348 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 178. 



Notes. 



In November, we read in a recent book about Japan, " the 

 coquette sends her lover a leaf or branch of Maple, to signify 

 that, like it, her love has changed." 



Mr. E. T. Ensign, Forest Commissioner of the State of Colo- 

 rado, announces in a circular that the citizens of Colorado 

 Springs have secured the reservation of extensive bodies of 

 timber-land at the sources of the springs, in Pike's Peak re- 

 gion. It is to be inferred from the wording of the circular that 

 these reservations are to be made by proclamation of the 

 President. 



The horticultural building for the World's Fair at Chicago, 

 which has been designed by Mr. W. Jenney, of that city, will 

 cost, it is said, about $600,000, and will stand on the edge of 

 the lagoon. It will be 1,000 feet in length and 286 feet in 

 breadth, and will consist of a central pavilion connected with 

 two others by glazed galleries. This central space will be 187 

 feet square and 113 feet in height, and will be devoted to the 

 display of tropical plants. 



Some of the perennial Gypsophilas and Statices, especially 

 G. paniculata and S. latifolia, are highly valued for their cut 

 flowers, which are small and abundant and borne on slender 

 stems, and, when mingled with other flowers, have the effect 

 of a fine mist or halo. Another excellent plant for this pur- 

 pose is Asperula hexaphylla. A specimen sent to this office 

 from the Passaic Nurseries by H. Meyer, has minute flowers, 

 pure white, and borne on a very loose panicle, and they have 

 a fairy-like delicacy. A well-grown plant will make a mass 

 three feet in diameter and nearly as high. 



La Revue Horticole announces the death of Monsieur F. 

 Herincq, in his seventy-first year. Monsieur Henricq was long 

 connected with the Herbarium of the Museum d'Histoire 

 Naturelle, in Paris, and was known to horticulturists as the 

 editor of L'Horticulteur Frangais, a periodical which he 

 founded, and which ceased to appear several years ago. He 

 was intimately associated with the late Monsieur Lavall£e in 

 the study and arrangement of the plants in the Arboretum Se- 

 gretzianum, and assisted in preparing the important work 

 which Monsieur Lavalle'e, published under that name. 



The Planter, of New Orleans, recently put forth a novel 

 suggestion with regard to the employment of the low grades 

 of molasses, which sugar manufacturers now do not know 

 how to get rid of even at five, six or seven cents a gallon. 

 So the Planter advocates the unfamiliar idea of using 

 it as fuel in the place of coal in the sugar-houses. Com- 

 bined with the dry stalks of the Sugar-cane, after the sac- 

 charine matter has been extracted from them, it would burn 

 with a high heat, while it would cost from one-eleventh to one- 

 fifth of a cent per pound as against the one-fifth of a cent now 

 expended for coal - f and even half the now available stock of 

 molasses would, we are told, more than suffice for the manu- 

 facture of all the sugar of Louisiana.. 



A correspondent of the London Standard recently proved 

 that the Edelweiss, that secluded inhabitant of high Alpine 

 regions, may make itself thoroughly at home in a city, by 

 telling about a small plant which a friend living near Belfast 

 had raised from seed and sent him, with directions to leave it 

 to itself in a corner of his garden. " Unhappily," he says, 

 " London gardens are the hunting-grounds for innumerable 

 cats, so I placed my treasure, for such I deemed it, on the sill 

 of my drawing-room window, aspect south-east ; and there, 

 through the dismal sunless winter, now buried deep in snow, 

 now frozen hard, the Alpine stranger remained, always re- 

 ported dead by all who saw it ; but toward the end of March 

 life showed itself, and now it is a large healthy plant, with five 

 lovely blooms, the admiration of all who see it." 



We have recently received the prospectus of a new pe- 

 riodical, called Zeitschrift fiir Pflanzenkrankhcitcn {Journal 

 of Plant Diseases), which is to be issued at Stuttgart, under 

 the control of Dr. Paul Sorauer, who will have the assistance 

 of the International Phytopathological Commission, which in- 

 cludes members residing in all the civilized parts of the world, 

 the American members named in the prospectus being Pro- 

 fessor Farlow, of Cambridge ; Professor Galloway, of Wash- 

 ington, and Professor Humphrey, of Amherst. The journal, 

 will be published bi-monthly, with lithographed plates and 

 wood-cuts in the text, and the annual subscription price has 

 been fixed at fifteen marks. It will contain original articles of 

 considerable length, shorter notes on subjects of current in- 

 terest and full reviews of new books and treatises, and should 



be of great use to all who are concerned with the cultivation 

 of plants. 



