274 



The Readers' Service will give 

 information about automobiles 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



January, 1912 



From an old print in La Telegrafie Historique. 



Napoleon's Visual Telegraph 



The First Long Distance System 



Indians sent messages by means of 

 signal fires, but Napoleon established 

 the first permanent system for rapid 

 communication. 



In place of the slow and unreliable ser- 

 vice of couriers, he built lines of towers 

 extending to the French frontiers and 

 sent messages from tower to tower by 

 means of the visual telegraph. 



This device was invented in 1793 by 

 Claude Chappe. It was a semaphore. 

 The letters and words were indicated by 

 the position of the wooden arms ; and the 

 messages were received and relayed at the 

 next tower, perhaps a dozen miles away. 



Compared to the Bell Telephone system 



of to-day the visiial telegraph system of 

 Napoleon's time seems a crude make- 

 shift. It could not be used at night nor 

 in thick weather. It was expensive in 

 construction and operation, considering 

 that it was maintained solely for military 

 purposes. 



Yet it was a great step ahead, because 

 it made possible the transmission of 

 messages to distant points without the 

 use of the human messenger. 



It blazed the way for the universal 

 telephone service of the Bell System 

 which provides personal intercommuni- 

 cation for 90,000,000 people and is indis- 

 pensable for the industrial, commercial 

 and social progress of "the Nation. 



American Telephone and Telegraph Company 



And Associated Companies 



One Policy One System Universal Service 



Start a Fernery 



Brighten up the deep, shady nooks on your lawn, or that dark 



porch corner — just the places for our hardy wild ferns and wild 



flower collections. We have been growing them for 25 years and 



know what varieties are suited to your conditions. Tell us the 



kind of soil you have — light, sandy, clay— and we will advise you. 



Gillett's Ferns and Flowers 



will give the charm of nature to your yard. These include not only hardy wild 

 ferns, but native orchids, and flowers for wet and swampy spots, rocky hillsides, 

 and dry woods. We also grow such hardy flowers as primroses, campanulas 

 digitalis, violets, hepaticas, trilliums, and wild flowers which require open sunlight 

 as well as shade. If you want a bit of an oid-time wildwood garden, with flowers 

 just as nature grows them — send for our new catalogue and let us advise you 

 what to select and how to succeed with them. 



EDWARD GILLETT, Box C, Southwick, Mass. 



Planning the Garden 



MAKE plans now for both home garden and 

 farm and toward the middle of January 

 commence carrying them out. Be sure to plan 

 for rotation of flowers, vegetables and field crops. 

 Remember that planting the same crop on the 

 same land every year rapidly exhausts the plant 

 food in the soil (as regards that particular crop) 

 as well as encourages disease and insects. The 

 farmer can change the situation of his garden each 

 year if he likes, but the suburbanite whose space is 

 limited cannot do this; therefore, he must practice 

 rotation if he expects to have good crops year after 

 year. 



Help both yourself and your seedsman by order- 

 ing seeds during this month and avoid the rush 



Plant Magnolia grandiflora (the best of all ever- 

 greens, because of the large flowers) during January 

 in the lower South 



which occurs a little later. By all means try at 

 least a few novelties and study them closely. 



Plant out tuberose bulbs this month in the 

 southern parts of Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, 

 Mississippi, and in Florida. With me the tuberose 

 usually begins flowering the last of July or first 

 of August, and continues to the middle of October. 

 I have noticed, in planting many bulbs of the same 

 variety and of the same size, that they will not all 

 come into flower at the same time, sometimes there 

 is as much as two months' difference. As the 

 tuberose is a slow grower, it is a good plan to get 

 the bulbs planted in the ground just as soon as 

 cold weather has passed. 



Roots of Bermuda grass may be planted the 

 last of this month for lawn or pasture. It is 

 valuable for either purpose in the South, as it 

 withstands the dry, hot summer and grows rapidly. 

 The seed may be sown the first of next month. 

 A pasture or lawn is made more quickly by plant- 

 ing roots, but it is easy to get the grass quickly 



