NOTES AND ABSTRACTS. 



149 



Bees and their Relation to Horticulture ; Fruit in our Dietary ; American 

 Native Shrubs ; Stone Fruits ; Small Fruits for the Farm ; Evergreens ; 

 the Evolution of the Apple ; a List of Recommended Varieties of Several 

 Sorts of Fruits ; the Greenhouse. It is evident, after reading all these 

 various papers and discussions, that the culture of the apple is what comes 

 nearest to the heart of all good American horticulturists. No time or 

 trouble seems to be spared by State departments, by nurserymen, and by 

 many private individuals to produce remunerative crops of apples in 

 spite of the unfavourable climate of Iowa, either for export, the home 

 market, or domestic consumption. Paper after paper on this subject 

 was read, and no other seems to have produced so much interested dis- 

 cussion. We read first of the evolution of the Pyrus baccata from the 

 Pyrus mahts, native of Western Europe from the Caucasus to the Medi- 

 terranean and the Atlantic, and probably allied to the two sorts of wild 

 crab whose charred remains are found among the Lake Dwellings of 

 Switzerland. This was crossed with the little pear-like apple which is 

 native to Eastern Siberia. According to Pliny, there were twenty-nine 

 varieties of apple in cultivation about the beginning of the Christian 

 era, but it was only, apparently, at the beginning of the nineteenth 

 century that pomology began to attract wide attention. 



In America it has been proved that to secure the best results it is 

 better to rely upon varieties raised from home-grown seedlings than those 

 from Russian parents, even some having their origin in the Atlantic 

 States being failures in the severe climate of the more northerly States. 

 In an account of his experiments in cross-breeding, Mr. C. G. Patten 

 gives evidence of the marked influence of the male parent in determining 

 the habit of growth of the young tree and the colour of its fruit, and he 

 quotes some results as giving great encouragement in the attempt to 

 produce fruit trees hardy enough to withstand the most rigorous North- 

 Western winter. 



The situation of the orchard, the preparation of the soil, the arrange- 

 ment of the trees, the choice of varieties, and the subsequent care of the 

 orchard were all described by successive speakers, as well as the business 

 side of the industry. Cold storage as a means of equalising the price and 

 regulating the supply of apples was advocated, and a co-operative associa- 

 tion of fruit-growers, which has successfully negotiated with the railway 

 companies in the matter of rapid and punctual carriage, and has thereby 

 enormously increased the export of fruit from its own centre, was 

 described. 



The question of spraying occupied a large part of the attention of the 

 societies, and members were almost unanimously in favour of it. Some 

 few dissentients protested that it was too troublesome and unpleasant a job 

 rather than that it was a useless one. On the whole the treatment most in 

 favour seemed to consist of three or four sprayings with Bordeaux mixture 

 and some arsenic compound — one just as the buds are swelling, one after the 

 petals fall, one about ten days later, and the last ten days later still. One or 

 two papers give the natural history of various orchard pests, and explain 

 why different poisons must be used to control the ravages of different 

 orders of insects. The eating insects, for instance, may be poisoned by 

 some arsenic compound such as Paris green, scattered on the leaves : 



