IO 



Garden and Forest. 



_ The demands of the toilet were met by Colonial dames 

 in painstaking, artificial ways which would seem frivolous 

 indeed, to their supposedly more frivolous descendants of 

 to-day. Pomades, cosmetics, face-washes, hair-dyes, tooth- 

 powders^ and especially perfumes, were very lamely manu- 

 factured in Puritan households, and stills, retorts and mills 

 tor the making of perfumes, oils and "beauty-waters" 

 were almost as common as looms and spinning-wheels. 

 Much time was spent in planting suitable materials in the 

 garden, and in gathering them there and in the woods and 

 fields; and "m every garret, from every rafter, slowly 

 swayed great susurrous bunches of withered herbs and 

 simples, awaiting expression and distillation I n 



many an old garret, now bare of such stores, • mints still 

 perfume the air ; the very walls exhale 'the homesick 

 smell of dry, forgotten herbs.'" 



But the still-room was used likewise for the preparation 

 of medicines and quaint and curious is the catalogue Mrs. 

 Earle gives of the partly vegetable, partly animal and partly 

 mineral remedies used m colonial times. But we need not 

 dwell now upon her chapter entitled "Doctors and Pa- 

 tients for we noticed it at some length when it first ap- 

 peared, under the title, "The Queen's Closet Opened "m 

 the Atlantic Monthly. In closing Mrs. Earle's delightful 

 gossipy yet in many ways seriously instructive volume' 

 one wishes only that she had told us something of our 

 far-off grandmothers' gardens as well as of their home- 

 interiors. " 1C 



Notes. 



The last English census enumerated about 5,000 women 

 who are professional gardeners in that country, and si who 

 a,e employed in superintending the drainage of towns 



A statistical summary with regard to the rate of growth of 

 different .species .of trees, as observed in the P.netum at Scho 

 venhorst, ,n Holland, has recently been pub fished The 

 measurements were made in the years 1S78, 1SS6 and i8<r> 

 and deal with 200 specimens. The tree which showed the 

 most rapid increase of size was Abies grandis. At three feel 

 four inches above the ground it was twenty-two inches to cir 

 cumference in 1878, forty-four inches in ,886, and sfxtv-nine 

 inches m 1892, while its height was noted as twenty one feel 



S/fSnVsy 878, fhirty - five feet ,hree inches - ^ S3 



„7 h , e „ fo " estr y exh 'bit of the state of Pennsylvania at th*. 



Center 1 ^ 311 ; ^V^ b ^ de P° Sited at "he S^e Collte u 

 Centre County. Fortunately, the large sections of tree-trunks 

 have not been damaged beyond the loss of small pieces of 

 bark and a few bruises on the oil surfaces. The lar-e photo 

 graphs in swinging frames make an interesting ^a^beautLfu 

 series. Among the trunk specimens is one" of Sassafras 

 twenty-six inches m diameter, and showing 107 rings of annual 

 growth, and another of a White Pine, thirty-e""ht°nches fn 

 diameter, showing 28S rings. Pennsylvania canno boast of 

 many trees of similar dimensions in her forests to-day? 



LeComte Oswald de Kerchove de Denterghem the distin 

 guished Belgian horticulturist, and the author of "work on 

 Les Palmters, is about to issue le Livre des Orchidls ,noc 

 avo vo ume, with thirty colored plates and n/ore than two" 

 hundred figures. The work will be divided into five div sions 

 and will embrace the history of Orchids their mnmh„i 

 their geographical distribution, their usel and fcd?<^& 

 the las part being devoted to a review of each of the Z era 

 cultivated in European gardens, with descriptions of thlmosl 

 valuable species. The volume may be obtained from the nub 



P n h ce\1hiriy H frcs RUe ^^ «' Gh ^ *^ & 



ington. It has been largely adopted elsefe" " g noKV 

 because it is cheap, but because it is proving most effective 

 How complete tins protection is can be plainly seen by one 

 who 1 rides through certain streets in Washington; where toe 



examination of a row ot trees a mile long and treated in mis 



[Number 306. 



way there was hardly a visible defacement on a single trunk 

 which had been surrounded by the wire screens, although the 

 meshes were two inches in diameter, while the unprotected 

 trees were almost invariably badly injured, and some ol ? them 

 completely barked on the street side from the -round toS 

 point as high as a horse's teeth could reach. & 



A recent account of the celebrated botanical garden of 

 Buitenzorg , m Java, published by Dr. Haberland ff Vienna 

 speaks with especial praise of the avenues, each composed of 

 trees of a single kind, which divide the garden into sections 

 One of these is composed of 160 fine specimens of Canarnnn 

 commune, the thick crowns of which form a gitantic arcaT 

 where all interstices are filled by the deep groin oThousands 



rather of a long-extended wood than of a simplelvenue? 



