488 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 354. 



care and should cover the ground at the end of four or five 

 years. A few years later it will probably be necessary to 

 cut out the trees in every other row, although the character 

 of the soil and the size of the plants must determine the 

 period and extent of such thinnings. It is generally cheaper 

 and more satisfactory to use nursery-grown plants than to 

 obtain them from the woods, and, unless very large plan- 

 tations are to be made during a series of years, when 

 a home nursery should be established, it is best to 

 buy plants from some reliable nurseryman. Seedling 

 conifers are difficult to raise in this climate, owing to the 

 heat and dryness of our summers, and none of them, per- 

 haps, are more difficult to manage than the White Pine ; and 

 no one is successful with it unless he makes the raising of 

 seedling conifers a business, and has had some experience 

 in it. When a few trees to bear seed and restock the ground 

 are left in cutting a forest of Pines, when fire is prevented from 

 burning off the herbs and low shrubs, which make the best 

 possible protection for seedling conifers, and the surface of 

 the soil, and when cattle are excluded, the ground will soon be 

 covered with Pines again, and the foundation of a new forest 

 will have been laid in the cheapest and most satisfactory 

 manner. A self-sown forest costs nothing but the employ- 

 ment of a little common sense and, perhaps, a little rough 

 fencing. There is no interest account running against it, 

 while the interest against a planted forest, which will cost, 

 at the lowest estimate, from five dollars to ten dollars an 

 acre to establish, must, at the end of even fifty years, be 

 debited with an interest charge which will more than eat 

 up all the possible direct money profits of the undertaking. 

 —Ed. ] - 



Extracting Cedar of Lebanon Seeds. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — I notice what you say about demolishing Cedar of 

 Lebanon cones in Garden and Forest of November 14th, 

 and this reminds me that years ago when this beautiful coni- 

 fer was in much greater demand at the nurseries than at the 

 present time, we always imported the cones in order to se- 

 cure fresh seed. To extract the seed we placed the cones 

 singly in a vise, then, with a three-eighths of an inch auger- 

 bit, bored out the rhachis, or central woody part, after which 

 the scales were easily pulled apart and the seeds separated 

 from the scales. There are many species of our indigenous 

 Pines that have very persistent cones, which will remain 

 closed for years if gathered and stored in a dry place. Boring 

 out the centre is a very simple and ready means of getting at 

 the seed when it is wanted. This habit of remaining closed is 

 a wise provision of nature for preserving the seeds, and as long 

 as they remain hermetically sealed up in the cone they lose 

 little or nothing in the way of vitality, and I have myself 

 opened Cedar of Lebanon cones twenty years after gathering 

 them, and found the seed fresh and sound. There are also 

 instances on record of seeds of the same sprouting freely after 

 having remained in the cones for forty years. 



Ridgefield, N. J. A. S. Fuller. 



Chrysanthemums for Outdoor Culture. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — I was greatly interested in an article in your issue of 

 November 7th, from a New Jersey correspondent, on outdoor 

 Chrysanthemums. I have had my trials in the same line, and 

 at times nearly despaired, but I hope this year's experience 

 has set me in the right direction. The Buffalo season may not 

 be as long as that of Elizabeth, but it is greatly favored, as the 

 lake assures us a very equable temperature. Tender plants 

 are seldom killed here in October, and they were not seriously 

 injured this year till the severe freezing of November nth. 

 This permits us to bloom all the earlier Chrysanthemums out- 

 side if we desire, and makes their cultivation possible to many 

 who have no room for them indoors. Their season can be 

 finished readily enough by potting them in full bloom and set- 

 ting them in a window, but the average householder cannot 

 successfully bloom them in the house. 



For our purpose the strong, stocky, early sorts should be 

 selected. I have tried in vain to raise the old purplish red 

 Duchess in this way. It is hardy and vigorous, readily winter- 

 ing out-of-doors, and it is a great bloomer, but it is late, and 

 will grow about as high as a man's head, in spite of all prun- 



ing. Last spring I set out a single plant of Mrs. Whilldin, an 

 early yellow sort. It produced, without assistance, a single 

 stalk, which spread out like a tree, and grew into a veritable 

 little tree about two feet high. When hard frosts threatened 

 it was potted, and finished its season in a window. I am con- 

 vinced that such easily handled sorts are to be had in all desira- 

 ble shades by carefully selecting from the multitude of 

 varieties. Such points as these are the ones about which 

 amateurs need information. There are good plants to be had. 

