BUDS. BLOSSOMS. FRUITS. 



clinging stem-fibers. You did not say enough of the 

 palm's hardiness, My largest rhapis was apparently 

 killed during a trip of 1,000 miles in a freight-car in 

 severe weather. I cut off its leaves, and after several 

 months a sucker appeared ; in a few months more some 

 badly crinkled leaves appeared at the top of the stem, 

 then another set, also dwarfed, but not so much so as the 

 first, and now there are seven perfect leaves upon the 

 palm. — Agnes Greggire, Barton' Co., Ga. 



Bedding with Foliage-Plants. — The horticultural 

 embroidery shown on page 271 is doubtless pretty in the 

 same way that any other embroidery is pretty. But is 

 " the game worth the candle "? A garden, of all places, 

 ought to be restful ; but then embroidered lawns are more 

 suggestive of lavish expenditure and wasted labor than 

 anything else. The very plants all seem to be in their 

 Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, and afraid to grow with 

 any natural grace lest they get out of fix. These gardens 

 always remind me of the old-fashioned canvas ' ' sampler " 

 that our grandmothers made with gay-colored silks in 

 their school-girl days. The great space of glass required 

 to propagate and keep such quantities of bedding stuff 

 could be used for much better work, I think. — W. F. 

 Massev. 



The No-Fence Law. — (Page 295). Raleigh, N. C, 

 is situated in the midst of a no-fence section, and I think 

 that even the American Gardening folks, if they move 

 here for a while, would agree with me that here, at least, 

 the no-fence law has proved a great evil. Drive all 

 around this country and you see only wide stretching 

 cotton-fields — no grass, nothing but cotton, varied occa- 

 sionally with corn. Years ago the cotton-planters kept 

 a few cattle and turned them in the woods to graze ; but 

 the no-fence law stopped this, and now most of them keep 

 no stock whatever, except work-mules. Talk about 

 diversified farming, grass-growing and stock, and they 

 agree with you, but to keep stock means fencing, and 

 they give it up. It costs too much ; and so they keep on 

 in the same old weary way of growing cotton, cotton 

 everywhere, and not a mouthful to eat. Just around 

 Raleigh are some stock-farms with fine grass and fine 

 stock, and orchards and vineyards ; these of course 

 are fenced. In driving out, when you get beyond 

 them into the unfenced cotton-fields, it is like pass- 

 ing from an oasis into a desert. The no-fence law 

 may be a good thing in some communities, but here it is 

 only an excuse for keeping in the old ruts. — W. F. M. 



Dating Seed-Packets. — (Page 277). You are right 

 about the North Carolina seed-law. The trouble is that 

 it is totally impracticable. The dealers in New Y'ork 

 and elsewhere who sell to our merchants are not going 

 to be pestered with dating the packages, so the merchants 



complacently mark them all "Crop of 1891." But, as one 

 of our leading seedsmen says, "Why all this fuss about 

 the mere germinating character of the seed ? The stocks 

 from which they are grown are of equal importance to 

 the purchaser " ; and no laboratory-test of seeds can de- 

 termine whether seed is of a good strain or a poor one, a 

 suitable sort for the climate or otherwise. So also with 

 tlje dating of seed-packages. If the retailers shift their 

 seeds to new packets next spring, and mark 1892 on them 

 instead of 1891, the figures would be just as correct as 

 most of them are now, and how are you to prove they are 

 not the crop of 1892 ? by next season the matter will be 

 forgotten. The dating this year has not made the seeds 

 any better than those sown last year, and no one ever 

 hears much complaint from seeds sent out by the great 

 seed-houses. Folks that buy the low-priced, job-lot seeds 

 sometimes get cheated, just as the ladies do who hunt 

 bargains among the Jews. — W. F. M. 



The Hardy Orange. — In the spring of 1890 I received 

 several plants of Citrus trifoliata from the Agricultural 

 Department, Washington. They grew slowly until late 

 in the summer, when they began to throw up vigorous 

 shoots that did not mature before cold weather. The 

 bark on the new growth split as the thermometer descended 

 to zero or a little below, but the shoots retained their 

 glossy green appearance until the following March, when 

 they began to fade, and I then cut them back to living 

 wood. These little plants began to push out new growth 

 about as early as most of our native hardy trees, and, 

 while the young leaves and shoots of the latter vifere in 

 many instances killed by the very severe frosts of the 

 spring of '91, the young growth of C. trifoliata escaped 

 injury. The plants made but moderate growth during 

 the following summer, and although we had here an un- 

 usually long and favorable fall, winter again found them 

 with wood unripened. Their leaves did not fall, and 

 the shoots retained their beautiful green color, but it 

 became evident in March, and still more so in April, that 

 the plants had been injured more the second winter than 

 the first. Where the growth was unusually strong, the 

 bark had not split, but it began to fade on the south side 

 until it nearly died down to the older wood near the 

 trunk. Very few branches escaped ; these are again 

 putting forth tender young buds. C trifoliata evidently 

 requires a longer warm season than the forty-second 

 parallel affords, and while it posesses remarkable hardi- 

 ness for a member of the citrus family, I am reluctantly 

 forced to the conclusion that it cannot be successfully 

 grown so far north as this without protection. As plants 

 are now being advertised as enduring the climate at Ann 

 Arbor, Michigan, I give these facts for the benefit of 

 planters.- — H. Purfield, Michigan. 



