240 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 169. 



the streams and in the ravines, and the Elder has red berries 

 more'commonly than black ones." 



The arrangement of genera and species and the nomencla- 

 ture is that adopted in the latest edition of Gray's " Manual of 

 the Northern States." 



Notes. 



The first cherries of the season arrived in New York about 

 May 12th. They came from San Jose, California, and were 

 retailed at $1.25 a pound. 



The Earl of Gosford, a member of the British House of 

 Lords, has purchased an entire section of land (640 acres) near 

 Bakersfield, Kern County, California, and has begun to plant 

 it with Grape-vines, Peaches and Pears. 



A large part of the shore of the picturesque harbor of 

 Sydney, Australia, is already laid out in parks and botanical 

 gardens. Now it is announced that the Government, wisely 

 intent upon preserving as far as possible the beauty of the bay, 

 will take possession of all the islands still unoccupied and de- 

 vote them to ornamental plantations. 



"Perfumes," wrote Heinrich Heine, "are the feelings of 

 flowers; and as the human heart feels most powerful emotions 

 in the night, when it believes itself to be alone and unper- 

 ceived, so also do the flowers, soft-minded, yet ashamed, ap- 

 pear to wait for concealing darkness, that they may give them- 

 selves wholly up to their feelings, and breathe them out in 

 sweet odors." 



Part I. of the thirteenth volume of the "Journal of the Royal 

 Horticultural Society" has reached us. It contains papers on 

 the Dahlia, the Grape, on Trees and Shrubs for large towns, 

 on Chinese Primulas, on cultivated Ferns, and other subjects 

 of great and immediate interest to horticulturists, and shows 

 the vitality and usefulness of the Royal Society, which has 

 never done better work than it is doing to-day. 



When the votes for a " state flower " were cast by the school- 

 children of New York a year ago the Golden-rod proved the 

 favorite, with the Rose so close a second that another ballot, 

 confined to these two flowers, was thought desirable. This 

 has just been taken in fifty-three public schools ; 22,945 chil- 

 dren voted for the Rose, and 25,360 for the Golden-rod, which 

 thus becomes the emblem of New York state. 



The leaves of Salvia triloba are extensively used in the 

 Levant in the preparation of a kind of tea. The plants are 

 simply cut, dried, tied in bundles and sold on the market- 

 place, and are found, ready for use, in every cafe of Greece, 

 and even in the poorest homes. This " Athenian tea," or, as 

 the Greeks call it, "Phaskomylia tea," is believed to be a sure 

 preventive of colds and fevers, and is therefore universally 

 drunk in winter weather and by sailors at sea. 



" In 1873," says a writer in the Evening Post, "the govern- 

 ment of Assam began to cultivate the India-rubber-tree in the 

 humid forests of Charduar, at the foot of the Himalayas. It 

 was found best to propagate from seedlings, which were 

 planted in the forks of trees, and by 1885 they had reached the 

 ground. The trees were subsequently planted in beds forty 

 feet wide, amid the surrounding forest, which sheltered them. 

 Last year the plantation comprised 1,106 acres, and contained 

 16,054 healthy plants, besides 84,000 seedlings." 



In his " English Flower Garden," Mr. H. A. Bright well says : 

 "One of the greatest ornaments to a garden is a fountain, but 

 many fountains are curiously ineffective. A fountain is most 

 beautiful when it leaps high into the air and you can see it 

 against a background of green foliage. To place a fountain 

 among low flower-beds and then to substitute small fancy jets 

 that take the shape of a cup, or trickle over into a basin of 

 gold-fish, or toy with a gilded ball is to do all that is possible 

 to degrade it. The real charm of a fountain is when you come 

 upon it in some little glassy glade of the ' pleasaunce,' where 

 it seems as though it sought, in the strong rush of its waters, 

 to vie with the tall boles of the forest-trees that surround it." 



The Illustrirte Gartenzcitung of Vienna says : " White fruits 

 are rather rare in nature, and in this country are represented 

 almost solely by those of Symphoricarpus racemosus. Varia- 

 tions into white from the usual red, blue or yellow fruit-colors 

 do, indeed, occur in cherries, plums, raspberries, blackberries, 

 whortleberries, gooseberries, strawberries, tomatoes, privet- 

 berries and other fruits ; but they almost always show a tint 

 which is not pure white, but is tinged with the original green, 

 yellow or red. The establishment of L. Van Houtte, Senior, 



has, however, produced a variety of the common Elder with 

 pure white fruit. The originators say that the plant is vigorous 

 in habit, and bears fruit freely ; that this fruit is not only pure 

 white, but translucent like white currants, and that a delicious 

 preserve may be made from it." 



