104 
June, 1891. 
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wps at first supposed that six hundred 
plants would meet all demands: but when 
Saturday came the crowd of school chil- 
dren was so great that the police had to be 
called upon to keep the side walks open for 
travel. In view of the unexpected crowd, 
it was decided to give the girls plants as far 
as they would go, and the rest (including 
the boys) had to be satisfied with promises 
for a future distribution. The result of 
this experiment will be watched with a 
good deal of iuterest. It furnishes an ex- 
ample that might well be followed by oth- 
ers, and for which the managers of the so- 
ciety deserve much praise. It is not ex- 
pected to result in a grand show of speci- 
men plants, but it is a praiseworthy step in 
the right direction, which is certain to have 
an influence for good on a child's life in the 
future. — P. B. Mead. 
The Myricas. 
The Sweet Gale, Myrica Gale, is well 
known in America, growing as it does on 
the border of low ponds from New England 
to Virginia and westward to Wisconsin. Its 
nuts are very pretty and curious, but not so 
useful as those of Myrica cerifera, the Wax 
Myrtle, its southern cousin. 
Myrica cerifera is a handsome little shrub, 
usually growing from three to eight feet 
high, with oblong-lanceolate leaves, shining 
and resinous, dotted on both sides. These 
fragrant, bright green leaves, often retained 
through nearly the whole winter, make it 
a valuable ornamental shrub. Its sterile, 
oblong catkins are scattered thinly over the 
bush : the catkins sessile along last year’s 
branches, and ovoid are the fertile ones. 
The nuts are naked, bony and encrusted 
with white wax, often they cling to the 
6hrub for two or three years. The shrubs 
are most frequently found on the sandy soil, 
or near the sea-coast. 
Before the discovery of oil, or its general 
use for lighting houses, this Wax Myrtle 
was the only reliance for light in some sec- 
tions of the coast-line, and in New Jersey, 
and North and South Carolina, its wax light 
was very largely used during the war, when 
necessity became a very fruitful mother of 
invention, or adaptation, with us southern 
people. The whitish oleaginous covering of 
M. cerifera is detached from the berry by 
means of boiling water — the oil floating 
upon the top. When cool and hardened it 
is skimmed off and moulded into candles 
which are delicate, pale green in color, 
burning with a pink flame, and delicious 
odor. They are eagerly being sought for 
now-a-days, by fashionable people for light- 
ing their dinner tables, and certainly those 
old Carolina dining halls, with rich, heavy 
curtains, bright wood fires, tables covered 
with costly damask and crowned with cut 
glass, china, and sparkling silver candelabra, 
gleaming with these sweet lights, would 
put to shame the fantastic trumpery of some 
fashionable salle-a-manges of to-day. 
The Oil nut, Pyrularia oleifera , is not re- 
lated to the Myrica but deserves mention 
with the Wax Myrtle, as being useful for 
candles. It is taller growing than M. ceri- 
fera, having large, bright green, soft, de- 
ciduous leaves, obovate-oblong in shape; 
and small greenish flowers in simple ra- 
cemes, opening in May. The whole plant 
is full of an acid oil, especially the nut, 
which is about an inch long, shaped like a 
little pear, fiat at the summit and bearing a 
curious five angled figure like the tracery T of 
old seal rings. Oil is prepared from these 
nuts as from Wax Myrtle, or when perfect- 
ly dry they will burn by simply lighting the 
stem, or stringing them with bits of pitch 
pine. The plant’s home is in the southern 
Alleghany mountains. 
Myrica rubra, from Japan, is attracting 
considerable attention as an edible fruit. 
Its fine evergreen foliage is pretty enough 
to give it a place in cool green-houses, even 
if it bore no fruit, for it is very like that of 
the Magnolia. It grows to the height of 15 
or 20 feet and the fruit is of a dark red col- 
or; in size about an inch long and three- 
quarters of an inch in diameter. As a des- 
sert fruit and for preserves it is said to be 
delicious when fully ripe. It is then slight- 
ly acidulated, highly flavored, and juicy. 
