408 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 183. 



culating, so that the two conditions are inseparable. The 

 danger in putting steam-heating pipes through the heater is 

 that when the water had stopped passing through the heater 

 it would soon become too hot to use. It would not be as 

 economical as our plan, where nothing but waste steam is 

 used. 



The question, What twelve plants are the best companions 

 of Ficus elastica and Latania (Livistona) Borbonica for 

 house decoration ? was submitted to Mr. Robert Craig, of 

 Philadelphia ; Mr. Charles D. Ball, of Holmesburg, Penn- 

 sylvania ; Mr. W. K. Harris, of Philadelphia ; Mr. F. G. Foster, 

 of Hamilton, Ontario ; and Mr. William R. Smith, of the 

 Botanical Gardens at Washington, D. C. 



In the lists presented by these gentlemen, from which 

 rare and expensive plants were omitted, Areca lutescens, 

 Kentia Belmoreana, Dracana fragrans, Pandanus Veitchiiand 

 P. utilis were named five times ; Aspidistra hirida and its 

 variegated form and Cocos Weddelliana four times ; Phcenix 

 rupicola and Ficus elastica variegata, three times ; Araucaria 

 exce/sa, Dracana terminalis, Aralia Sieboldii variegata, Kentia 

 Forsteriana, Phcenix reclinata, Raphis flab ell if or mis twice; 

 Seaforthia elegans, Cyperus alter nifolius and its variegated 

 form, Caryota uretis, Cycas revolnta, Phormium tenax varie- 

 gation, Cordyline terminalis and Draccena Goldieana, once each. 



Notes. 



A. Lietze, a florist of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has written to a 

 Chicago correspondent asking him to take charge of an ex- 

 hibit for the World's Fair of 400 varieties of Caladium. 



The raisin-crop in Fresno County, California, is the largest 

 on record. Fully 4,000 Chinese are now engaged in the vine- 

 yards of that county picking grapes, and they have advanced 

 the price fifty cents a day over prices last year. 



A western paper recently stated that a citizen of the town 

 where it is published had " invented" a vine, to which he had 

 given the name of Potomato, because it bears potatoes under 

 ground and tomatoes above ground. This is not a new " in- 

 vention," but probably a result achieved by grafting a Tomato- 

 cion on a Potato-stock. 



Many of the visitors at Toronto last week remarked the 

 thrifty condition of the street-trees. The American Mountain 

 Ash trees were conspicuously good, and were loaded with fruit. 

 The practice of cutting back the Lombardy Poplars seems to 

 give freshness and vigor to these trees, and they appear to be 

 longer-lived than they are in the cities of the United States. 



Mr. Frederick McMonnies, a young sculptor who has recently 

 been studying in Paris, has completed a statue of Nathan 

 Hale, the famous Revolutionary spy, which will be set up in 

 the City Hall Park in this city. He has also received a com- 

 mission to design the statue of Victory, which will be the 

 crowning ornament of the soldiers' monument to be built on 

 the government grounds at West Point by Messrs. McKim, 

 Mead & White, and he will be the sculptor of the large Colum- 

 bus fountain for the Exposition grounds at Chicago. 



The death is announced, in his seventy-fifth year, of Dr. 

 Henry Bennet, an English physician long established on the 

 Riviera, where his garden at Mentone had become, under his 

 zealous and intelligent care, one of the richest and most inter- 

 esting in Europe. He is remembered as the author of a de- 

 lightful book entitled "Winter and Spring on the Shores of the 

 Mediterranean," by means of which he brought the Riviera, 

 and especially Mentone, into wide repute as a winter residence 

 for invalids. He found Mentone, a contemporary remarks, 

 " an obscure hamlet ; he left it the resort of thousands of inva- 

 lids from all countries, with all the luxuries and appliances 

 suited to their condition." 



The most striking feature in the attractive public garden 

 at Dijon, known as LArquebuse, is the so-called Gros Arbre, an 

 immense Black Poplar, for which an antiquity of more than four 

 centuries is claimed. Its trunk is said to be fifty feet in cir- 

 cumference, and despite the fact that it has lost its larger 

 branches, it is still well clothed with leaves and is a stately as 

 well as an interesting object. One can hardly realize that it is a 

 tree of the same species as the myriads of slight feathery 

 Poplars which grow in almost every field in these parts of 

 France. 



