T' 



'HE World's Fair will 

 present a n excellent 

 opportunity for a great 

 and profitable horticultural 

 gathering. No doubt the 

 most satisfactory arrange- 

 ments can be made with the 

 management tor space and accommodations for ex- 

 hibitions. We should like to see an Ijifo'iiationa/ 

 HorticiiUural Congress assembled at that time. Such 

 congresses are comparative!)' frequent in the Old 

 World, and here is the opportunity to extend the 

 practice to America. Into this congress all the 

 national societies pertaining to horticulture in this 

 country should come. For once, all faction and 

 clannishness should disappear in a grand effort for 

 the common good. The enterprise should be under 

 the management of an independent committee, 

 which, perhaps, should be named by the National 

 Department of Agriculture, or else be made up of 

 one or two representatives of each of our national 

 organizations. 



The botanists are thinking of a similar movement. 

 A congress of botanists and a congress of horticul- 

 turists should have much in common, and one should 

 inmiediately follow the other. Who will push ? 

 * 



WONDERFUL things are coming to the knowl- 

 edge of the farmer in these later days. 

 New friends, new foes, new facts of culti- 

 vation, are coming so rapidly that we can scarcely 

 keep pace with them. And now comes a new line 

 of investigation which appears to open almost a 

 new science. We are no sooner becoming ac- 

 quainted with the terms bacterium and microbe 

 than we must familiarize ourselves with nematode. 

 Nematode is a term rather loosely used to designate 

 an immense number of minute true worms which 

 live in animal and vegetable tissues. Similar ani- 

 mals are the "eels" in vinegar and the dreaded 

 trichinse in pork. 



The nematode worms have been brought into 

 prominent notice during the last few months by in- 

 vestigations upon the root-knot of the peach and 

 other plants, and the clematis disease. As many 

 as seventy-five American cultivated plants are now 

 known to be attacked by these minute and insidious 

 foes. The knotty swellings upon the roots of house- 

 grown tomato plants, by which the crop is often 



destroyed, are the work of these animals. In 

 many parts of the world these worms are known to 

 cause some of the worst diseases of plants. We 

 are to expect that further study will reveal still 

 greater and more wide-spread damage. The 

 American literature of the subject is yet meagre. 

 A bulletin by Prof. Scribner, of Tennessee, one by 

 Dr. Neal, of Florida, issued by the Department of 

 Agriculture, another by Professor Atkinson, from 

 the Alabama Station, and a paper presented to the 

 Western New York Horticultural Society, by Pro- 

 fessor Cornstock, of Cornell, comprise the sum of 

 it. Here is a science which is entirely distinct from 

 insects, fungi or bacteria, and the study of which 



demands special training. 



^ * 



TO raise a good crop is not the sum of farming, 

 for farming novv-a-days is become a busi- 

 ness, and it is governed by the laws of busi- 

 ness. Farming is selling as well as raising. The 

 markets are as important as the land. There are 

 ten men who can grow good crops where there is one 

 who can sell them to advantage. 



The farmer must study markets, and he must 

 adapt himself to them. There are laws of supply 

 and demand, and there are peculiarities of particu- 

 lar markets, of which the cultivator has no inkling. 

 Breadth of vision characterizes the man who in 

 these times succeeds. We are fond of thinking 

 that the fai'mers must combine in order to secure 

 higher prices. Combination may reduce carriage 

 and commission, and it may now and then obtain 

 trifling and temporary concessions in prices, but it 

 can never overturn or control the laws of trade. 

 Higher prices are not coming to the farmer. The 

 farmer must improve his methods. Better times do 

 not come to the farmer by combination. 



* 



THE New York Florists' Club is out with a cir- 

 cular asking the members to interest them- 

 selves in an exhibition to be held early in 

 November next. This is a move in the right direc- 

 tion, and, as the committee having the matter in 

 charge is composed of truly representative men, 

 full of zeal, and with the best interests of the craft 

 at heart, there is no reason why an exhibition can- 

 not be made that will far surpass those grand affairs 

 formerly held at the Madison Square Garden. 



We need not discuss the causes of the failure so 