According to an account in one of our daily journals, an 

 association of women has been formed in London for the 

 purpose of contracting for the care of city conservatories, 

 window-boxes, balconies and small urban gardens. "It will 

 personally supply and superintend all orders, employing men 

 only for the digging. Once a week one of the lady-gardeners 

 will call to attend to the conservatories, valuable plants in 

 rooms, etc., and leave orders for what is to be done until she 

 comes again. People wishing to close their town homes 

 leave their plants in the charge of the ladies. Swanley Horti- 

 cultural College is to open a ladies' department, so popular is 

 this work becoming among women, when the women will 

 occupy a separate residence, and devote the days to theoretical 

 and practical work." 



The Secretary of the Parisian Chambre Syndicate des Horti- 

 culteurs (which may be translated Florists' Board of Trade) 

 recently declared that many of the four hundred gardeners 

 who supply the flower-markets of Paris have been ruined by 

 the exceptional severity of the past winter. Fifty Rose- 

 growers, he declares, have lost about a million francs because 

 they could not house their plants quickly enough on the sud- 

 den advent of frost. One hundred and fifty gardeners who 

 make a specialty of hardy flowers, such as Pansies and Gilly- 

 flowers, have lost their entire stock ; and the loss of those 

 who furnish pot-plants, or the cut flowers of such plants, is 

 estimated at 800,000 or 900,000 francs. About 6,000 other 

 gardeners, living in the departments of the Seine and of the 

 Seine-and-Oise, have likewise greatly suffered. In general the 

 damage has been much greater than even during the famous 

 winter of 1870-71, for then the excessive cold did not extend 

 to the western and southern parts of the country. 



"Variations of flowers," wrote Leigh Hunt, in an essay called 

 A Flower for your Window, "are like variations in music, 

 often beautiful as such, but almost always inferior to the 

 theme on which they are founded — the original air. And the 

 rule holds good in beds of flowers, if they be not very large, 

 or in any other small assemblage of them ; nay, the largest 

 bed will look well, if of one beautiful color, while the most 

 beautiful varieties may be inharmoniously mixed up. Con- 

 trast is a good thing but we should first get a good sense of 

 the thing to be contrasted, and we shall find this preferable to 

 the contrast if we are not rich enough to have both in due 

 measure. We do not, in general, love and honor any one 

 single color enough, and we are instinctively struck with a 

 conviction to this effect when we see it abundantly set forth. 

 The other day we saw a little garden-wall completely covered 

 with Nasturtiums and felt how much more beautiful it was 

 than if anything had been mixed with it, for the leaves, and 

 the light and shade, offer variety enough. The rest is all rich- 

 ness and simplicity united — which is the triumph of an intense 

 perception. Embower a cottage thickly and completely with 

 Roses and nobody would desire the interference of another 

 plant." 



The April issue of Hooker's /cones Plantarum, being part 

 third of the twenty-second volume, contains figures and de- 

 scriptions of a number of plants of extraordinary interest, 

 including a new Chinese Rubus ; a Magnolia-like tree from 

 Hong-Kong, Mangalietia, the first record that this genus is 

 represented in China ; Eperua Jentnani, a fine leguminous 

 tree from British Guiana furnishing timber, and. from the root 

 a remedy for the toothache ; Ligttsticum Sincnse, one of the 

 sources of the Chinese drug known- as Kao-pSn ; Nyssa Sinen- 

 sis, an interesting addition to a genus known before only in 

 North America, where several species occur, and in tlje 

 Himalaya, where one is known. This Chinese Gum-tree dif- 

 fers from its allies in the pedicellate ovaries. Dalbergia Hupe- 

 ana ; this is the T'an-tree of the central provinces of China, 

 and is common in Hupeh " in the flat country, and its wood, 

 being hard and durable, is much used in making rammers for 

 oil-presses, wheel-spokes, tool-handles, and the blocks and 

 pulleys used on the native craft." Buddleia officinalis, one of 

 the sources of the Chinese drug known as meng-hua ; it is 

 common about Ichang. Inula racemosa, a very fine species 

 from the western Himalaya and China, where it is cultivated 

 as a drug and as a substitute for the root of Aplotaxis auricu- 

 lata, which is so largely imported into China by way of Cal- 

 cutta and Bombay from Cashmere. 



