July 8, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



323 



These sentences may well be read by many persons in this 

 country who have charge of planting our public parks, in which 

 it often happens that crooked, distorted and half-dead trees 

 and worthless shrubs are set. Such plants never produce 

 desirable results. The cheapest and best thing to do with 

 such plants is to put them on a brush pile. It is certainly a 

 waste of money to plant and cultivate them. There is no 

 branch of American horticulture which now needs reform so 

 much as in the quality of nursery-grown ornamental trees and 

 shrubs as usually offered for sale. Nurserymen, of course, 

 will continue to sell poorly grown plants as long as purchasers 

 can be found for them, and a reform in this direction will not 

 come until purchasers know what a good plant is, and what it 

 is worth. When this time comes they will be willing to pay 

 what it costs to produce a well-grown, well-rooted and well- 

 pruned shapely plant. The character of the material which is 

 beino- planted in some of our cities under the direction of park 

 commissioners and landscape-gardeners is not a credit to the 

 existing knowledge of tree-planting in this country, and we are 

 glad of the support of so eminent an author as Dr. Schlich on 

 this subject, which is one of very considerable importance, as 

 a bad tree, once planted, will, unless it has the good fortune 

 to die, continue bad until the end of its life and remain a daily 

 proof of bad methods. 



We are glad to quote, too, the sentence that, "as a general 

 rule, young plants are best because the operation of planting 

 is cheaper. The plants survive more easily the interruption 

 of growth involved in the change, and they adapt themselves 

 more readily to new conditions." These are sound arguments 

 against the prevailing notion that it is better to plant large 

 plants than small ones. 



Persons who desire to plant on a large scale will find in this 

 work a detailed account of all the methods necessary to follow 

 in planting forest-trees in the most economical manner, with 

 descriptions of the tools used, and such other information as 

 will enable them to carry out sylvicultural operations success- 

 fully. They will find, too, a clear account of the systems 

 employed in Europe in renewing woods by the natural process, 

 with suggestions for the application of these rules in particular 

 cases. We should be glad to describe these methods more in 

 detail, but the want of space compels us to refer the reader 

 interested in such subjects to the book itself, which has the 

 exceeding merit of being written in plain and simple English, 

 and in a style which makes it perfectly easy to understand 

 some of the rather complicated operations of which it treats. 



Sylvicultural notes on British forest-trees, which occupies 

 the fourth and concluding chapter, is devoted to an account 

 of the native trees of Great Britain, with a description of the 

 material they produce, their distribution, with notes on the 

 climates and soils in which they flourish, together with an 

 account of the best systems for cultivating them profitably ; 

 and, in convenient form, much useful information upon the 

 diseases and other dangers which threaten them. The only 

 foreign tree included in the list is the Douglas Fir of western 

 North America, a tree of which numerous experimental plan- 

 tations have been established in Great Britain and Germany, 

 some of them upward of thirty years old. 



The last Bulletin of the Cornell Experiment Station is devoted 

 to the winter forcing of Tomatoes, which has become a pros- 

 perous business in the vicinity of our large cities. The most 

 essential points in cultural practice may be summarized as 

 follows : A Tomato-house should be very light and warm, and 

 the roof should be at least five feet above the beds or benches. 

 An abundance of sunlight is essential, and the temperature 

 should be about sixty to sixty-five degrees at night and seventy 

 to eighty degrees during the day, or higher in full sunshine. 

 House-Tomatoes demand a rich soil and a liberal supply of 

 fertilizers, and they will bear when four to five months old. 

 They like brisk bottom heat and may be grown in large boxes 

 or upon benches ; eighteen-inch square boxes, placed a foot 

 apart, and containing four plants to the box, afford one of the 

 neatest and best means of growing Tomatoes. Winter Toma- 

 toes must be trained. From one to three stems, depending 

 upon the distance apart of the plants, are allowed to grow 

 from each. These are trained upon perpendicular or ascend- 

 ing cords, and they must be pruned as fast as new shoots 

 appear. The heaviest clusters should be supported. Water 

 may be used more freely early in the growth of the plant than 

 later. Wet the soil thoroughly at each watering rather than 

 water often. When the fruit begins to set, keep the atmos- 

 phere dry, especially during the middle of the day. 



House-Tomatoes in this latitude yield about two pounds to 

 the square foot. The amount of the first crop does not appear 

 to influence the amount of yield in the second crop from the 



same plant. Lorillard, Ignotum, Volunteer, Ithaca, Golden 

 Queen and Beauty have been found good winter varieties. 