 Who is testing them for outdoor cultivation, and who will give 

 us the results of their experience ? 



We are greatly pleased with the new silvery, purplish pink 

 Chrysanthemum, Maud Dean, the finest, it seems to me, that 

 has appeared lately. Florists have greatly overdone the yellow 

 varieties to the expense of other colors. 

 Buffalo, N. Y. John Chamberhn. 



The Walking Fern and its Haunts. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — The curious and beautiful Camptosorus rhizophyllus 

 is occasionally listed by florists. Perhaps I have failed to give 

 it proper treatment, but I have always found it a most fas- 

 tidious pot-plant, exacting conditions of shade, drainage and 

 ventilation that none but those with unusual facilities could 

 give it. It has been very capricious with me even with out- 

 door transplanting, refusing to live except when planted in the 

 shadiest nook of the rockery, and even there producing but a 

 feeble, protesting sort of growth, with short yellowish green 

 fronds, while the curious and characteristic attenuation of the 

 frond's tip, that tapers to a thread only to fall to the earth and 

 spring up a new Camptosorus, is much curtailed, and in some 

 instances lacking. In its native haunts, however, the plant 

 shows not a trace of weakness. There it is fairly riotous with 

 life and vigor, embroidering the moss-carpeted rocks with 

 feathery tufts of slender, procumbent and spreading fronds of 

 the richest, deepest green, each tuft linked to its neighbor by 

 the slender chain-like acumination that binds each of the little 

 colony together. It is very plentiful here, but I have never 

 seen it growing in any other situation than at the foot of a 

 precipice or rocky bluff, usually attached to the moss that covers 

 rocks, or else growing between the crevices of limestone rocks. 

 The soil is always of a highly calcareous nature, and the shade 

 dense. Here, with a home to its liking, it faces alike heat, 

 cold, drought or flood, ever luxuriant and green. I know of 

 one such rocky valley where these Walking Ferns grow with 

 singular luxuriance and reach the largest size. In the prepara- 

 tion of a road-bed for a railroad every vestige of tree or under- 

 brush was removed, but the piled up rocks were left undis- 

 turbed. Three years afterward the once beautiful Camptosorus 

 had dwindled to a few pale yellowish specimens of stunted 

 growth. This would seem to show that we can only succeed 

 in transferring this lovely evergreen wilding to our homes by 

 giving it deep shade and a limestone anchorage for its roots. 



Pineville, Mo. Lora S. La Mance. 



Recent Publications. 



Text-book 0/ the Diseases 0/ Trees. By Professor Robert 

 Hartig. Translated by Willliam Somerville. Macmillan 

 & Co., London and New York. Pp. 331, 8vo, fig. 159. 



The leading laboratory of the world for the study of the 

 diseases of trees is that of Professor Robert Hartig at 

 Munich, and no other botanist has made in this field so 

 many investigations in which scientific study has been 

 united with practical suggestions. The first edition of his 

 Lehrbuch der Baumkrankheiten appeared in 1882, and was 

 the first work on the subject which gave a clear and satis- 

 factory presentation of modern investigations. The excel- 

 lent translation by Professor Somerville, revised and edited 

 by Professor Marshall Ward, follows a later edition of the 

 Lehrbuch, which includes considerable matter not found in 

 the original work. In the preface to the English edition 

 Professor Marshall Ward traces in an interesting rrfanner 

 the development of plant pathology in its relation to forest- 

 trees, and especially the contributions of Hartig to our 

 knowledge of the subject. 



While the Lehrbuch was highly valued as an authorita- 

 tive treatise by experts in foreign countries as well as in 

 Germany, the English translation brings within the easy 

 comprehension of a large circle of readers a most interest- 

 ing account of the fungous parasites which attack forest- 



