May g, 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



183 



ported. It is the longest keeper of all American apples, 

 and is often shipped in April, while it has been sent to 

 Glasgow and to English ports as late as June. 



The firm prices which continued in England until Febru- 

 ary were then broken by large receipts from the Continent, 

 and the demand for such American apples as were still 

 held there was also affected by large receipts from Australia 

 and Tasmania. The bulk of supply in England is, how- 

 ever, drawn from Canada, some of the best apples coming 

 from Nova Scotia. These are of a quality superior to those 

 grown in the United States and have remarkable keeping 

 qualities. Transportation to England costs hardly more 

 than freight into the United States, so that English markets 

 stand the first chance with Canada shippers, especially as 

 there is also a duty of 84 cents a barrel on apples brought 

 from Canada into this country. So large a supply of Canada 

 apples found their way to England last winter that prices 

 were often $r.oo a barrel less than the same fruit brought 

 here. The average wholesale price for apples in New York 

 for the season of 1892-93 was $2.50 a barrel, and for the 

 season just passed, $4. 50 a barrel. 



Many of the apples exported come from western New 

 York ; the largest apple farms have storage houses or 

 cellars provided, and these are also found in many towns, 

 for neighborhood use. At the beginning of winter the 

 storage house or cellar is filled with cold air and closed up 

 with the temperature at 28 or 30 degrees. Later in the 

 season, when the temperature inside rises to 35 or 40 de- 

 grees, cold air is again let in. By this means apples are 

 kept until the end of winter without ice. For late holdings 

 cold storage is necessary. Shipments are usually made to 

 commission dealers in the seaboard cities, by whom trans- 

 portation is arranged for through a shipping broker. The 

 fruit is sent on fast passenger steamships and is stowed in 

 the hold away from the engine and boilers, generally in the 

 forward part of the vessel, where the ventilation is best. 

 In the early years of the trade apples were carefully 

 wrapped in paper and packed in cork or mahogany saw- 

 dust, but no special precautions are now taken beyond 

 having perfectly sound fruit. Shipments vary from 500 to 

 1,000 barrels, sometimes as many as 8,000 going on a sino-le 

 steamer. The fruit is consigned to an English agent who 

 remits the proceeds of sale after deduction for ocean freight, 

 besides expenses for landing, harbor dues, delivery and 

 sale. Cable advice as to prices is sent to the dealers on 

 this side and shipments made on such advice naturally 

 result in gain or loss as the English market may happen to 

 rise or fall. New York merchants tell of losing as much 

 as $3.00 a barrel, while the highest authentic price ventured 

 upon by a veteran dealer is 105 shillings a barrel for a half- 

 dozen barrels twenty years ago. 



The season here is nearly ended, and the few apples held 

 in the interior of the state for trade values will all be dis- 

 posed of before the new crop comes in from the South. 

 Roxbury Russets, Baldwins and Golden Russets are the 

 only sorts quoted in the market reports. These now arrive 

 at the rate of about 300 barrels a day and bring at whole- 

 sale $6.00, $5.50 and $5.00 a barrel. Dealers have recently 

 divided their barrel stock into bushel lots, and these are 

 offered in boxes at barrel rates. 



New Vorlt. M. B. C. 



Foreign Correspondence. 



London Letter. 



^Eschynanthus Hildebrandii. — This is a new species, and 

 one that is likely to become a favorite with those culti- 

 vators who are interested in pretty little tropical plants. It 

 has lately been introduced to Kew by Mr. Hildebrand, of 

 Fort Stedman, Shan States, Burma, where it is epiphytic 

 on the trunks of large trees, the roots finding nourishment 

 in the crevices of the bark. Several little specimens of it 

 have been established in teak baskets, and they are planted 

 in sphagnum-moss, the treatment being such as is given to 

 Phalsenopsis. Although the stems are barely three inches 



high, they bear a considerable number of bright scarlet 

 tubular flowers with orange and black-purple blotches in 

 the throat ; the leaves are sub-rotund, petioled and covered 

 with fine hairs. It appears to be nearest JE. gracilis, also 

 Indian. The charm of the plant is in the erect habit of the 

 short stems, the rich green of the leaves and its elegant, 

 brilliantly colored flowers. A figure and description <>t it 

 will shortly be published in the Botanical Magazine. 



