36 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 152.. 



neighborhood as Mount Mitchell or Mitchell's High Peak, 

 although after his explorations in 1844 this name was attached 

 to another, which is rightly "Party Knob." Prompted by con- 

 troversies with regard to the justness of his calculations and 

 the exact peak whence they had been made, Dr. Mitchell made 

 a fifth ascent of the mountain in 1857, and then lost his life, 

 probably falling in a storm into the pool where, some time 

 afterward, his body was found, at the foot of the falls now 

 called by his name. A year later his remains were removed 

 from the graveyard at Asheville and buried beneath the Balsam 

 Fir whence his famous observations had been taken on the 

 very top of the highest peak of the mountain. His name was 

 definitely given to this peak by the United States Geological 

 Survey of 1881-1882, and there his monument, a simple shaft 

 twelve feet in height, will long stand on the most elevated 

 spot in eastern North America. 



We may add that Dr. Elisha Mitchell, or Professor Mitchell, 

 as he is more often called, should not be confounded with Dr. 

 John Mitchell, a Virginian botanist of earlier date, for whom 

 his correspondent, Linnaeus, named our pretty Partridge-berry. 



Notes. 



It is stated that Mr. Ruskin maintains a Cherry-orchard solely 

 for the benefit of the birds on his estate. 



In a late bulletin issued by the New Jersey Agricultural Ex- 

 periment Station, Professor Halsted describes nine distinct 

 kinds of Fungus which attack the Sweet Potato and cause it to 

 rot. 



An olive-oil factory is soon to be built in Sonoma County, 

 California, by a company which now has sixty acres of six-year- 

 old Olive-trees and is planting 700 acres more. The plant will 

 cost $250,000. 



The leaves of Daboisia Hopwoodii, an Australian shrub, are 

 chewed by the natives in the same way that the leaves of 

 Tobacco are chewed, and bid fair, it is said, to become a rival 

 to Tobacco. They contain an alkaloid, piturine, which is 

 identical or closely related to nicotine, the action of the two 

 being in every respect identical. 



The newest Oxalis, which was introduced to the trade in 

 Europe by Herr Dammann, is 0. sensitiva, and, says a foreign 

 periodical, "is even more beautiful and interesting, as regards 

 its foliage, than Mimosa pudica. The finely cut leaves are in 

 almost constant motion, and fall together at the slightest 

 touch. They form charming frills around the clusters of yel- 

 low flowers." Like the common Oxalis, this is a wood-plant, 

 which can easily be cultivated even in shady localities. 



The Revue des Sciences Naturelles Appliquees says that 

 among the food-producing plants valued in Abyssinia, but 

 elsewhere unknown or little prized, are: Coleus tuberosus, A. 

 Rich., which has fleshy tubers resembling the potato in taste, 

 although not in shape, and is grown at an elevation of from 

 6,000 to 7,000 feet above the sea; Brachystelma linear e, A. Rich., 

 which grows in moist shady situations in the valleys and 

 furnishes large fleshy tubers ; Campanula esculenta, A. Rich., 

 the roots of which are eaten, and Cyanotis Abyssinica, A. Rich. 

 {Com?nelina hirsuta, Hochst.), which is also a tuber-bearing 

 plant. 



Some of the lessons drawn by the American Agriculturist 

 from the immense crops of Potatoes grown in competition for 

 the prizes offered by that paper are : That cutting the seed- 

 potatoes into sets with two eyes each gives mostgeneral satisfac- 

 tion; that large or medium sized potatoes are best for planting ; 

 that the sets should be slightly sprouted before being planted, 

 although they should be cut before the sprouts have started ; 

 that planting should be delayed until settled weather ; that 

 placing the sets directly upon stable manure is bad practice, 

 and that concentrated commercial fertilizers are better as a 

 rule than stable manure. 



The December issue of Hooker's Icones Plantarum is 

 devoted to figures and descriptions of Indian Orchids of the 

 genera Dendrobium and Bulbophyllum, the descriptions being 

 supplied by Sir Joseph Hooker, who is now engaged in study- 

 ing these plants for the Flora of India. Of the species included 

 in this part only Dendrobium Moulmeinense is of garden inter- 

 est, all the others being supplied with small and inconspicu- 

 ous flowers. D. Moulmeinense belongs to the same group as 

 D. dixanthum and is a native of the same country, differing, 

 however, from that species in its more slender stems, pendu- 

 lous habit and deeper fimbriation of the lip. 



