of effort which the stations could occupy with 

 wisdom and profit. 



All the fruits and vegetables and grains that are grown 

 in our farms and gardens have been bred up from their 

 wild condition. If they had originally any quality which 

 was useful to man, by proper care and selection this has 

 been strengthened until it has become a fixed element in 

 their constitution, which could be handed down to succeed- 

 ing generations. Useful plants have been perpetuated and 

 improved in this way, and the good qualities of each of 

 them have been multiplied and established as a part of 

 their hereditary nature. Of course, this improvement has 

 not been brought about systematically and scientifically, 

 but by the long and bungling efforts of man through gen- 

 erations. It has taken centuries to produce the best varie- 

 ties of Cabbage and Cauliflower and Rutabaga from the 

 wild plant on the western shores of Europe, and the Toma- 

 toes and Potatoes in our gardens, when compared with the 

 wild plants in the mountains of South America, will show 

 what even unskilled selection can accomplish in the course 

 of years. But these results could have been reached much 

 sooner if the selection and crossing had been made by men 

 of adequate knowledge and with a well-defined purpose. In 

 the instructive paper read by Monsieur Henri L. deVilmorin 

 at the Congress of Horticulture, in Chicago, last summer, an 

 example is given to show how the wild form of a plant can 

 be changed if it receives kind treatment at the hand of man 

 and is helped to adapt itself to his purpose. The changes 

 may be slow and gradual at first, and often scarcely no- 

 ticeable, but if the effort is persisted in these modifications 

 will become greater and greater, and they will in time be- 

 come much more rapid than the earlier ones. The account 

 of this experiment, which Monsieur de Vilmorin has been 

 conducting for more than twenty years, is here given in 

 his own language : 



Since 1872 I have been cultivating one of our Parsley- worts, 

 Anthriscus sylvestris, a European weed, in order to change its 

 slender and much-forked roots into fleshy, straight and clean 

 roots like those of the Parsnip. Among the first package of 

 roots raised from wild seeds a dozen were selected which had 

 a tendency in their roots to larger and straighter bodies. Each 

 root was planted separately and its seed harvested separately. 

 Of a dozen lots obtained, eight or nine were discarded, and 

 roots were selected only from such lots as exhibited some trace 

 of variation. The next year a dozen roots or so were chosen, 

 and a drawing of each root was made, which was planted sepa- 

 rately and its seed harvested separately, as before. I have 

 sketches of all these roots selected, so that it is possible to fol- 

 low every stage of variation from each plant living at this day. 

 For the first ten years the changes were slight, but now they 

 are more and more marked with every generation, and in 

 some of the lots the straight and smooth roots are the most 

 numerous. My object was not to create a new vegetable, as 

 the roots of Anthriscus sylvestris have such a strong taste of 

 camphor as to be quite uneatable, but simply to show that 

 careful and continuous selection could quite transform a wild 

 plant in years which do not equalaquarterof the span of many 

 human lives. Like results had been shown by my grandfather 

 with the Wild Carrot, only these were open to controversy on 

 account of possible crosses between garden varieties and the 

 wild strains. But no such objection can be raised in the case 

 of my Parsley-wort. 



This experiment indicates a line of work which might 

 be well taken up by any station, but it will be observed 

 that it is altogether different from the testing of a hundred 

 chance varieties of any plant, especially when nothing is 

 known of their pedigrees. How much a practical grower 

 can accomplish by taking advantage of these laws of vari- 

 ation and heredity is strongly shown in the production of 

 the Osage Melon in a market-gardening region a few miles 

 from Chicago, on the Michigan shore of the lake. Last 

 year Professor Bailey explained in this journal (vol. vi., 



