360 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 179. 



arc in bloom in the south they are, ol course, imported, but 

 at other times the greenhouses of the city and its vicinity fur- 

 nish an uninterrupted supply ; and it is said that the forced 

 flowers are superior to those brought from the south, as the 

 latter soon turn gray and dingy when exposed to the air. 



It has been claimed by many growers of Roses that the 

 temperature of the water applied to them is a matter of no 

 consequence, but in the last number of the American Florist 

 Mr. John N. May considers it an important point that the 

 water should be tepid. Hydrant water in winter he thinks 

 much too cold to be applied to the plants. In the summer, 

 water which is supplied to towns, however, is not often much 

 below sixty degrees, and therefore will do no injury. 



One of the oldest wooden stairways that exist is the flight 

 which leads up to the gallery of the Sainte Chapelle, in Paris, 

 on the north side of the shrine, its companion on the southern 

 side being a restoration. It was built during the first half of 

 the thirteenth century, when Saint Louis erected the chapel to 

 contain the Crown of Thorns, now preserved at Notre Dame. 

 It is very delicately carved, and is regarded as a masterpiece 

 of the finest period of Gothic art. The stairs wind about a 

 central newel and are supported on the outer side by uprights, 

 which form an open-work cage. 



The following advertisement is one of a large class which 

 appeal, we fear with some success, to a puerile craze for 

 novelty on the part of persons who think that they "love 

 plants"; but it is the first we remember to have seen where 

 an appeal is likewise made to a pseudo-religious sentimen- 

 tality. Singularly enough, it was allowed to appear in an Eng- 

 lish journal called The Christian, for it runs: "Wonderful 

 Symbolical Plant — Calvary Clover, leaves three in one, with 

 blood-like spot, seed-vessels surrounded with mimic crown of 

 thorns. Grows freely in pot or open ground. Healthy plants, 

 two for one shilling." 



Every one knows that " elbow grease" is the best polish for 

 mahogany, and it is interesting to learn how it is applied in 

 Japan to produce the beautifully polished floors of cheaper 

 wood, upon which one is not allowed to tread with shoes. 

 "They are not varnished, nor oiled, nor waxed," says a recent 

 traveler, " but every morning rubbed with a cloth wrung out 

 of hot bath-water, which contains oily matter enough to give, 

 in time, this peculiar lustre. Three years of daily rubbing 

 with a hot cloth are required to give a satisfactory result, and 

 every subsequent year adds to the richness of tone and polish, 

 until old tea-houses and temples disclose floors of common 

 pine looking like rose-wood or six-century-old oak." 



A correspondent sends us some spikes of bright pink flow- 

 ers, and inquires what they are and why they are not often 

 cultivated. They prove to be flowers of the Hardback (Spiraa 

 to/nentosa), which ought to be familiar to all persons who have 

 passed much time in the country at this season. This is 

 among the latest of the Spiraeas to bloom, and it is really one 

 of those handsome plants which would be often found in pri- 

 vate grounds but for the fact that it is native and common. It 

 is usually found in low grounds, but not always, and it will 

 thrive in any ordinary position. When planted in rich soil, 

 and occasionally cut back, it makes a dense shrub, and the 

 beauty of its flowers, as well as the season of its bloom, make 

 it a very desirable plant. 



At the last session of the Ontario Legislature an Act of Par- 

 liament was passed for protecting the plant Ginseng {Aralia 

 quinqitcfolia), and the Honorable John Brydon, Minister of 

 Agriculture, has thought it advisable to publish a bulletin, so 

 that the people of Ontario may be better acquainted with a 

 plant of so much economic value. The bulletin contains a 

 figure of the plant, with both popular and botanical descrip- 

 tions and notes on its distribution, which show that it is com- 

 paratively common throughout the province. Of course, it is 

 used for export to China. Twenty thousand dollars' worth 

 was shipped over the Kingston and Pembroke Railroad last 

 year, and the price of dry roots ranged from $3 to $3.50 a 

 pound. Whether it would pay to cultivate the plant is a ques- 

 tion now considered. The law referred to forbids any one 

 from rooting up, gathering or destroying Ginseng wherever it 

 may be found in a wild or uncultivated state, except for the 

 purpose of clearing land and bringing it under cultivation, be- 

 tween the first day of January and the first day of September 

 in any year. 



There may be some reality in the danger explained by a 

 writer in the New York Tribune who recently described the 

 butler in a large country house arranging the flowers with 



which the rooms were filled, renewing those in each receptacle 

 with the greatest skill, but merely adding a little fresh water 

 to that already polluted by the blossoms of the day before. 

