NOTES AND ABSTRACTS. 



121 



14 figs.). — Gummosis is a term applied to a condition in which an exuda- 

 tion of gummy sap takes place through the bark. Such a flow of gum is 

 almost always connected with a dying or unhealthy condition of the tree. 

 Such troubles are particularly characteristic of two classes of trees, citrus 

 and stone fruits. 



The most important consideration in regard to the control of gummosis 

 is the fact that, since the disease is brought about solely by unfavourable 

 conditions, it can be more easily prevented by avoiding those conditions 

 than it can be cured after once started. In the choice of location heavy 

 wet ground should be avoided, unless it can be drained or improved in 

 some manner. — M. C. C. 



Helianthus OP Salsify. By P. Graebner (Not. Kdnig. Bot., Berlin, 

 No. 44, p. 107, 108). — In recent years the name of Helianthus or Salsify 

 has been given in commerce to a plant of extraordinary productiveness. 

 It grows to a height of 10 feet, and is used as food for cattle, and the 

 tubers as a vegetable. The author identifies it as Helianthus macrophylla. 



S. E. W. 



Horticultural Society, Indiana, Report of the Proceeding's 

 of the year 1907. — As usual in these Transactions of American 

 Horticultural Societies, the apple claims the greatest attention. 



In Indiana apparently neither climate nor situation generally is 

 really quite suited to fruit culture, but much can be achieved by intelligent 

 care ; and one paper in this volume recounts the adventures of a special 

 train run over the system of the Baltimore and Ohio South- Western Rail- 

 road under the auspices of that Railway Company, the Purdue Experiment 

 Station, and the State Horticultural Society. The train carried lecturers, 

 magic-lantern apparatus, samples of fruit, and diagrams of various sorts, 

 and preached the gospel of fruit-growing in towns, villages, and to hastily 

 summoned buggy-loads of interested farmers at wayside stopping-places 

 through a long strip of Southern Indiana. Other subjects treated of in 

 this volume are melon, potato, cherry, onion, peach, pear, strawberry, and 

 plum culture ; remedies for and prevention of the attacks of garden pests ; 

 marketing fruit, cider and vinegar making, the State inspection of orchards 

 and nursery stock ; and spray mixtures. An account is also given of a 

 successful method of protecting orchards from severe frosts by lighting fires 

 of wet straw or wet stable manure here and there among the trees. On 

 fairly still nights the smoke, mixed with the fog produced by the condensa- 

 tion of the steam from the wet fuel, hangs low over the trees and acts as 

 a screen to check the radiation of heat from the plants, and even increases 

 the temperature of the air to a considerable height above the ground. 



M. L. H. 



Inflorescence of the Pear and the Apple, Notes on the. By 



Claude Abrial and L. Chasset (La Pomologie Francaise, August 1908, 

 pp. 243-5). — In apple the terminal flower is the largest and expands first, 

 the lateral flowers expanding from the periphery towards the centre like 

 an ordinary corymb. In the pear, on the contrary, the corymb is indefinite, 

 only the flowers of the periphery are fertile and the central flowers are 

 sterile ; in the Williams' Pear, the flowers of one corymb expand almost 



