228 



Garden and Forest. 



[NUMUER 328. 



is frequently made of planting too many varieties in one house. 

 This usually results in the comparative failure of several sorts, 

 for exactly similar treatment is not adapted to all kinds, nor 

 will the same soil give the best results for all varieties. 

 Meteor and American Beauty are not likely to do their best 

 when grown in a night temperature of fifty-six to fifty-eight 

 degrees, in which Souvenir d'un Ami and Niphetos luxuriate. 

 A few suitable sorts should be selected for each house, when 

 success will be more certain. Cleanliness in the Rose-house 

 cannot be too strongly urged, for with high cultivation there 

 seems to be a corresponding development of various diseases, 

 mostly of fungoid origin, and likely to yield to prompt and 

 intelligent treatment. The interior of the house should have 

 a coat of paint every two years, and every season, previous to 

 refilling, the benches should be thoroughly coated with crude 

 oil ; this acts both as a preservative and insecticide,, and while 

 the odor is disagreeable for a time, the benefits are decided. 



For planting in shallow benches 1 prefer strong plants from 

 three-inch pots ; these are more convenient to use than plants 

 from larger pots, and, if healthy, they will give equally satis- 

 factory results. Smaller plants will also do well if skillfully 

 handled, but these naturally have less strength to depend 

 upon if they receive a check after replanting. The opening 

 of side ventilators on a level with the benches in which the 

 Roses are planted has frequently been tested and discussed, 

 but the weight of evidence seems to be against this practice. 

 Attacks of mildew are much more prevalent under such con- 

 ditions than when ventilation is confined to the openings at the 

 top of the house, where air can be admitted freely, without 

 so much direct draught on the plants. Very light shading 

 over the newly planted Roses is beneficial to them, if it is not 

 allowed to remain on the glass too long, and relieves the 

 necessity for frequent watering of the young stock. A heavy 

 shading tends to make the growth weak and soft. 



Among the newer varieties that have rapidly attained popu- 

 larity are Madame Testout and Kaiserin Augusta Victoria, 

 both of which are strong growers and give flowers of large- 

 size. Christine de None has also been highly recommended 

 in some quarters ; the buds are especially desirable and bear 

 some resemblance to Papa Gontier, both in coloring and 

 shape. 



Holmesburg, Pa. W. H. Taplill. 



Correspondence. 



A California Garden. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — An unexpected rain-storm in the third week of May has 

 set every farmer and gardener in this valley to work. The air 

 is cool, and gentle sea-breezes come in across the Coast- 

 range, and that peculiar California season that is partly spring 

 and partly summer, and that obeys no rules of the almanac, is 

 upon us in its full splendor. The yellow fruits of the Loquat, 

 Eriobotrya Japonica, are ripening in the tree-tops, and the 

 Cherry avenue is reddening in the sun. In the vegetable- 

 garden are new potatoes and Juno and Sapphire peas ready to 

 be gathered. There are more strawberries than the family 

 can use, and raspberries are beginning to ripen. 



It is the season when all gardening work will prosper, what- 

 ever one's choice or whim. There is always water to irrigate 

 with, enough for a few acres at least, and whenever the 

 soil becomes too dry for transplanting or seed-sowing, it 

 can be made wet in a few hours. At times, therefore, we 

 are doing December or February work, and at other times 

 pruning away the surplus of bloom or heading back plants that 

 are running to seed. A stranger would certainly think it a 

 September garden. For example, the Eschscholt/.ia bed, some 

 thirty feet square, was seeded several years ago, and is now 

 well established. When the first bloom is over, the plants are 

 cut down with a scythe, the water turned on, and in a few 

 weeks there is again a flaming sheet of flowers. There are 

 additions to the wild garden every year. A bulb or flowering 

 plant taken from the fields or canons seldom amounts to any- 

 thing the first year, but if given half a chance it is soon con- 

 testing with the garden-plants for space for its progeny. A 

 beautiful large-flowered Wild Clover that I started from one 

 seed in a pot two years ago is now well naturalized in the 

 gravel of the road-side, and it would be easy to give a score of 

 such instances. 