In the preface to Mr. E. W. Hervey's interesting " Flora of 

 New Bedford and the Shores of Buzzard's Bay," which we 

 have already brought to the attention of our readers, he says 

 that comparative reference to catalogues of various western 

 localities shows that the blossoming season is earlier there than 

 on the shores of the Atlantic. A catalogue of the plants found 

 at Oquaka, Illinois, on the shores of the Mississippi, " discloses 

 the interesting fact that the season there ... is much earlier 

 than that of New Bedford by the sea, though both places are 

 practically in the same latitude, the spring plants of the former 

 region blooming from ten to fifteen days earlier, and those of 

 May, June and July from three to four weeks earlier," while 

 an article by Mr. E. W. Hammond on " Winter Flowers in 

 Oregon," published in Garden and Forest last January, 

 seems to prove " that the season on the Pacific coast in lati- 

 tude one degree further north is six weeks earlier than here." 



Dr. Richard Schomburgk, for the last twenty-five years 

 director of the Adelaide Botanic Garden, died there at the end 

 of last March. He was a native of Freeburg, and was born in 

 181 1. Political complications compelled him, with his brother 

 Robert, to leave Germany. With the assistance of Humboldt 

 he was able to reach Australia, where he has principally re- 

 sided. In 1 87 1 he published a catalogue of the plants culti- 

 vated in the Adelaide garden, and his elaborate annual reports 

 testify to the energy and activity which he displayed in carry- 

 ing on the establishment entrusted to his care. He published 

 in 1876 his "Botanical Reminiscences of British Guiana," an 

 interesting account of the Boundary Expedition of 1842, which 

 was commanded by his brother, and to which he was attached 

 as naturalist on behalf of the Prussian Government. His 

 most important contribution to botany is, however, the synop- 

 sis of the flora of British Guiana, published in his " Reisen in 

 Britisch Guiana" in 1848. 



A recent number of the American Architect and Building 

 News contains an interesting article on the great island of 

 New Guinea, the least-known of any country on the globe. 

 After speaking of the houses built on piles, the writer describes 

 another type of house, which seems even more primitive, as 

 it appears in an illustration reproduced from a photograph. 

 The picture shows a sort of small clearing on a steep hill-side, 

 and in the centre of it a tall, rather slender tree, apparently a 

 Blue-gum, the head of which has been lopped off, so that 

 nothing remains but a few short branches -with scattered 

 tufts of leaves springing from their extremities. About thirty 

 feet above the ground, approached by a very frail-looking 

 ladder and supported by the main branches, some distance 

 above the place where they fork, stands the house which, 

 oddly enough, always contains two stories, and has a platform 

 on top whence the surrounding country may be scanned for 

 signs of approaching danger. Resting thus on the lopped and 

 naked tree, with the ragged thatch of its sides and roof hang- 

 ing down in rough streamers, it looks not unlike a colossal 

 nest— such a nest, on a larger scale, as the fish-hawk builds in 

 blasted trees along our own Atlantic coast. Our "arboreal 

 ancestors " seem closer to us as we think of human habita- 

 tions in the tree-tops at the close of the nineteenth century. 



The fact that the authorities of Kew Gardens have been 

 endeavoring for a number of years to extend the scope and 

 enlarge the usefulness of the various botanical establishments 

 in the British West Indies has already been alluded to in these 

 columns. To further this undertaking, which looks to the 

 formation of a botanical federation for purely economic pur- 

 poses, and which is likely to be beneficial to all English-speak- 

 ing people in the Antilles, Mr. D. Morris, the Assistant 

 Director of Kew, was sent last winter to make a tour of in- 

 spection through the West Indies. His report, containing 

 much useful and interesting matter pertaining to the different 

 islands, is now published in the May and June issues of the 

 Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information from the Royal Gardens. 

 The information it contains will be found useful not only to 

 Englishmen, but to Americans who now visit the West Indies 

 in larger numbers every year, both for business and pleasure. 

 An appendix to the same useful publication contains a list 

 of the new garden-plants described in botanical and horticul- 

 tural publications, English and foreign, during the year 1890. 

 It includes not only plants brought into cultivation in that year 

 for the first time, but the most noteworthy of those which have 

 been introduced after being long lost from gardens. In addi- 

 tion to these the list contains all hybrids, whether introduced 

 or of garden origin, but described for the first time in 1890. 

 The list will be found indispensable to all people who desire 

 to keep informed of new plants available for garden decoration. 



