35° 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 340. 



Notes. 



Mr. J. H. Hale gives it as his opinion that the Japanese 

 plums will in a few years revolutionize Plum-cultivation in 

 Connecticut, and that this delicious fruit will become as abun- 

 dant and cheap in the home and the market as apples or 

 peaches. 



During the long drought good plants of Rosa rugosa have 

 shown a few flowers every day, while the foliage holds its dark 

 rich green color just as if the weather was most propitious. 

 Occasionally a plant of R. rugosa is seen in which the flowers 

 are inferior in color and by no means as abundant as in the 

 best plants. There is little doubt that hybrids of some inferior 

 variety have been put on the market as R. rugosa, and planters 

 should be careful in selecting their stock. 



The Currant, President Wilder, is considered by Mr. S. D. 

 Willard as the most productive variety he has tried. It is a 

 seedling of Versailles, better in quality than the Fay, and hav- 

 ing large berries in good clusters. The Country Gentleman, 

 in reporting on some specimens of the best varieties of cur- 

 rants sent by Mr. Willard, pronounces the White Imperial as 

 equal in size to the White Grape, and altogether surpassing it 

 in sweetness. Moore's Ruby is commended for a late table 

 currant. 



It is a pity that Linaria vulgaris, the common Butter-and- 

 Eggs of every field and roadside, is such a troublesome weed 

 that no one can be induced to admire it. The pale leaves sur- 

 mounted by a dense raceme of orange-yellow flowers, with 

 paler lemon-colored tips, are quite as handsome as those of 

 many Antirrhinums, with which it is closely connected botan- 

 ically, and then, when everything else is dried up, it seems to 

 revel in these adverse conditions, so that, if anything, it is now 

 rather more showy than usual. 



The first train-load of California fruit shipped direct to Lon- 

 don this year reached that city on schedule time last Wednes- 

 day. There were ten car-loads, comprising 45,000 packages, 

 mainly Bartlett pears. The entire cost of transportation is 

 $700.00 a car-load, $75.00 more than the cost from the Pacific 

 coast to this city, making an average cost of seventy cents for 

 each package. Other train-loads are now in transit to Eng- 

 land, consisting of pears, peaches, plums, apricots and grapes. 

 Cable reports of the first sale are hardly satisfactory to the 

 growers, the main part of the shipment of pears having real- 

 ized from $1.00 to $1.50 a box, which is no more than thesame 

 fruit commands in this city. A small part of the cargo in 

 green condition brought, however, as much as $3.00 a box, 

 and the success of these long-distance shipments seems to 

 depend in large measure on having the fruit reach its destina- 

 tion before it is over-ripe. 



A correspondent of The Country Gentleman speaks of a 

 Scuppernong Grape-vine from which forty bushels of grapes 

 have been sold for two successive years, and it is probable 

 that it will produce fifty bushels this year. The vine is trained 

 over an arbor some twenty-five feet long by eighteen feet 

 wide, and it is a foot in diameter at the ground. This is not 

 at all an uncommon size, and a vine might easily cover an 

 area of 2,000 square feet. The Scuppernong will not thrive 

 north of thirty-seven degrees of latitude, but it is well known 

 as a thick-skinned grape which keeps well and can be shipped 

 long distances. It has a peculiar flavor, which is not disagree- 

 able to many people, and it makes an acceptable wine. It 

 reaches its best development in south-eastern Virginia and 

 north-eastern Carolina, where it runs wild and often climbs 

 forty feet or more into tree-tops. If allowed to grow with no 

 pruning or care, except a trellis or something to run upon, it 

 will usually give fair crops. 



According to the Government report for August 1st, the gen- 

 eral average of the potato-crop for the entire country fell from 

 92.3 per cent, on July 1st to 74 percent, at the close of the 

 month. This is the lowest average condition of the potato- 

 crop ever reported, the general average at the same time last 

 year being 84 per cent. In the principal potato-growing states 

 which usually supply the chief distributing markets in the mid- 

 dle-western and eastern states, the average production this 

 year will be even lower than the general average for the whole 

 country in other years. Thirteen of these states now show an 

 average crop of 66 per cent., as against 83.6 last year. The 

 yield of New Jersey, for example, is rated at but 53 per cent, 

 this year, for 69 per cent, in 1893 ; in Ohio there is a decrease 

 of 12 per cent, from last year ; in Illinois 17 per cent., and in 

 Iowa 53 per cent. Potatoes now bring, at wholesale in the 

 markets of this city, $1.75 and $2.00 a barrel, an advance of 

 fifty cents a barrel within the past month. The present supply 



comes from New Jersey and Long Island. While the home 

 crop has been thus shortened by drought, the late crop in the 

 United Kingdom is rated at92.S. 



