August S, 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



319 



express purpose of adding to the soil the nitrogen which the 

 plant has taken from the air. This process pays, because, while 

 the other elements of plant-food which are lacking- in unpro- 

 ductive soils — namely, potash and phosphoric acid — cost only 

 five or six cents a pound, nitrogen costs three or four times as 

 much. Now, may it not be that this Woad Wax is helping to 

 enrich the waste lands of eastern Massachusetts, instead of im- 

 poverishing them ? If Woad Wax will thrive where little else 

 will grow, why not encourage it ? Perhaps it might be worth 

 while to plant it and to plow it under as a green manure. Like 

 many other leguminous plants, it may need a special form of 

 bacteria to aid it in capturing nitrogen. Peas, for example, 

 sometimes fail to grow unless nitrogenous manures have been 

 furnished them, but on the same lands, if a light dressing of 

 soil, in which Peas have been grown before, is given to the 

 land, the crop will grow without the application of any nitro- 

 gen except that furnished by the air. This means that the 

 top-dressing has inoculated the soil with the special bacteria 

 which live in connection with the Pea-roots. It might, there- 

 fore, be necessary, in order to insure the growth of this Genista 

 in any worn-out land, to inoculate it with a dressing from 

 soils where it has grown before. 



Perhaps the directors of some of our experiment stations 

 may consider this subject worth attention. 



New Brunswick, N. J. -"■ *->• 



[Our correspondent has fairly stated, in a popular way, 

 what is known as to the power of plants of the Pulse family 

 to store up nitrogen from the air. In many cases soils can 

 be enriched with nitrogen cheaply and effectively by 

 plowing under crops of Cow Peas and other legumes. 

 We are hardly prepared to recommend the cultivation of 

 Woad Wax for this purpose. Plant crops which can be 

 utilized as food for animals would plainly be preferable in 

 situations where they can be grown. Nevertheless, the 

 suggestion that Genista Tinctoria may prove an instrumen- 

 tality of bringing up sterile soils to a condition of compar- 

 ative fertility is worth considering, and we should be glad 

 to hear from other correspondents to whom the subject is 

 interesting. — Ed.] 



Seedlings from the Shatter Raspberry. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — In your issue for July 1st, page 288, I note that Mr. 

 Powell writes : " So far [referring to the Shaffer Raspberry] 

 all of its seedling's turn out to be pure black, and none of them 

 remarkable in any way." This is much at variance with my 

 experience with them. In 1891 we sowed a small amount of 

 Shaffer seed from plants growing near those of Marlboro 

 and other varieties, but without any effort at cross-fertilization. 

 From this sowing about four hundred seedlings were raised, 

 the most of which fruited last year, but none of them showed 

 pure black-colored fruit, and that of most of them was a dull 

 red, occasionally a purple, with a few bright red. The fruit 

 from thirty-eight plants was considered worthy to be sent to 

 the Exposition last year. The canes and general appearance 

 of most of the plants plainly showed the Shaffer parentage. 

 A few plants, perhaps half a dozen, resembles the Black-cap 

 in cane and general appearance. All those selected as being 

 of possible value closely resembled the Shaffer, and all are 

 difficult to propagate from the tips. _ 



Experiment Station, St. Anthony Park, Minn. Samuel B. Green. 



Recent Publications. 



Fungi and Fungicides. By Clarence M. Weed. New 

 York : Orange Judd Co. 



This is not a work for scientific students, but a practical 

 handbook which explains the various methods, so far as 

 they are known, of preventing and curing the ordinary 

 fungous diseases of cultivated plants. The book makes no 

 pretense of originality, but is a compilation of matter 

 which, during the last few years, has been published in 

 various bulletins, reports and periodicals in relation to the 

 life-histories of fungi which are destructive to plants, to- 

 gether with the characters of the diseases they cause, and 

 the approved ways of treating them. In the introduction 

 Mr. Weed gives some data from which we can form some 

 estimate of the losses which are caused by these diseases. 

