432 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 185. 



deriana. Pitcher & Manda, of Short Hills, New Jersey, re- 

 ceived the Society's silver medal for a plant of Pteris Victoria, 

 and first-class certificates of merit for Alocasia Chambieri and 

 Draavna argcntea. The same firm received a gratuity for a 

 small collection of new and rare plants. 



Notes. 



The portrait published as a frontispiece to the Popular 

 Science Monthly for September shows the face of Professor 

 George Lincoln Goodale, of Harvard University, and is accom- 

 panied by a sympathetic sketch of his life and his labors in the 

 interests of physiological botany. 



In an article recently published in Harper's Magazine, it is 

 stated that the New York Chamber of Commerce, one of the 

 most intelligent and conservative bodies of practical business 

 men in the world, regards the preservation of the Adirondack 

 forests as " of vital commercial importance." 



The memory of Dr. Joseph Priestley, the famous chemist 

 and discoverer of oxygen, and a great-grandfather of our dis- 

 tinguished architect, H. H. Richardson, is perpetuated in bot- 

 any by the name Priestleya, denoting a genus of some fifteen 

 species of shrubs, natives of South Africa, and sometimes cul- 

 tivated in northern greenhouses. 



Other societies besides the well-known New York Flower 

 Mission aid in the work of brightening the lives of the poor 

 of New York during the summer. One of them is the New 

 York Moderation Society, which distributes flowers, contrib- 

 uted by florists, in the most destitute and grimy regions of 

 the Five Points and "Mulberry Bend." It is said that on the 

 appointed days crowds of expectant children fill the sidewalks 

 long before the welcome wagon appears. Both cut flowers 

 and plants in pots are given away. 



Spinach should be sown, according to Meehan's Monthly, a 

 trifle before the forest-leaves color in autumn. It will then 

 grow very rapidly in the temperate weather. No frost will 

 injure the plant, but it should have a covering of straw so 

 light that the green leaves can be seen through it. The use 

 of this mulch is chiefly to keep the frost from lifting the plants 

 out of the ground and to prevent the leaves from discoloring. 

 The soil should be very strongly fertilized, for the richer it is 

 the larger and more tender will be the leaves. 



Modern botanical explorers may well envy the triumphant 

 pleasures of those who, in early days, explored new regions, 

 for now hardly any remain in the world which can offer any- 

 thing approaching the same wealth of " novelties." How, to- 

 day, can any one hope, even remotely, to compare his results 

 with those, for instance, of Tournefort, who, after spending 

 two years at the beginning of the last century in lands no 

 further afield than Greece and Asia Minor, brought back rep- 

 resentatives of 1,300 hitherto unknown species of plants ? 



Plants of Hydrangea hortensis will live out-of-doors in the 

 vicinity of Philadelphia without any protection in the winter, 

 and Mr. Joseph Meehan writes of a specimen in Laurel Hill 

 Cemetery, which is one of the largest near that city. This 

 plant is eight feet in diameter and four feet high, and recently 

 held more than eight hundred, and probably a thousand, 

 flower-heads fully expanded at once. The flowers on this 

 Hydrangea, as well as on the many others in that cemetery, 

 are of the deepest blue color, not one of them being pink or 

 rose-color. 



The Delaware peach crop has this year been unprecedent- 

 edly heavy, but it seems that growers have, nevertheless, 

 something to complain of. It is estimated that two million 

 baskets are needed for the crop ; but as a great many basket- 

 makers went out of the business in consequence of the disas- 

 ters of the years 1889 and 1890, baskets are difficult to get, and 

 their price has risen from three to five cents each. Factories 

 are running at full speed with increased facilities, and growers 

 are importing baskets from regions as distant as Michigan, yet 

 the demand is not properly supplied. 



According to a recent dispatch to the Evening Post, Professor 

 J. C. Arthur has been examining the street trees in Cleveland, 

 at the request of Mayor Ross, of that city, in order to discover, 

 if possible, why so many of them are dying. Professor Arthur 

 reports that the soot of coal, which closes the pores of the 

 leaves, is one cause, and that water-tight pavements and deep 

 sewers, which dry out the ground, is another cause. He rec- 

 ommends that smooth-leaved trees, like the Oaks, should be 

 used instead of Maples and Elms. The street trees of Buffalo 

 have also been reported in an unhealthy condition, and, for 



this state of things, Superintendent McMillan ascribes a simi- 

 lar cause, or, in his own terse language, " too much dust in 

 the air and too little water in the soil." 