 "I knew by experience," says the commentator, "how fetid 

 and offensive water becomes from decaying stems of plants, 

 and I spoke to my friend on the subject, believing, as I did, that 

 the standing water in so many open receptacles was positively 

 unhealthy. ' How often do you clean the vases completely, 

 James?' she inquired. 'We wash everything once a week, 

 ma'am,' he answered respectfully ; ' the rest of the time I only 

 take out the flowers that are faded and replace them with fresh 

 ones.' 'Just take out those," she directed, pointing to a big 

 yellow bowl filled with purple Irises. As he lifted the wet 

 mass from the dish the odor was so sickening that it filled the 

 whole room. Now here, I thought, is surely a question for a 

 physician, and yet I have never heard it mentioned. Wherever 

 houses are profusely decorated with flowers, this stagnant 

 water is presumably standing constantly in living-rooms, and 

 people are continually breathing what, even out-of-doors, 

 under the fresh winds of heaven, is generally accounted un- 

 healthy." 



In speaking of the planting of home grounds, Mr. Parsons, 

 in his recently published Landscape Gardening, well says : 

 " The tendency of those who think of trees in mass, and in 

 their mass relations, is to crowd them too much with their 

 companions, to fail to comprehend their appearance at matur- 

 ity, and thus to develop their proper effect imperfectly. Such 

 a tendency is apt to ' crib and confine' the trees and to under- 

 take to make them do duty after a fashion that is not altogether 

 adapted to their nature. . . . On the other hand, a person 

 who dwells specially on the development of the individual 

 character of a plant is liable to err in another way, and to 

 sacrifice the broad effects and harmoniously combined rela- 

 tions of trees to the exhibition of characteristic and highly per- 

 fected individual excellences. ... A middle way of arrange- 

 ment may be pursued, with reasonable satisfaction, which will 

 secure good mass effects and a fair consideration for the 

 character of individual specimens. . . . Outlying speci- 

 mens of choice trees and shrubs will vary the outline of the 

 masses here and there, and, perhaps, stand alone at a few 

 points without shrubs. ... A simple negative rule for 

 the arrangement of trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants is 

 never to plant them in a continuous straight line, but in groups 

 with curving boundaries, and placed on the specially prepared 

 crests of swelling spots or portions of the lawn." 



A recent writer in the Cornhill Magazine, speaking of "elas- 

 tic fruits " which explode when their seeds are ready to be 

 scattered, says that the examples of these elastic capsules pro- 

 duced in the tropics, where plants have to fight against a 

 greater multitude of powerful enemies than in temperate 

 regions, "are by no means mere toys to be lightly played with 

 by babes and sucklings. The Sand-box tree of the West 

 Indies has large, round fruits, containing seeds about as big 

 as an English horse-bean, and the capsule explodes, when 

 ripe, with a detonation like a pistol, scattering its contents 

 with as much violence as a shot from an air-gun. It is dan- 

 gerous to go too near these natural batteries during the shoot- 

 ing season. A blow in the eye from one would blind a man 

 instantly. I well remember the very first night I spent in my 

 own house in Jamaica, where I went to live shortly after the 

 repression of 'Governor Eyre's rebellion,' as everybody calls 

 it locally. All night long I heard somebody, as I thought, 

 practicing with a revolver in my own back garden — a sound 

 which somewhat alarmed me under those very unstable 

 social conditions. An earthquake about midnight, it is true, 

 diverted my attention temporarily from the recurring shots, 

 but didn't produce the slightest effect upon the supposed 

 rebel's devotion to the improvement of his marksmanship. 

 When morning dawned, however, I found it was only a Sand- 

 box tree, and that the shots were nothing more than the ex- 

 plosions of the capsules." 



Catalogues Received. 



A.Blanc, 314N. nth St., Philadelphia, Pa. ; New Floral Electrotypes. 

 — William Bull, 536 King's Road, Chelsea, London, S. W., England ; 

 New and Rare Plants and Orchids. — Ellwanger & Barry, Mount 

 Hope Nurseries, Rochester, N. Y. ; Pot-grown and Layer Strawberries, 

 Bulbous Flower Eoots for Fall Planting. — W. B. Hartland, Cork, 

 Ireland; Carefully drawn Illustrations of nearly fifty varieties of 

 Daffodils.— J. L. Normand, Marksville, La.; Rare Oriental Plum 

 Buds. — J. J. van Loghern, Haarlem, Holland, Otto Schmitz, Fuller 

 Building, Jersey City, N.J., Ag't; Wholesale Price List of Dutch Bulbs. — 

 Van Velsen ISros., Haarlem, Holland; Flower Bulbs. — James Veitch 

 & Sons, 544 King's Road, Chelsea, England; Catalogue of Plants, in- 

 cluding Novelties for 1801. 