 A Commissioner of Agriculture has stated that corn and 



wheat, to the amount of $200,000,000 at least, are annually 

 destroyed by fungi. It is probable that fruit suffers in even 

 greater proportion than field crops. For example, the loss 

 from the apple-scab ranges from one-sixth to one-half of 

 the entire product. In one year the loss of peaches from 

 the brown-rot in the Chesapeake and Delaware peninsula 

 alone was half a million dollars. Rots and mildews cause 

 losses in the grape crop that are almost incalculable. 



Ten years ago there were not a dozen scientific men in 

 this country who were giving serious study to the diseases 

 of plants from an economic standpoint, but in almost 

 every experiment station now the subject of plant-diseases 

 is one of the regular lines of work, and it is largely owing 

 to the investigations in these stations that we have learned 

 the cause and cure of the potato-scab, and have become 

 familiar with the Bordeaux mixture and other fungicides 

 in treating Pear leaf-blight, apple-scab, raspberry anthrac- 

 nose, Plum leaf-spot and potato blight and rot. This little 

 book only treats of the more destructive and widely spread 

 diseases, and especially of these for which some more or 

 less successful treatment has been discovered. After a few 

 pages of introduction, in which some of the elementary 

 facts in regard to the life-history of fungi are given, the 

 fungous diseases affecting the orchard fruits are first dis- 

 cussed, and then those affecting the small fruits. The dis- 

 eases affecting shade-trees, ornamental plants and flowers, 

 kitchen vegetables, cereals and forage crops are then dis- 

 cussed in order. Altogether, the manual is convenient and 

 ought to prove useful, as it contains facts with which every 

 gardener and fruit-grower ought to familiarize himself. 



Periodical Literature. 



Mrs. Katherine Brandegee has just published, in the 

 Proceedings of the California Academy of Natural Science 

 (ser. 2, iv., 173), the results of a long and careful study of 

 the difficult genus Ceanothus, which, finding its greatest 

 development in California in many beautiful species, makes 

 in early spring one of the most conspicuous and attractive 

 features of vegetation, especially in the Coast-range region 

 south of the Bay of San Francisco. The last study of these 

 plants was that of Dr. C. C. Parry, published in the fifth 

 volume of the Proceedings of the Davenport Academy of 

 Science, where thirty-two species were recognized, and 

 where, for the first time, the prevalence of natural hybrids 

 in this genus, the ease with which these may be recognized 

 in the field, and the corresponding difficulty of their separa- 

 tion in herbaria, were pointed out. According to Mrs. 

 Brandegee, " the hybrids of Ceanothus are fouixfwherever 

 two species of the same section grow together. As a rule, 

 to which there are, however, many exceptions, no two spe- 

 cies of the same section occupy the same area. Either one 

 grows at a higher elevation or at a different exposure, and 

 the hybrids occur along the lines of junction. They seem 

 usually to be fertile, and show every gradation from one 

 to the other parent. 



''Ceanothus is very readily and completely killed by the 

 fires which so frequently run over the chaparral hills of 

 California. About the places where their parents grew the 

 seedlings then spring up in great numbers, although they 

 are otherwise rarely seen. A certain proportion of these 

 seedlings are always, where two different forms have 

 grown intermingled, found to be hybrids. If the district 

 should be again swept by fire before the seedlings bear 

 fruit the species in that locality would be exterminated, 

 with, perhaps, an occasional sheltered exception, which 

 may almost as readily be a hybrid as one of the parent 

 forms. In this way, as may readily be conceived, a fertile 

 hybrid might become established as the prevailing form in 

 a given district. Where the seedlings survive in great 

 numbers, cross-fertilization being made certain by the 

 swarms of insects attracted to their fragrant flowers, a con- 

 tinual crossing takes place, not only between the original 

 forms, but between the hybrids and their parents on either 

 side." 