General Vincenzo Ricasoli, a distinguished Italian soldier 

 who fought as a volunteer in Lombardy in 1848 and 1849, and 

 later was the companion of Lamarmora in Sardinia and in the 

 Crimea, and who in his old age came to be called the father of 



horticulture in Italy, has recently died. His garden at Casa 

 Bianca, near Port Ercole, was one of the richest in the penin- 

 sula, and famous for the experiments its owner made there 

 with Eucalyptus, Acacia, Palms, Cycads and other semi-trop- 

 ical plants of which he was one of the first and most success- 

 ful cultivators in Italy. He was particularly interested in the 

 Bulletin of the Royal Horticultural Society of Tuscany, which 

 he helped to found, and to which he made frequent and im- 

 portant contributions, describing in its pages the results of his 

 experiments and explaining his broad and catholic views on all 

 matters relating to agriculture and horticulture. 



Professor Goodale, in his address as the retiring President 

 of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 in speaking of the possibilities of Economic Botany, said that 

 the methods of improving plants are already known so well 

 that " if all our present cereals were swept out of existence 

 our experiment stations could probably replace them by other 

 grasses within half a century. New vegetables may be reason- 

 ably expected from Japan, which has already sent us many 

 choice plants in all departments, and it is likely that some of 

 our present vegetables, which are now much neglected, will 

 come into greater favor and be improved. The fruits of the 

 future will tend more and more toward becoming seedless, 

 just as pine-apples, bananas and some oranges- are now. 

 There is no good reason why we should not have seedless 

 raspberries, strawberries and blackberries, and also raise, by 

 cuttings, plums, cherries and peaches free from stones." 



A writer in Downing's Horticulturist, in the year 1846, stated 

 that the Baldwin Apple "originated in Wilmington, near 

 Boston, in that part which now makes a portion of the new 

 town of Sommerville, in the county of Middlesex. The 

 original tree grew on the farm of a Mr. Butters and was known 

 for a time as the Butters. Apple. This tree was frequented by 

 woodpeckers, and Mr. Butters called it the Woodpecker Apple, 

 which was soon abbreviated to the Pecker Apple. My trees, 

 which I set out twenty-eight years ago, are registered ' Peckers.' 

 This fruit must have been known about a century. Orchards 

 were propagated from Mr. Butters' tree pretty freely, about 

 seventy-five years since, by Dr. Jabez Brown, of Wilmington, 

 and Colonel Baldwin, of Woburn, and their sons, to whom the 

 public are principally indebted for bringing the fruit so gener- 

 ally into notice. From Colonel Baldwin and his family it took 

 the name of ' Baldwin,' by which the fruit is now everywhere 

 known." 



Last week Professor J. L. Edwards "delivered a lecture at 

 Chautauqua on the Arboretum at that place. Among other 

 interesting statements he said that there are found there fifty- 

 six different species of native trees, or half the number of spe- 

 cies in the state. The tallest is a Hickory, 132 feet high. The 

 largest is a Red Oak, twenty-three feet in girth and nofeethigh. 

 Twenty trees average seventeen feet in girth. The largest stum p 

 is that of a Chestnut, over which was built the original Chau- 

 tauqua platform ; it measures' twenty-seven feet around. The 

 speaker said that all people, and especially young people, 

 should become interested in trees for the following reasons : 

 Such a study cultivates habits of observation ; the knowledge 

 gained is intrinsically valuable ; trees have interesting historic 

 and patriotic associations ; communion with nature is whole- 

 some, cheering and ennobling ; literature is permeated with 

 the spirit and imagery of the forest. The very terms employed 

 in literary work are redolent of the woods. Paper from Papy- 

 rus, book from Beech, library from liber, the inside bark, and 

 leaf from leaves of the trees. 



The famous Grape-vine at Hampton Court, near London, 

 was formally referred to as the largest whose size has been re- 

 corded. But in the volume of Downing's Horticulturist for 

 1846-1847 we find a letter, signed "J. J. S., Philadelphia," which 

 runs: "I have lately made an excursion to Burlington, New 

 Jersey, for the purpose of obtaining the exact measurement 

 of the most extraordinary Grape-vine I have ever heard of. It 

 stands on a farm called West Hill, belonging to my late 

 brother, two miles from the city of Burlington. ... At three 

 feet from the ground it measures six feet one inch round the 

 trunk, and at ten feet high it is positively three feet in circum- 

 ference. It is a native male Grape, and has been the wonder 

 of the neighborhood as long back as the memory of man 

 reaches. It is still healthy, and its giant folds run over and 

 cover four trees, one of which is a full-sized White Oak, while 

 the others are quite large. . . . This vine grows near a 

 springy soil on upland, its roots, no doubt, penetrating to the 

 water." To this Downing adds: "The celebrated vine at 

 Hampton Court . . . does not, as regards size, deserve to be 

 mentioned in the same paragraph." 