 Insect pests are kept in check by fumigating with tobacco, and 

 the spotted mite by Hughes' fir-tree oil. Fungi are controlled 

 by ammoniacal carbonate of copper and Bordeaux mixture. 



The most interesting passage in the bulletin is that which 

 relates to the necessity of aiding nature in the work of pollina- 

 tion. Some account of experiments on this point was given 

 in Garden and Forest while they were being carried on, but 

 the subject is of sufficient importance to be referred to again. 

 When the flowers appear, the atmosphere is kept dry during 

 the brighter part of the day, when the pollen is discharged 

 most profusely, but in the short, dull days of midwinter the 

 flowers must be helped, or the fruit will not set. The common 

 practice of tapping the plants in the middle of the day with a 

 padded stick may be better than nothing at all, although some 

 tests of the value of this operation showed indifferent re- 

 sults. The most expeditious and satisfactory method which 

 has been used is to knock the pollen from the flowers, catch 

 it in a spoon or other receptacle, and then dip the stigmas of 

 the same or other flowers into it. There is a proper time in 

 the life of a flower when the pollen falls out readily if the at- 

 mosphere is dry enough. This is when the flower is fullv 

 expanded and somewhat past its prime. If the flower is then 

 tapped lightly with a lead-pencil the yellow powder falls out 

 freely. 



But there is additional reason for hand pollination. In-door 

 Tomatoes are smaller than those grown out-of-doors, and 

 midwinter fruits are smaller usually than those produced in 

 late spring. There is also a tendency in house-grown Tomatoes 

 to be one-sided, and Professor Bailey concluded that, although 

 the lack of sunlight had something to do with inferior size, 

 this lack of symmetry, and perhaps the smallness, too, were 

 due to irregular and insufficient pollination. As an experi- 

 ment two fruits upon one cluster were pollinated from the 

 same source. In one case very little pollen was used, and it 

 was applied to one side of the stigma only, while the other 

 flowers received abundant pollen over the whole stigmatic 

 surface. A picture of the fruits which resulted shows that the 

 freely pollinated fruit was large and symmetrical, while the 

 other was small and one-sided. In the large fruit, too, all the 

 cells developed and bore seeds, while the smaller one had 

 seeds on one side only. This experiment was repeated sev- 

 eral times with substantially the same result. From these 

 tests it appears that one-sidedness is due to the greater de- 

 velopment of seeds upon the large side ; that this increased 

 development of seeds is due to the fact that the greater part of 

 the pollen has been applied on that side ; that abundant pollen 

 placed over the entire surface increases the number of seeds 

 and the size of the fruit ; and that perhaps the pollen, either 

 directly or indirectly, stimulates the growth of the fruit beyond 

 the mere influence of the number of seeds. 



Another interesting section relates to the second crop. The 

 yield from the trained shoots of Tomatoes under glass does 

 not exhaust the vitality of the plant, and, therefore, when the 

 crop is well advanced, one or two new shoots may be trained 

 from near the base to produce a second crop. If the plant is 

 carrying fruit while these shoots are trained,. liquid manure 

 should be given once or twice a week, and a fresh mulch of 

 manure may be added. In the dark days of midwinter there 

 is not light enough to make strong shoots, where the planting 

 is close, and it is better, therefore, to delay starting them until 

 the fruit of the first crop is nearly all grown. But late in Feb- 

 ruary or in March the new shoots may be allowed to grow 

 three or four feet long before the old ones are cut away. The 

 stocky shoots, from six inches to a foot long, give fruits as 

 early as weak and slender ones, three or four feet long, and 

 they make better plants. The second crop can be made to 

 follow the first with an interval of from only four to six weeks, 

 although this may be difficult when the planting is close. 

 Another method of obtaining the second crop is to bury the 

 old plants, after the fruit is off, until only a foot or so of the 

 tips projects. The soil which was removed to make a hole 

 into which the plant is coiled down is then filled in and the 

 tip grows the same as a young plant. By this method the 

 yield has not proved quite so heavy as from single shoots, 

 although it is abundant and quite as early. The operation is 

 laborious, and some of the stiffer plants will crack in handling. 

 A third way of obtaining a second crop is by seedling plants 

 which are started from seeds two or three months beforehand, 

 and transplanted two or three times into pots. At the final 

 removing they are taken from four or five inch pots when 

 they are eighteen inches or two feet high and ready to be tied 

 up. Seedlings will bear about the same time as sprouts of 

 equal length to begin with, and the preference, therefore, will 