Roses have flowered luxuriantly this year, and they are still 

 magnificent, though lessening in quantity as the time ap- 

 proaches for their midsummer rest. Under our treatment we 

 have roses ten months of the year, and two seasons of very 

 heavy bloom. In broad terms, nearly every Rose does well 



here, though a few mildew if neglected. One Rose-grower in 

 this neighborhood a few days ago cut fifty thousand choice 

 roses for the Rose Carnival of the Midwinter Fair. A plant of 

 Marechal Niel, which has reached the top of a twelve-foot trel- 

 lis in this garden, has already produced three thousand choice 

 buds this season. Madame de Watteville is a wonderful little 

 Rose, somewhat hard to grow in perfection, but it well repays 

 extra care ; budded on Papa Gontier, or some such stout 

 grower, it is less likely to mildew, and produces better buds. 



Calceolaria rugosa and all the hardier sorts of Calceolarias 

 are entirely at home here in a sheltered border, and so are 

 many of the popular greenhouse and florists' flowers. When 

 any plant does poorly under glass the rule in California is to 

 bed it out and watch for improvement. Glass is useful, to be 

 sure, but most amateurs value it chiefly for propagating pur- 

 poses. The open-ground sowing of seeds that was easy and, 

 indeed, almost universal a quarter of a century ago, when 

 there were no insect pests and no slugs here, is no longer 

 practicable in every garden. Seed pans or boxes are preferred 

 at all times of the year, and everything except a few patches of 

 self-sown annuals is transplanted into well-prepared soil, it 

 is a great saving of labor, as less hoeing and weeding have 

 thus to be done. 



The work of keeping up a garden is probably less in these 

 Coast-range valleys of California than almost anywhere else. 

 Amateur gardening is easy here, and very little skill or knowl- 

 edge is required to produce beautiful effects. There is not a 

 single professional gardener employed in this region, although 

 every house- lot has its flower-garden. The Portuguese and 

 Italian laborers are handy in such matters, and they do good 

 work under directions. California florists learned long ago, 

 however, that there is little or no money for them in stocks of 

 bedding-plants. "If I sell a ten-cent Geranium to a farmer's 

 wife," said a commercial grower to me, "it is over the whole 

 valley in less than a year, and I never sell another. Winters 

 that would kill off all the sott-wooded plants would give our 

 business a chance." 



Niles, Calif. Charles H. Shinn. 



The Forest. 



Mixed Oak and Beech Forests of the Spessart.— II. 



VALUE OF THE OAK. 



IN the Spessart, as throughout Germany, the most valu- 

 able tree is the Oak. The Beech and the Hornbeam are 

 useful companions ; nay, they may be said to be necessary 

 for the good development of the Oak, but the value of their 

 produce is small. An Oak-tree, twenty-four inches in 

 diameter, breast-high, and 105 feet high, will yield five cubic 

 metres, or 176 cubic feet, of salable wood, including 

 pieces down to three inches in diameter. If sound, it will 

 sell as follows: Logs, fifty-five per cent, or 2.75 cubic 

 metres at fifty marks a cubic metre, 13750 marks. Small 

 timber, chiefly for wine-casks, twenty per cent, or 1. 

 cubic metre at fifteen marks. Firewood, twenty-five per 

 cent. ' or 1.25 cubic metres at 3.50 marks, 4.38 marks. 

 The whole worth 156.88 marks. 



A Beech-tree of the same size will sell as follows : Tim- 

 ber, thirty per cent, for thirty marks ; firewood, seventy per 

 cent, for 17.50 marks, or 47.50 marks altogether. The 

 timber of the Hornbeam sometimes fetches a little more 

 than beech, but the tree grows more slowly and never 

 attains the same size as the Beech. 



Thus, assuming a dollar as equivalent to four marks, an 

 Oak-tree of the size mentioned would sell for thirty-nine 

 dollars, and a Beech-tree for twelve dollars. It must, how- 

 ever, be borne in mind that, while an Oak-tree of that size 

 would be 300 years old, a Beech-tree in the same locality 

 would attain the same dimensions in 180 years. Man}'- of 

 the Oak-trees in the Spessart are 400 years old and upward, 

 and have a much larger diameter, often containing twice 

 the volume of wood. The price of Oak timber increases con- 

 siderably with the diameter of the tree, large logs not rarely 

 fetching 100 marks per cubic metre. Such trees would be 

 worth $125 to $150 apiece, or even more. Of Oaks con- 

 taining five cubic metres, on good soil and under favorable 

 circumstances, sixty trees might stand on one acre. The 

 outturn of an acre at the fall, therefore, would be worth 

 sixty by thirty-nine, or $2,340, while the wood of an acre 