The Directors of the Madison Square Garden Company 

 announce a grand competitive Chrysanthemum show, to be 



held on November .1st, 1891. The company offers $1,500 to- 

 be given in prizes, and a large number of ladies well known 

 in society are aiding the project by their influence, as well as 

 by liberal contributions to the prize fund. Nowhere in the 

 country are Chrysanthemums grown in greater perfection 

 than in the neighborhood of this city, and it is to be hoped that- 

 next autumn a display will be made which will at least equal in 

 merit the shows in Philadelphia and Boston, not to speak of a 

 dozen less important places. The managers of this enterprise 

 are to be commended for this seasonable announcement of 

 their plans. 



The Northern California Citrus Fair is now in progress at 

 Marysville, and here there are to be seen displays of oranges, 

 lemons and other semi-tropical fruit, grown in places which 

 have the same latitude as St. Louis or Kansas City. No pro- 

 tection of hedges has been given to Orange-groves, and grow- 

 ers declare that their losses from frost have been no heavier 

 than they have been in Los Angeles or San Bernardino. One 

 of the singular features of the fair is the presence of beautiful 

 oranges from the foot-hills of Placer County, once the fore- 

 most mining county of the state. Old mining ditches and 

 flumes have been repaired and are now used to irrigate 

 orchards. If the original gold-hunters could return they 

 would be amazed to find their old prospecting grounds trans- 

 formed into groves of tropical fruit. 



The London Telegraph said not long ago : " An individual 

 living in the Department of Aveyron, France, struck by the 

 high price at which mushrooms were being sold in his district, 

 conceived the idea of fabricating the delicacy out of turnips. 

 He cut the turnips into rounds, dried them, and, after giving 

 them a dab of the paint-brush, disposed of them to unsus- 

 pecting customers as the genuine article. For some time he 

 drove a thriving trade, but, unluckily for him, he one day sold 

 a batch to a gourmet who was not so easily to be taken in. 

 Indignant at the trick played on him, the gourmet brought an 

 action which has just resulted in the condemnation of the 

 mushroom-manufacturer to two months' imprisonment. It 

 was in vain that he pleaded that he had enabled his fellow 

 citizens to regale themselves on a vegetable which they 

 regarded as a good specimen of the mushroom at a cost far 

 below that commanded by the real article. Vain, too, were 

 his efforts to demonstrate that his mushrooms could be con- 

 sumed without entailing disastrous consequences on lovers of 

 the delicacy. The court turned a deaf ear to his specious 

 arguments, and has allowed him two months' leisure to medi- 

 tate on the error of substituting dried turnips for honest 

 mushrooms." 



In an interesting article on Anemones, published in the 

 December number of the Illustrirte Gartenzeitung of Vienna, 

 Dr. Carl Mueller says of Anemone coronaria that it grows in 

 western and southern France, in Italy, Dalmatia, Turkey, 

 Greece and the Levantine countries, as well as in Algiers, but 

 then explains that one thinks of it especially as the character- 

 istic flower of Palestine. Here, he says, "it as commonly 

 grows wild as about Smyrna and in Asia Minor, spreading far 

 and wide as the most beautiful of spring blossoms, growing 

 on chalk soil along the edges of shrubbery. We cannot won- 

 der that it was already in ancient times a favorite of the inhab- 

 itants and excited in poetic minds sensations such as can only 

 be excited by surprising beauty. 'I am the Rose of Sharon and 

 the Lily of the valleys,' sings the first verse of the second 

 chapter of Solomon's Song, and there can be no doubt to-day 

 what is here meant by the Rose of Sharon. It was an Ameri- 

 can, Fiske P. Brewer, who decided this question, Narcissus 

 Tasetta, which likewise grows in Palestine, having previously 

 been considered the Biblical flower. This gentleman, accord- 

 ing to the Edinburgh Review of 1886, while traveling in the 

 year 1859 from Jaffa to Ranleh, came upon a place where a 

 considerable expanse of ground was half covered with brilliant 

 red flowers. At the sight of them some of his native com* 

 panions immediately exclaimed ' Roses of Sharon '; and, when 

 he inquired about the name, he was told that the Anemone 

 was there universally so called. In truth it would not be easy 

 otherwise to speak of a Rose in Palestine, for native Roses do 

 not exist there — at least not where they would justify the asso- 

 ciation of the Plain of Sharon with their name. Wild Roses 

 are found in Palestine only on Lebanon, or where, here and 

 there, R. centifolia is cultivated for the production of attar, as 

 in the Wadi-el-Werd (Rose-valley) near Hebron. According 

 to Ebers and Guthe, in their ' Palestine,' the translations of the 

 Bible often use the word Rose where there is no warrant for 

 understanding by it a true Rose. The Roses of Persia and 

 Media were not introduced into Palestine before the Grecian 

 period." 



