NOTES AND ABSTRACTS. 



109 



servative estimate of the profit from spraying the whole orchard being 

 £1,400 (p. 121) ; trees of the same size (standards 20 feet in height and 

 diameter) in neighbouring unsprayed orchards produced less than one- 

 fourth as much marketable fruit. At least three sprayings annually are 

 recommended to secure good results (p. 125), some growers in the district 

 making five or more ; and the essentials for success are stated to be 

 thorough work, applications at the right times, and a good spraying outfit 

 — in this case a gasoline power pump, a 250-gallon tank on trucks with 

 an elevated platform, and bamboo extension rods ten feet long, each 

 terminated by a cluster of four Vermorel nozzles. 



Paris green is not recommended for the July spraying, as it is 

 considered to cause excessive falling of the fruit due to the burning of the 

 stems, while Bordeaux mixture or arsenical compounds in cold wet 

 springs conduces to excessive russeting in the fruit (p. 111). — A. P. 



Cold Chambers, How to construct. By S. F. Walker (Gard, 

 Chron., No. 1141, p. 321, figs. 135, 136, and 137, November 7, 21, and 27, 

 1908). — Very concise directions are given in this paper for the construc- 

 tion of cold chambers, in which cut flowers may be kept fresh for long 

 periods and plants in bud may be retarded. The writer, in mentioning 

 various substances which are more impervious to heat, hardly seems to 

 realize that it is not the matter of which the substance is composed, so 

 much as the amount of air that they contain, which make them good or 

 bad conductors of heat, though he admits that " of all thermal insulators 

 still dry air is by far the best." Yet he writes of filling the space 

 between two walls with some insulating material, and ramming it well 

 down. One would have thought that if the material was put in lightly it 

 would have been more efficacious ; some is wanted to prevent currents of 

 air being set up. — G. S. S. 



Coniferous Conescales. By Dr. Aug. Bayer (Belli. Bot. Centralbl. 

 xxiii. l te Abth. Heft 1, pp. 27-44 ; one plate). — Dr. Bayer by anatomical 

 sections, by the examination of abnormal cones of Cryptomeria, and by 

 studying the embryonal development, confirms Velenovsky's interpretation 

 of the conescales of this genus. 



Whereas the ovule is borne on a simple carpel in Juniperus, Thuja and 

 Chamaecyparis, the conescale in Cryptomeria is a bract to which is fused 

 a reduced axillary shoot ; the teeth of the bract represent so many fertile 

 ovule-bearing carpels which belong to this rudimentary shoot, but are 

 united with the bract.— G F. S.-E. 



Cotoneaster rotundifolia. (Garden, January 1909, p. 19).—" D." 

 recommends this variety on the ground that the birds do not interfere 

 with the berries as they do in the case of other species of Cotoneaster. 



H. B. D. 



Cotton Wilt. By W. A. Orton (U.S.A. Dep. Agr. Farm. Bull 333, 

 1908 ; with 11 woodcuts). — The most characteristic symptom of wilt is 

 a browning of the woody portion of the stem and root. These dis- 

 coloured parts are the water-carrying vessels which have become 

 obstructed by the development in them of the fungus causing the disease. 