I cannot trace any resemblance between it 
and the black berry to which some people 
have likened the dark red variety'. There 
is a rose colored Myrica berry superior in 
flavor to the dark one, and a white fruited 
variety that is counted best of all in quality, 
besides being of larger size. The Japanese 
call it mountain peach! It is made up of 
numbers of crowded little sections, distinct 
from each other, but radiating from a sin- 
gle small, hard stone or seed in the center. 
Myrica rubra comes true from the seed, 
or is propagated by grafting scions from a 
fruit-bearing tree on seedlings, or, as the 
Japanese declare, may be grafted upon 
the mulberry. They plant it for a number 
of purposes: fruit, ornament, wood — which 
being very light, tough and durable, is 
used in making the finest cabinet work — and 
its bark is an important dye-stuff with them. 
M. rubra' s chosen home is in the moun- 
tains of southern Japan, and it prefers a 
southern latitude, not being hardy, it is said, 
where ilie thermometer falls 15° below zero. 
It is probable that in our SoutliAtlanticStates 
it would thrive finely, and Mr. H. H. Ber- 
ger, of California, who imports the plants, 
strongly recommends our giving it a trial. — 
L. Greenlee, North Carolina. 
Those who have a good supply of Gladi- 
olus bulbs should continue to plant a few 
at intervals up to the middle of June for 
late bloom. Probably not more than half 
the flowers of those last planted will be 
open on the approach of sharp frosts; but 
if the stalks be cut off and placed in water 
in any suitable receptacle, all the flowers 
will unfold, and their enjoyment be greatly 
prolonged. 
Cl II n R I TP Co1 - Pearson’s cure for Rose-bugs, 
OLUUUl I Li specific for Borers, Grape-louse, Ehn 
Leaf Beetle, etc. Keeps ben house free from lice. 
COLUMBIA CHEMICAL WORKS, 
Brooklyn, N. V. 
Hints for June. 
As the weather becomes warm, vines will 
grow very fast and should be tied up and 
pinched back promptly, or they will soon 
become a confused and unmanageable mass. 
The most vigorous canes, those that start 
near the lower wire, should be selected for 
fruiting canes next season, and pmcheJ off 
at about twenty inches in length. These 
canes will then throw out new shoots or lat- 
erals, which will be shorter-jointed and 
better than if not pinched at all. They 
should be tied up carefully to the upper 
part of the trellis and allowed to grow un- 
checked. All suckers and feeble fruiting 
shoots should be removed to give more vig- 
or to those remaining, and so produce larger 
and better bunches. Strong, rampant shoots 
that are bearing should be pinched off be- 
yond the last bunch of fruit. Very weak 
shoots do not require pinching back at any 
time. The remedy for such is short spring 
pruning. 
If vines have been properly pruned and 
trained, more fruit will be set than should 
be permitted to mature, therefore all imper- 
fect and small bunches should be removed 
and this will improve what is left and give 
finer fruit. Never allow vines to overbear 
as this is the main cause of grape failure. 
Vines that once overbear will not soon, if 
ever, recover. It is an old and true max- 
im that haste makes waste. 
Cultivate and keep the vineyard clear 
from weeds by frequent plowing and hoe- 
ing. No fruit suffers so much from neglect 
as the grape and none rewards so bountiful- 
ly for extra care and cultivation. In fact 
fine grapes of high quality can only be rais- 
ed on a suitable location with high culti- 
vation. The difference in location on simi- 
lar soil not two miles apart often amounts 
to 25 per cent difference in the quantity of 
sugar the grape contains, which is the stand- 
ard of excellency. No other fruit shows 
this great difference; and this is the reason 
so few succeed in growing fine grapes. 
Grafting may now be done if the grafts 
have been kept in a dormant state Strong 
current growth may also be cleft grafted, 
but this is a very nice and delicate piece of 
work. To do so, cut the cane off that comes 
up from under the ground, say two or three 
inches below the surface. Slit or cut down 
through the centre of the stock with a very 
keen, sharp knife, about one inch and a half, 
then take a graft from a new growing cane 
with buds about pushing, remove all the 
leaves, wedge the graft, and insert it. Tie 
with some soft material and fill in the soil 
around it. 
Growing grafts should be tied up to stakes 
as fast as they grow, to prevent the wind 
from breaking them off. Remove the suck- 
ers as fast as they appear. 
Layers may be made by laying down a 
cane in a trench and covering up as the lat- 
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