552 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 195. 



to the child that botany must be an attractive study. This 

 foundation once laid, the useful book of the second sort can 

 be brought in play, and this of course is the elementary bot- 

 any itself. This ought not to try to be amusing or to con- 

 descend to fanciful suggestions, poetic interpretations or the 

 stimulating of mere curiosity. It ought to be simple and 

 direct, systematic and scientific, although of course in its lan- 

 guage, its choice of fundamental facts and its avoidance of all 

 which can be left for later periods of study, it ought to be care- 

 fully adapted to budding intelligences. One such botany is, 

 we all know, within the reach of every American child. No 

 child too young to understand Gray's " How Plants Grow " is 

 old enough to get valuable botanical information from other 

 sources ; and none who does not find it interesting will be 

 charmed into botanical enthusiasm by the administration of 

 sugar-coated pellets. The total separation of these two kinds 

 of writing — of the kind which is meant to awaken interest 

 from the kind which is meant to supply information — would, 

 we feel sure, be of great benefit to the rising generation. 



Notes. 



A natural history society, with Mr. William M. Canby as 

 president, has just been established in Wilmington, Dela- 

 ware. 



The English building on the grounds of the World's Fair in 

 Chicago is to have the general character of an old English 

 manor-house. 



The popular French name for Cotinus is Arbre a Per- 

 ruke, or Wig-tree, a term which expresses its peculiar appear- 

 ance when covered with its abortive pedicels as distinctly, 

 if not as prettily, as does the English term " Smoke-tree." 



The Iceland Poppy shows its sturdy qualities by throwing 

 up occasional blooms in spite of the frost. Perhaps the 

 plants which are to bloom next spring would do better if they 

 were kept from flowering the autumn before, but the flowers 

 are very beautiful now amid the general desolation of No- 

 vember. 



The beauty of the deep blue flowers of the low-growing and 

 half-prostrate Plumbago Larpenta has often been spoken of 

 in these columns, but now that the frost has destroyed its 

 bloom the plant is still beautiful for the bright scarlet of its 

 foliage. A spread of a square yard or so makes a very bril- 

 liant spot at this season on rock- work or wherever else it may 

 be planted. 



About 10,000 corn-cob pipes are daily manufactured in this 

 country, all being made in three factories, one of which stands 

 at St. Louis, one at Greenwood, Nebraska, and the third in 

 Kansas. The cobs are all procured in Missouri, and are sup- 

 plied by the Collier variety of Corn, on which they grow 

 usually heavy, woody and hard, while the stems are formed 

 of the so-called Arkansas Swamp-cane or reed. 



In a preliminary list of the plants of Franklin County, Ohio, 

 lately made by Messrs. A. D. Selby and Moses Craig for the 

 Columbus Horticultural Society, it is stated that 138 native 

 plants and 85 introduced plants have been added to the num- 

 ber given in a catalogue made by William S. Sullivant in 1840. 

 It appears that 15 per cent, of the plants of the county are in- 

 troduced and that 8.5 per cent, of these have appeared during 

 the last fifty years. 



No more striking contrast to our beautiful rural cemeteries, 

 filled with costly monuments and carefully tended plants, can 

 be imagined than the City Cemetery of New York — the "Pot- 

 ter's Field," on Hart's Island in the East River. Here about 

 2,500 unknown and pauper dead are annually buried. There 

 are some 75,000 drunkards' graves, and the most pathetic sight 

 of all is the only monument, which bears sad tribute to the 

 fact that some of the brave soldiers of the Civil War are here 

 interred. 



In the recently issued Proceedings of the Pennsylvania 

 Academy of Natural Sciences a record is made of a double-flow- 

 ered Skunk Cabbage {Symplocarpus fcetidus), and an illustration 

 which shows the two spathes fronting each other is given in 

 Median's Monthly for November. In the same magazine it is 

 stated that in a Japanese work on botany there is a figure of 

 this plant, which grows in Japan as well as in America, with 

 two spathes, the outer one being a purplish violet with orange 

 stripes within and darker lines without, and the smaller spathes 

 in the interior striped with white and having a greenish bor- 

 der. 



We have received from Mr. Joseph Meehan a branch of 

 Elceagnus ' umbellatus which is thickly covered with fruit. 

