November 18, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



54i 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1891. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles :— The Report of the Secretary of Agriculture 541 



Statues in Central Park , 542 



The Cranberry Bogs of Cape Cod. (With figure.) 542 



Entomological : — A New Herbarium Pest. (With figures. ). Professor C. V. Riley. 543 



New or Little-known Plants : — New Orchids R. A. Rol/e. 544 



Plant Notes: — Some Recent Portraits 544 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter W. Watson. 544 



Cultural Department : — About Apples T. H. Hoskins, M.D. 546 



The Propagation of Ferns IV. H. Taplin. 547 



Thorpe's Pedigree Seedling Chrysanthemums J. N. Gerard. 547 



Cleome pungens, Sedum Sieboldii, Tritonia crocosmiflora M. Barker. 548 



Cattleya Walkeriana A. Dimmock. 548 



Damping Off. Professor Byron D. Halsted. 549 



Correspondence : — In the Shore Towns of Massachusetts. — II. . J. B. Harrison. 549 



Exhibitions : — Chrysanthemums in Boston 550 



Chrysanthemums in Philadelphia 551 



Recent Publications 551 



Notes 552 



Illustrations : — Carphoxera ptelearia, n. sp., Figs. 84, 85 543 



A Cranberry-field on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Fig. 86 545 



The Report of the Secretary of Agriculture. 



THE current work of the Department of Agriculture 

 during the year that is past has been made the sub- 

 ject of record and comment from time to time in this jour- 

 nal whenever that work related to subjects which are of 

 special interest to its readers, but the annual report of the 

 Secretary, which has just been issued, suggests a rather 

 more comprehensive note. We are not concerned now 

 with the general statistics of crop-values for the year, 

 although it is a matter of congratulation that, in spite of 

 the unusual abundant yields, prices of agricultural products, 

 especially of cereals and animals, have been so well sus- 

 tained that the increase in the wholesale value of these 

 products when compared with those of last year, at the 

 prices then current, amounts to $700,000,000. The most 

 important way in which this department can aid horticul- 

 ture in its various branches is through the labors of 

 experts who are employed by it in the various fields 

 of study and experiment. Of course, the department can 

 aid horticultural pursuits on their commercial side in other 

 ways, as, for example, by furnishing accurate statistics as 

 to crops in this and other countries, perhaps by dissemi- 

 nating new varieties of fruit and other plants of economic 

 value, by the suppression of fraudulent substitutes for and 

 the adulteration of agricultural products, and by the actual 

 help in the extermination of plant disease and of insects 

 which are injurious to crops. But, after all, the distribu- 

 tion of information which is of practical value to horticul- 

 ture is a matter in which we are all primarily interested. 

 In order to ensure work of the highest character in this 

 field it is essential that expert talent of the first order 

 should be employed, and it is gratifying to note that many 

 of the divisions of this department are under the control of 

 men who take rank with the best in the republic of science, 

 and they have exerted an influence which has already been 

 felt in one way or another in almost every farm and gar- 

 den of the country. 



It may be worth while to make brief mention of the 

 kind of work which is being done in the department, 

 omitting such 'important divisions as the Bureau of 

 Animal Industry, and others which relate more strictly 

 to agriculture. Under the care of the Chemical Di- 

 vision the manufacture of sugar has been the subject- 

 of study, and an experimental station for the pro- 

 duction of beets of a high saccharine richness has been 

 established in Nebraska. Scientific methods of cultivation 

 have been pursued for the purpose of growing beets of a 

 large sugar-content, for the production of seed, and the 

 establishment of a race of plants which equal or excel in 

 quality the sugar-beets of Europe. Two stations have 

 been established in Kansas- — one in order to develop a 

 higher grade of sorghum-cane for sugar-making, and the 

 other to illustrate the possibilities of the alcohol process 

 for producing sugar. The investigation in regard to the 

 adulteration of food, especially of syrups and honey, tea 

 and coffee, has brought to light many fraudulent, and 

 some highly deleterious practices. 



In the Division of Entomology, the most interesting 

 work has been the importation of a parasite which in- 

 fests the Hessian Fly, and of another one to help in the sup- 

 pression of the Cabbage worm. Both of these attempts, 

 especially the latter one, have been highly successful, and 

 the numbers of destructive insects have been largely re- 

 duced by their means. It is no doubt true, also, that the 

 serious damage to the Hop-crop in New York state was 

 prevented by an emergency bulletin distributed through the 

 Hop-growing region, which instructed growers how to 

 fight the Hop-plant louse in the most successful way. In 

 the Botanical Division extensive exploration and survey 

 have been made, especially in the Death Valley of south- 

 eastern California, and among the grasses and Cactacece of 

 Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona; and general herbarium 

 collections have been received from the Indian territory, 

 northern Wisconsin, Minnesota and Florida. An experi- 

 mental grass and forage station at Garden City, Kansas, 

 has been continuing operations started three years ago for 

 testing grasses and grains adapted to semi-arid districts ; 

 these experiments seem to show that there are forage- 

 plants which can produce, with proper management, even 

 under the arid conditions of western Kansas, crops not 

 greatly inferior to those of more eastern and moister regions. 

 The most important work of the Division of Orni- 

 thology has been a biological survey of parts of southern 

 California and Nevada under the charge of Dr. Merriam 

 and Mr. T. S. Palmer. The expedition was organized to 

 determine the boundaries of the natural life zone in these re- 

 gions, and to study the problems which relate to the lines 

 which cover the distribution of life there. The determina- 

 tion of such a line is a matter of consequence, inasmuch 

 as it fixes the northern limit of raisin-production and the 

 cultivation of sub-tropical fruits. 



The Division of Vegetable Pathology has been so often 

 mentioned during the year, and its work in the treat- 

 ment of Grape-diseases and Peach-yellows and the disease 

 which is called Peach-rosette, that it only needs to be 

 added here that a large number of New York nurserymen 

 and fruit-growers requested that an agent from that division 

 should be sent to Geneva to remain on the ground to inves- 

 tigate some diseases of the nursery stock which have 

 grown to such an extent in that vicinity. It shows the 

 general interest and confidence in the work of the division 

 when it is said that about 3,000,000 fruit-trees in nurseries 

 have been treated for leaf-blight and other diseases near 

 Geneva, and it is largely through the aid of investigators 

 in this department that some of the diseases can now be 

 controlled at comparatively little expense. 



In the Division of Pomology a monograph on the Wild 

 Grape has been prepared, and a bulletin on Nuts of Amer- 

 ica is in press. Besides this there have been investiga- 

 tions of fibre, a study of artesian wells and underflow, the 

 continuance of the not very reputable seed division and 

 some comical efforts to coax a fall of rain by means of ex- 



