600 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The acreage of woods and plantations was returned separately in 

 1895, and the Departmental Committee of the Board of Agriculture on 

 Forestry recommend, in their Report dated November 29, 1902, that " the 

 inquiry conducted in 1895 concerning the area of woodlands be repeated 

 by the Board of Agriculture, and the details concerning the timber crop 

 grown upon them be ascertained." 



Potato Disease. 



A Fellow writing from Cornwall sends us the following information. 

 Having observed that Potatos grown on a red gravelly soil seldom if ever 

 suffer from the disease, he accounts for it by suggesting that very few 

 species of fungi can thrive where there is an abundance of iron oxide. 

 He says that, apart from sulphate of copper, one of the very best antidotes 

 for the disease is the black rust or flake from a blacksmith's shop, which 

 should be hand-sown on the surface of the soil and will then by the 

 natural action of the air and rain be dissolved from its chemical condition 

 of iron protoxide into ordinary iron rust. He adds that he has himself 

 tried the sweepings from a blacksmith's shop with the greatest success, 

 not a single tuber being found diseased. The black flake and scale from 

 smiths' shops are now a waste and valueless product, but our correspondent 

 prophesies that some day their manurial value for soil dressings where 

 cultivated vegetables are grown will be appreciated. 



White Fly on Tomatos. 



One of our Irish correspondents says, "lam dreadfully troubled with 

 White Fly on indoor Tomatos ; can you tell me of any simple remedy ? " 

 We think the pest can be easily eradicated in the following manner: — 

 Mix up some flowers of sulphur with skim milk to the consistency of a 

 thin paste and paint all the hot-water pipes in the house with it, closing 

 the house in the evenings when the pipes are nice and warm. If this is 

 done for about a week and the sulphur allowed to remain on the pipes, 

 not only will all White Fly be killed, but as the young ones hatch out 

 from the eggs laid on the plants, they also will succumb. 



Fruit Trees from the Cape. 



A correspondent who is greatly interested in the production of very 

 early fruit from trees in pots asks, " How do fruit trees behave when 

 brought over from the southern hemisphere ? Steamers from the Cape 

 now only take sixteen or seventeen days. Apropos, therefore, of the 

 difficulty of forcing in January early pot Vines, Peaches, Nectarines, &c, 

 suppose the trees were grown in pots at the Cape, where they would 

 flower in September or October, and were brought over here a little before 

 that time so as to bloom in a greenhouse here, would it not obviate 

 the hard forcing necessary to give us ripe fruit in February and early 

 March?" 



The idea is certainly novel, but we doubt whether it is practical, as 

 the trees would have to come through the tropics to our cold, short, dark 

 days. This would probably give them a check. If they were kept in 