 This plant has been distributed very abundantly during a few 

 years past as E. longipes, which, however, it does not resem- 

 ble. It is much more like the one known as E. parvifolius, 

 but this ripened its fruit more than a month ago, while E. um- 

 bellatus still has fruit on it, which will be frozen off before it 

 ripens. The berries, as they came to us, were of a beautiful 

 amber color, thickly set along the stem and about as large as 

 currants. The fruit adds much to the ornamental value of 

 this shrub, which is beautiful at all seasons of the year. The 

 plant from which this branch was taken is in the garden of 

 Mi\ A. G. Elliot, of Germantown. 



The little park known as the Bowling Green in this city orig- 

 inally lay in front of a fort built of^logs in the year 161 5, which, 

 in 1626, was replaced by a store-house surrounded by palisades 

 of Red Cedar, and was used as a drill-ground. In 1732 the 

 ground was leased to residents of the neighborhood and con- 

 verted into a bowling-green, and in 1770 it was chosen as the 

 site for a leaden statue of George III., which had been sent 

 from England, and was surrounded by an iron railing, for 

 which the city paid ,£800. On the evening of July 9, 1776, 

 when the Declaration of Independence was read from the City 

 Hall, statue and railing were demolished by the excited popu- 

 lace, and the pieces of the former were sent to Oliver Wolcott 

 at Litchfield, Connecticut. Here Wolcott's wife and daughter 

 cast the lead into 42,000 bullets, and it was believed that four 

 hundred British soldiers met their death by missiles which 

 had once formed part of the statue of their king. 



In eastern New England this year the autumn foliage of 

 trees and shrubs is less brilliant than it has been in several 

 years. The foliage of many trees, especially of the Ash, the 

 Hickories, and the Virgilia, all of which usually turn to bril- 

 liant shades, was killed by a hard frost in the last week of 

 October before they had changed color at all, and these trees 

 are now generally leafless. The leaves, too, have fallen from 

 many Maple-trees, both Red Maples and Sugar Maples, with- 

 out any previous change of color. The Oaks, however, prom- 

 ise to turn as usual, and just now some White Oaks and the 

 Chestnut Oak which, with its deep orange autumn color, is 

 always one of the most beautiful trees at this season of the 

 year, are particularly noticeable. The Red Oak and the Scar- 

 let Oak turn later. It is interesting to note that in spite of the 

 hard frost the Gleditsias still hold a large part of their leaves, 

 which are almost as bright green as they were at midsummer, 

 while its nearest relative, the Kentucky Coffee-tree, is quite 

 leafless. 



In an article recently published in the New York Sun, con- 

 trasting this year's fair of the American Institute with the one 

 held fifty years ago, it is said that in the Floricultural Depart- 

 ment of this latter the most striking attractions were " thou- 

 sands of specimens of what was called ' that fashionable and 

 esteemed flower, the Mexican Dahlia,' in all its varied shades. 

 It was considered worthy of mention that the root of the Queen 

 Dahlia had cost ^10 the previous spring. G. C. Thorburn was 

 credited with having imported the majority of the stock, or 

 parent plants, cultivated in this country at the time. ... Of 

 the forty premiums for agricultural and horticultural products 

 Thomas Addis Emmet, one of the most famous lawyers of 

 the time, got a diploma for the best purple Egg-plants, William 

 Niblo got a copy of Downing's ' Rural Architecture ' for the 

 greatest display of tropical fruits, and Niblo and Dunlap got a 

 diploma for the best self-colored and various-colored Dahlias. 

 . . . Among the exhibits of garden ornaments were ' splendid 

 specimens of stained glass peculiarly adapted to the highest 

 style of garden architecture.' The making of stained glass 

 had been introduced here only a few years before. A cast- 

 iron sun-dial was described as ' a very useful article to any one 

 who sets a due value on his time. When its cheapness is con- 

 sidered, we should think it strange that any person who has a 

 situation in which to place it should be without one.' An iron 

 case was considered a valuable ornament where stone pillars 

 were used, as in gardens and parks. Some iron settees were 

 described as 'entitled to rank among the luxuries of life.'" 

 But the " climax in garden ornaments" seems to have been an 

 enormous cast-iron fountain composed of groups of "female 

 figures of great beauty," with Tritons spurting water ranged 

 about an upper basin. Among other exhibits of importance 

 " were Amazon bonnets made of so-called Manilla-grass, which 

 was the fibre of Aloes. The braids were both white and dyed, 

 and the judges could not too highly commend its exhibitors 

 for originating and bringing to its state of perfection a fabric 

 of so much importance." 