Protea cynaroides and P. nana. — These are two of the 

 mpst interesting plants now flowering among the south 

 African plants at Kew. The former is an erect-branched 

 shrub six or eight feet high with numerous spathulate 

 bright green leaves and a terminal head of flowers sugges- 

 tive of an Artichoke, Cynara Scolymus, but the color is pale 

 pink. The plant now in flower is growing in the succulent 

 house along with the Agaves, and it is planted out in grav- 

 elly soil. Thus treated it is much happier and produces 

 finer flowers than when grown in a pot. P. nana is totally 

 different, being not unlike a small Pine in its habit of 

 branching and in the linear and crowded leaves. The 

 nodding cup-shaped flowers are colored blood-crimson and 

 are two inches across. A picture of this same plant in 

 flower, taken two years ago, was published in Garden and 

 Forest (vol. iv., page 412) along with some notes on the 

 handsomest sorts of Proteas, a genus well worth the atten- 

 tion of the modern horticulturist. 



Epiphyllum Makoyanum. — This is a plant of which note 

 should be made by growers of stove-plants, and especially 

 of Cacti. I suppose it is nothing more than a form of E. 

 Gaertneri, figured in the Botanical Magazine, t. 7201, the 

 only difference being that in the former the branch divi- 

 sions are narrow and thin as compared with the latter, and 

 there are fewer and smaller hairs at the apices of the nodes. 

 In flower, form and color the two are identical. They dif- 

 fer very much from the E. truncatum group, which have 

 hitherto had a monopoly of the favor generally meted out 

 to Cacti by horticulturists, and, in my opinion, they are 

 superior. The color of E. Makoyanum is a uniform orange- 

 scarlet, and the form is more like that of a Phyllocactus 

 than E. truncatum. There is a plant of E. Makoyanum in 

 flower now at Kew, which was a small branch grafted upon 

 a short stem of Cereus nycticalus three years ago ; it is 

 now a dense mass of branches nearly two feet across, and 

 is covered with bright-colored flowers. 



Agave Potatorum. — This species was introduced into cul- 

 tivation from Mexico about 1830, audit was described by 

 Zuccarini as a good species with broad spiny leaves and a 

 pole-like scape twelve feet high, including the thyreoid 

 panicle, five feet in length. An enormous specimen of it 

 which had long been a striking feature in the succulent 

 house at Kew, last .year started to push up a flower-spike, 

 and to give this headroom the plant was removed to the 

 Palm-house, where it is now finely in flower. Mr. Baker 

 suggested years ago that it was doubtfully distinct from 

 A. Scolymus, and now he has decided that the two are 

 identical. But, while there may not be good botanical 

 characters to separate the two there can be no question that 

 A. Potatorum, as represented at Kew, is very much larger 

 in leaf, scape and panicle than any of the many forms of 

 A. Scolymus described. The Kew plant has a huge rosette 

 of leaves each three feet long and a foot wide; the scape is 

 fifteen feet high and six inches in diameter at the base, and 

 the panicle is an enormous candelabrum-like arrangement 

 three feet high, of erect pale-yellow fleshy flowers, each 

 three inches long. It is a magnificent Agave. 



Lilium Henryi. — I do not know when this fine Lily will 

 cease to surprise us, but it increases in vigor and beauty 

 every year. At Kew there is now a bed of it, or rather a 

 bed of bushes of Olearia Haastii, with some fifty bulbs of 

 the Lilium planted among them, and some of these are 

 now sending up purplish growths nearly an inch in diam- 

 eter. Dr. Henry told us it was a giant in China, and it 

 promises to bear out that description here. Last year we 

 had plants of it eight feet high. In addition to the bed, we 

 have a large batch of seedlings raised from seeds ripened 