In one of the meetings of the American Forestry Associa- 

 tion held in Brooklyn last week, Dr. Horace C. Hovey, of 

 Newburyport, Massachusetts, showed by specimens and by 

 views the petrified forests of Arizona. This great tract of 

 agatized wood, at least 2,000 acres in extent, is near the stations 

 of Corrizo and Adamanna, on the Atlantic and Pacific Rail- 

 road, in Arizona, and resembles an immense logging-camp 

 with huge trunks thrown about. The largest are ten feet in 

 diameter, many of them severed as evenly as though cut up 

 by a cross-cut saw, and the sections vary from disks like cart- 

 wheels to logs thirty and more feet long. Many of the petri- 

 fied logs have been broken into glittering fragments by action 

 of the weather and by Indians and tourists, and at every foot- 

 fall the traveler steps upon a mosaic of cornelian, agate, jas- 

 per, topaz, onyx and amethyst. A petrified trunk 150 feet long 

 spans a canon, and is known as the Agate Bridge. The name 

 Chalcedony Park has been given to the tract. Curiosity- 

 hunters, manufacturers and speculators are rapidly destroying 

 its beauties, and recently a company proceeded to pulverize 

 the chips and logs, the powder to be used in place of emery. 

 Car-loads of the petrified wood are being shipped away for this 

 use, and Dr. Hovey advocates the saving and protection of 

 these dead forests in a public reservation by the Government. 



With Mount Pleasant Park, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, a natural 

 woodland of undisturbed beauty extending along the magnifi- 

 cent harbor of that city, Victoria Park, in the town of Truro, ranks 

 as the most distinctive and beautiful of natural parks in Nova 

 Scotia. Founded eight years ago on the occasion of the Queen's 

 Jubilee, by donations of land from seven citizens, one hundred 

 acres of wooded ravine were thus acquired. The entrance is 

 a wide open park space, which soon narrows to a shaded 

 walk beside a brook. A succession of six waterfalls extends 

 through the mile of park, the largest cascade, known as the 

 Joe Howe Falls, being, perhaps, thirty-five feet high. Four 

 miles of paths and walks lead through the densely wooded 

 hill-sides and afford views of the precipitous opposite side of 

 the ravine, one hundred feet high. In narrow side gorges, ex- 

 tending at right angles, springs have been opened up, 

 and here the heavy cold air under the perpetual shade of 

 dense Spruces and Firs, is twelve to fifteen degrees lower 

 even than in more open parts of this charming rustic 

 woodland. A carriage-road, three miles long, encircles the 

 outer edge of the park on the plateau high above the ravine. 

 This driveway overlooks Truro and many miles of rich agri- 

 cultural country, and to the northward the head-waters of 

 Cobequid Bay, the limit of the Bay of Fundy tides. The park 

 is unspoiled woodland, and we hope that the utmost caution 

 will be used in developing it so that its true spirit will be pre- 

 served, especially against the intrusion of any ornamentation 

 or construction, beyond that which is necessary to make its 

 natural beauties available. 



Dispatches from the interior of New York state report plums 

 and pears so plentiful that they will scarcely pay for the pack- 

 ing and shipping, and surprisingly large quantities of these 

 fruits are seen in all the wholesale fruit markets here. Bartlett 

 and Flemish Beauty pears may be bought for $1.50 to $2.50 a 

 barrel, a dollar more being asked for Seckel pears, while Belle, 

 Lucrative and Catherine are offered at $1.75 to $2.00, and 

 Clapp's Favorite at $2.00 to $2.50 a.barrel. Purple Egg plums, 

 Greengages and Damsons are as low as $2.00 a barrel, and 

 these are also offered in kegs and baskets at proportionate 

 rates. German prunes, a large and fleshy fruit, sell at thirty 

 cents for an eight-pound basket. Plentiful supplies of grapes 

 are here from Virginia and the states northward, including 

 Concord, Champion, Moore's Early, Worden, Delaware and 

 Niagara from this state. Retail prices now range from twenty 

 cents for a five-pound basket of Champions to sixty cents for 

 the same quantity of Delawares. Much of this fruit is hurried 

 to market before it is fully ripened, with the result of poor 

 flavor and quality. The best New Jersey peaches were offered 

 last Saturday at $1.50 a basket, and smaller fruit could be had 

 at seventy-five cents. Besides the large and varied supply of 

 fruits from near-by localities, 115 car-loads from California 

 were sold here last week. Among peaches Early Crawford, 

 Late Crawford, Wheatland, Susquehanna, Foster and Muir 

 brought the highest prices. California plums included large 

 shipments of Gros prunes, and these, with German prunes, 

 Kelsey and Fellenberg plums, brought an average of $1.50 a 

 box. Botan, Victoria, French, Bulgarian and Coe's Golden 

 Drop are among the many varieties now seen here. 