Messrs. Frost & Co., of the Genesee Valley Nurseries in 

 Rochester, write that they received last autumn theXwin£ 



F Zre Unl .^ tl0n fTOm 3 leadin * nurser y Arm Tn Odean S g 

 Jom.m : e ^T ySarS Slnce we sent y ou a plant named & 



you be i'&TS' HaVS u° l f the P' ant sti11 ? " so, wouYd 

 you be so kind as to dig up all the roots, even if you can vrt 



thousands of them, cutting them into lengths of four to f?x 

 oav vou a for f ° rward ' hen ? to ™ by the firsfsteamer ? W w fifi 

 EreFtt^n besides your labor, trouble and expense " 

 next steamer I, C °i,f < ? rwarded a , lar -f nulnber °* roots by the 

 20th of Z t ' 1 be remem bered that in our issue for the 



Knni , t V "^ ' aSt We Called att ention to the fact that twl 

 Knot-weed was being recommended in several European our 



Fros a l a rn rag< Tl P K ant ' a 5 d ' "° d0ubt - the rootssent by Messrs 

 Frost & Co. will be used to ensure a forage-supply in re-ions 

 where nothing better will grow. The Polygonums belon ° to 

 toe same family as Buckwheat and Rhubarb; and t is said fhat 

 when he rhizomes of this species are divided and set a vard 

 apart the surface of the soil will be completely covered to a 

 year or two with abundant forage. co\ereu in a 



th?=fiS g A° lid Y week fairl y g° od flow ers could be bought on 

 tn ™« r ° r a ' mOSt n ° thin - T ' though to those who are able 

 to pass discriminative judgment they were neither fresh nor 



T7^ r lTf the / rSt S ualit * and prices for choice flowers 

 at the firs -class florists' were not by any means exYrZ 



househnY "^ ViT t0 bS eXp6Cted that retreLhment in every" 



household would begin on the flower-supply, the fact is thlt 



instead of giving costly presents of jewelry o ^bric-a-brac 



flowers, which are always fashionable, have taken the nlMe 



of these, so that the quantity of cut flowers sold durto- the 



holiday season was larger than it was last year, the prices be ™ 



considerably lower. Of course, there was an abundance of 



roses, with a wide range of prices, from fifteen cents for daintV 



buds of Papa Gontier to two dollars apiece for Amen™Z? y 



roses, with stems three and four feet tong V to lets „! ' y 



to be the most fashionable of small flowers, and bunches of a 



hundred double deep-colored flowers were three dollars The 



best carnations sold for seventy-five cents a dozen <iJ 



King, the favorite among white "sorts for fts lar°e size an^d 



strong stems, commanding a dollar a dozen Lar-e andtho 



Prince of Orange marigold^ were in limi ed supply at a doltar 



a dozen, and flowers of Lilium Harrisii, popular tor decorative 



use at weddings, brought two to three dollars a dozen There 



was a suggestion of spring in the first forced daffodils and 



md P me ^ C °f mS «^*Y-^ cents to a doflar a dozen 



and the narcissus twenty-five cents a dozen. Orchids nam' 



rally made the richest and most imposing show in the" 



windows of the uptown florists, where they were dta 



played in great profusion. Flowers of CanW Ti 



costing from fifty F C ents to a dollar eacl , and of Cvorme' 



drum insigne, which varied in price from two to five Xlhrs 



a dozen were most frequently seen, and, oddly enough 



arge and well-grown flowers of Cyclamen were of ten sold wf h 



the Orchids, and even passed under that name 1? 



undirected buyers. These cost fifty cents a dozen L«?T 



of two or three kinds of flowers, e^Sely arranged S 



Ferns, were most generally used for floral holfdav S.fts n 



the construction of a bridal bouquet so manv *riu£k $ 1 n ? 



the-vafleyand forced white LilacLre used ^toat ^enty fivSo " 



lars is a fair price for one, and the same amount wH h,v » 



dozen sprays of Phalaenopsis, which are uTed for the same 



purpose. Plants sold for New Year's festivitie^ h^irill p f 



included well-berried specimens of Ardl ia 'various Sft 



in°bloom he JemSalem CheUy - Azaleas and sm all Lifac^ante 