In the report of the committee on nomenclature, made at 

 the recent annual meeting of the Society of American Florists, 

 it is stated that the existence and recognized activity of this 

 committee has had a salutary effect upon the business of 

 American Florists, and especially upon the catalogue trade. 

 It is said that the catalogues of the present time are much 

 more carefully prepared, so far as the naming of plants is 

 concerned, than they were five years ago, and that the general 

 tendency in them is toward plain facts, and away from sensa- 

 tional statements and sensational illustrations, notwithstanding 

 a few aggravated instances to the contrary. 



Among the superstitious precepts quoted by a recent writer 

 in the Journal of American Folk-lore as current among the 

 so-called " Dutch " of the Buffalo Valley in central Pennsyl- 

 vania, we read : " All cereals, when planted in the waxing of 

 the moon, will germinate more rapidly than if planted in the 

 waning of the moon. Beans planted when the horns of the 

 moon are up will readily pole, but if planted when the horns 

 are down will not. Plant early potatoes when the horns of 

 the moon are up, else they will go too deep into the ground. 

 Plant late potatoes in the dark of the moon.. Plant onions 

 when the horns of the moon are down. Pick apples in the 

 dark of the moon to keep them from rotting. For abundance 

 in anything you must plant it when the moon is in the sign of 

 the Twins." 



"Within a generation," says the American Architect and 

 Building News, "the United States, from one of the most 

 richly wooded countries in the world, has become com- 

 paratively sparsely provided with timber ; yet such is the force 

 of the habits handed down from our grandfathers, who sup- 

 posed that the forests among which they dwelt were inex- 

 haustible, that we still see our small remaining area of timber- 

 land diminishing day by day, partly under the axes of reckless 

 lumbermen, and partly through the gigantic forest-fires, whose 

 smoke obscures the sun over half the continent for weeks in 

 every year ; while in Germany, which at this moment pos 

 sesses a forest-area much larger, in proportion to its popula- 

 tion, than the United States, fire-wood is sold, in the cities, b 

 the pound, all the forests are guarded by state officers, thory 

 oughly educated for, the purpose, the underbrush is kept- 

 cleared away, to prevent fires, the cutting of timber is restricted 

 to a limited number of mature trees to the acre, so that the 

 supply shall be kept constant, and no timber, except a little 

 oak of specially beautiful grain, is sent out of the country ; 

 while the United States, out of a smaller reserve, exports tim- 

 ber to the value of more than five hundred thousand dollars a 

 week." 



A correspondent of the Philadelphia Ledger, writing re- 

 cently of Alaska, says that one can scarcely imagine, from the 

 usual forest-experience how closely the trees in the forests of 

 that country are packed together. "I and my wife," he says, 

 " undertook to walk four miles by an Indian trail through one 

 of these woods to a point where we might head off our vessel. 

 So thick was the mass of vegetation on each side of us, the 

 path being wide enough for us to travel single file only, that 

 we could not have seen a bear ten feet off. . . . One reason 

 for the dense covering of the land with trees is the favorable 

 conditions for seed-germination and the apparent scarcity of 

 seed-eating creatures. The warm temperature given off by 

 the Sea of Japan, which comes up south-westerly to break 

 against Alaska shores, meets the snowy cold of the mountain- 

 peaks, condensing the moisture so that the surface of the 

 ground, or indeed anything else, is never absolutely dry, and 

 every seed that falls to the earth has a chance to sprout and 

 grow. In the old Indian village were White Spruces twenty 

 feet high growing out of the top of totem-poles. These poles 

 are themselves thirty or forty feet high, and seem to have been 

 selected from the largest trees. They are stripped of their 

 bark, and have carved on them series of likenesses of crea- 

 tures, real and imaginary, representing the genealogical de- 

 scent of members of the tribe. It was a curious sight to see 

 the White Spruces, like huge Christmas-trees, growing from 

 the flat tops of these poles. In some cases the roots of these 

 living trees had split the poles in their descent downward to 

 the earth, into which the roots had in some cases so thoroughly 

 penetrated that should the poles finally rot away the trees would 

 probably on these stilts of roots continue to grow on as trees 

 high up in the atmosphere. Nothing but a climate continually 

 saturated with moisture would permit of seed-sprouting and 

 the tree continuing to grow out of the top of a pole in this 

 manner." 



