12 



Garden and Forest. 



[Vol. IV., No. 150. 



Notes. 



It is said that Orange growers have discovered a process by 

 which an orange picked while green can be colored a rich yel- 

 low in forty-eight hours. No doubt consumers will continue 

 to prefer ripe oranges to green ones artificially jaundiced. 



Professor Marshall Ward's excellent address on " Elemen- 

 tary Botany in General Education," delivered not long ago at 

 Leeds, England, and recently quoted in our columns, is report- 

 ed more at length in the Popular Science Monthly for January. 



The new park system which the City of Montevideo is about 

 to inaugurate under the direction of the distinguished French 

 artist, Edouard Andre, consists of two parks each of 175 acres, 

 of four smaller parks varying from twenty-five to sixty acres 

 each, of twelve public squares, and of a series of boulevards 

 and broad avenues to connect the old and new parts of the city. 



A dwarf form of the Calla Lily (Richardia JEthiopica), which 

 was certificated some time ago by the Royal Horticultural 

 Society, is highly commended in the Gardeners'' Chronicle. It 

 is a seedling, bears a perfect spathe, and is only nine inches or 

 a foot in height. It flowers very freely, has beautiful foliage, 

 and it is so small that it has altogether a different effect from 

 that of the ordinary Calla. 



The question as to what time of the year Pompeii was over- 

 whelmed has puzzled antiquarians, but according to the 

 Gardeners' Chronicle a late discovery enables us to answer it 

 with some degree of certainty. The trunk of a tree bearing 

 berries has been discovered among the ashes, the berries giv- 

 ing the clue to the nature of the tree, which was the true or 

 Bay Laurel (Laurus nobilis). From the degree of maturity of 

 the berries it is, moreover, surmised that the eruption took 

 place in November. 



Episcia maculata, a plant of the order Gesneracea?, and a 

 native of British Guiana, first flowered at Kew last summer. 

 In a paper on its floral biology recently published by Professor 

 F. W. Oliver, he says that it is remarkable from the fact that 

 the flowers do not open, as the front lobe of the corolla 

 remains folded back, closing the mouth like a cork. Notwith- 

 standing, its arrangements are for cross-fertilization through 

 insect agency of some sort. The flower is believed to be 

 unique in being thus at once closed and cross-fertilized. 



When describing the Mulberry-trees in the province of Ssu- 

 ch'uan, in western China, Mr. Alexander Hosie says : " Here I 

 observed an ingenious device for obtaining young trees from 

 the old. Round a promising branch of a tree a piece of Bam- 

 boo about a foot in length, which has previously been divided 

 into two parts along its length, is tied, and the hollow between 

 the branch and the interior of the Bamboo filled with mould. 

 In a short time suckers leave the branch and descend into the 

 mould, and when they are sufficiently developed the branch is 

 cut off and planted, the suckers forming the roots of the young 

 tree." 



One of the last papers written by the late Professor Proctor 

 and published in Knowledge says (we quote from a summary 

 in the Popular Science Monthly) : " In all the vegetable world 

 color seems to be in all cases dependent on the requirements 

 of propagation. Thus, where seeds are diffused by animals, 

 as with the berries, we find the fruits brightly colored, to 

 attract the attention of the animal distributors. It will be 

 noticed that when seeds are distributed by the winds, bright 

 colors are not found in the fruit, even though the plant be 

 closely allied to species distributed by animals in which the 

 bright colors are present." 



The latest bulletin from the Cornell University Experiment 

 Station gives some account of the Pear-leaf blister, which ap- 

 pears on the leaves in the form of dark reddish spots an 

 eighth of an inch or more in diameter, and are produced by a 

 gall-mite, which has long been known in Europe, but has at- 

 tracted little attention as yet in this country. The insect is 

 practically invisible to the naked eye, and as it lives within the 

 tissue of the leaves ordinary insecticides cannot reach it. The 

 only promising method of attacking these pests is to prune away 

 and burn the young wood in winter, since it is their, habit to quit 

 the leaves as they dry in autumn and collect on the terminal 

 buds, where they remain until spring. 



Dr. Byron D. Halsted contemplates the publication of a 

 " Century of Weeds," and hopes to follow it by a second collec- 

 tion showing the seeds of the same species and then to carry 

 on the work until all the annoying and pestiferous plants of 

 America are fully represented in herbaria. American botan- 



ists in all parts of the country have been asked to send in lists 

 of the twenty worst weeds in their vicinities, and from their 

 reports the " Century " will be composed. The price has not 

 yet been fixed, but it is expected to be about $8, and Dr. Hal- 

 sted will be grateful for all words of encouragement, believing 

 that, while the result of his laborious task will be of special 

 value to our agricultural colleges and experiment stations, it 

 will also be of interest to systematic botanists in general. 



The last annual report of the Trustees of the Astor Library, 

 in this city, shows that during the year 1889 only 538 readers 

 called for works dealing with agriculture and horticulture, as 

 against 2,748 who called for works on architecture, and 6,762 

 who desired to study painting, sculpture or archaeology. Of 

 students who asked admission to the alcoves for the purpose 

 of more serious research there were fifty-six concerned with 

 architecture, 467 with painting, sculpture and archaeology, and 

 only three with agriculture and horticulture. Yet the Library 

 authorities seem to recognize the importance of this depart- 

 ment, for while there were fourteen works upon architecture 

 added to the collection during the year and forty-five on the 

 other arts, there were thirty-nine upon agriculture and horti- 

 culture. More than half the alcove readers were interested in 

 patents, 5,082 having applied for this purpose, while, with a 

 great gap between, American history came next with 788 

 students. 



Writing of western Pennsylvania in the year 1795 the Mar- 

 quis De Talleyrand says, in a passage from his "Diary" 

 published in the Century Magazine for January : "I was struck 

 with astonishment; less than 150 miles distance from the 

 capital all trace of men's presence disappeared. Wild nature 

 in all its pristine vigor confronted us ; forests as old as the 

 world itself; decayed plants and trees covered the very ground 

 where they once grew in wildness ; others shooting forth 

 from under the debris of the former and like them destined to 

 decay and rot ; thick and intricate branches that often barred 

 our progress ; green and luxuriant grass decking the banks of 

 rivers ; some large natural meadows ; some strange and deli- 

 cate flowers quite new to me.; and here and there the traces 

 of former tornadoes that had carried everything before them. 

 Enormous trees all mowed down in the same direction, ex- 

 tending for some considerable distance, bear witness to the 

 wonderful character of those terrible phenomena." In another 

 passage Talleyrand reports that he saw, "sixty miles from 

 Boston, 6,000 feet of timber exchanged for a bullock." 



The Calcutta Englishman recently said: "Among the ex- 

 quisite arts for which the Indian people have long been 

 famous, Sandal-wood carving is one that neither government 

 nor native patronage can rescue from inevitable decay. Par- 

 sees have taken up the art in Bombay, and by employing their 

 own methods and enterprise on it have found a market and 

 established a trade, although their work bears no comparison 

 with that of Mysore, the home of the art. The Sandal-wood 

 carvers of Mysore turn out work which is indeed exquisite, 

 and their skill is acquired by slow years of patient practice 

 from boyhood. But the decay of this and other laborious In- 

 dian arts is inevitable. The native courts, which used to be 

 the chief patrons of indigenous art, have now the products of 

 all Europe competing for their favor, while, on the other hand, 

 the European markets, which might be open to Indian wares, 

 are impatient of India's tedious methods and stinted supplies. 

 Meanwhile, even conservative India cannot resist the rush of 

 the railway and the whirl of education. Her boys will not sit 

 down for years in one shop without a thought except to per- 

 petuate for generations to come the few and curious ideas of 

 generations foregone. Sandal- wood looks pretty and smells 

 sweet, but the School of Art, with its morning school and its 

 Saturday holiday, is killing the ancient order of Mysore 

 carvers." 



Catalogues Received. 



F. Bartheldes & Co., Lawrence, Kan. ; Seeds. — A. Blanc, Phila- 

 delphia, Pa. ; Electrotypes of Plants and Flowers. — J. L. Campbell, 

 West Elizabeth, Allegheny Co., Pa. ; The Eureka Incubator and 

 Brooder. — P. H. Foster. Babylon, N. Y. ; Nursery Stock. — Haage & 

 Schmidt, Erfurt, Germany; Novelties in Flower and Vegetable Seeds. 

 — Johnson & Stokes, Philadelphia, Pa. ; Flower and Vegetable Seeds, 

 Bulbs, Tools, etc. — Geo. J. Kellogg & Sons, Janesville, Wis. ; Large 

 and Small Fruits.— Harlan P. Kelsey, Linville, Mitchell Co., N. C. ; 

 Wild Flowering Trees, Shrubs and Vines of the Southern Alleghany 

 Mountains. — Wm. Paul & Son, Waltham Cross, Herts, Eng. ; Roses. 

 — James Rankin, South Easton, Mass. ; The Improved Monarch In- 

 cubator. — George H. Stahl, Quincy, 111.; Improved Excelsior 

 Incubator. 



