296 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER 
f September 27,1S88. 
expensive outfit in cows needed by the dairymen. By dividingattention 
between a variety of fruits the farmer can provide something to do most 
of the time and some revenue through a large part of the year. This 
kind of business necessitates the subdivision of farms. It is impossible 
for a man to properly care for more than a few acres of the small fruits, 
and a part of his land should be in Apples, Pears, and Quinces, which 
require less continuous care during the growing season than do the 
various kinds of berries. 
The change to this kind of farming should be made gradually. Only 
the small fruits will pay anything for the first two or three years. 
Strawberries give their best crop a year after planting. Raspberries 
and Blackberries are a year later, but will bear several crops without 
needing to be renewed. 
We do not believe there is serious danger of overdoing the production 
of any kind of good fruit. If the market is glutted and prices are low 
it is usually more the fault of inferior quality, a deficient distribution 
than of excessive supply. To some extent the choicest fruit makes its 
own market; but it needs some business enterprise and push to bring 
producer and consumer together. Farmers sometimes complain that the 
middleman takes too large a share of the profits. If he does so in the 
sale of fruit let them try doing their own marketing. In almost every 
rural neighbourhood are families doing without fruits who would gladly 
buy them if brought to their doors as they are in the city. It is rather 
odd that while fruits and vegetables are altogether grown in the country 
people have been obliged to go to the city markets to obtain them. 
This arises mainly from the fact that fruit-growing is made incidental 
to other farming, or is so extensive that only wholesale methods of dis¬ 
posing of fruit are practicable. But the middleman is obliged to take 
an extreme profit out of fruits because of their perishable character. 
It is for this reason that fruit growers should, so far as possible, market 
the products of their land themselves. This necessarily limits the area 
they can cultivate and care for, including harvesting and marketing, 
though extra help will always be needed when the fruit is ready to be 
gathered to have the crop saved without waste. 
Can a farmer make a fair living and provide competency against old 
age from fruit-growing on small areas ? Thousands are doing this and 
there is room for many more. It is not a business that dazzles with 
ambitious hopes of enormous profits. No branch of farming offers such 
tempting prizes of great wealth as do the mercantile and professional 
careers. But there are also fewer blanks. Most of the failures in 
farming come from trying to do too much. This is more true of fruit¬ 
growing than of anything else, for the reason that most of the work 
requires greater care than can be given on an extensive scale.— 
(American Cultivator.') 
HELIANTHUS MULTIFLORUS PLENUS. 
This is one of the few plants that seem to defy the elements, for 
although it has rained daily for the past fortnight it is covered with its 
bright yellow flower heads. It thrives amazingly in the neighbourhood 
of towns ; in fact, it seems at home in any position where the soil is 
fertile, tor the past three weeks it has been particularly conspicuous 
amon st clumps of dark foliaged Hollies, and will continue until severe 
frosts set in. Light frosts that will destroy Dahlias do not appear to 
injure it in the least. If these plants are allowed to grow undisturbed 
for a few years, clumps of large size are formed, carrying hundreds of 
flowers serviceable for cutting. We have found it one of the most use¬ 
ful plants in the garden for supplying flowers for church decorations; it 
appears specially adapted for harvest festivals. All who have to supply 
flowers in quantity for decorations of this description, and do not object 
to the colour, will find this double Helianthus one of the most profitable 
plants that can be grown. 
It is easily propagated by division. The best plan perhaps is to lift 
one good plant early in the year, and scores of small fleshy tubers will be 
found. If these are placed in boxes, or singly in pots, and placed under 
glass, they will make strong plants with a single stem by the end of May, 
when they may be planted outside. They w T ill produce a few flowers 
the first season, but the second they will be strong plants, and flower 
profusely.—G. 
THE PROGRESS OF BOTANY. 
At the recent meeting of the British Association in Bath, Mr. W. T. 
Thiselton Dyer, Director of the Royal Gardens Kew, presided in the 
section devoted to Biology, and delivered an address on botanical sub¬ 
jects, from which the following extracts (from a full report in Nature ) 
may be found of interest to our readers. 
It is not so very long ago that at English Universities, at least, the 
pursuit of botany was regarded rather as an elegant accomplishment 
than as a serious occupation. This is the more remarkable because at 
every critical point in the history of botanical science the names of our 
countrymen will be found to occupy an honourable place in the field of 
progress and discovery. In the seventeenth century Hooke and Grew 
laid the foundation of the cell-theory, while Millington, by discovering 
the function of stamens, completed the theory of the flower. In the 
following century Morrison first raised Ferns from spores, Lindsay 
detected the Fern prothallus, Ray laid the foundation of a natural 
classification, Hales discovered root-pressure, and Priestley the absorp¬ 
tion of carbon dioxide and the evolution of oxygen by plants. In the 
early part of the present one we have Knight’s discovery of the true 
cause of geotropism, Daubeny’s of the effect upon the processes of plant 
life of rays of light of different refrangibility, and, finally, the first 
description of the cell-nucleus by R. Brown. I need not attempt to- 
carry the list through the last half-century. I have singled out these 
discoveries as striking landmarks, the starting points of important 
developments of the subject. It is enough for my purpose to show that 
we have always had an important school of botany in England, which 
has contributed at least its share to the general development of the 
science. 
I think at the moment, however, we have little cause for anxiety. 
The academic chairs thioughout the three kingdoms are filled, for the 
most part, with young enthusiastic, and well-trained men. Botany is- 
everywhere conceded its due position as the twin branch with zoology 
of biological science. We owe to the enlightened administration of 
the Oxford University Press the possession of a journal which allows: 
of the prompt and adequate publication of the results of laboratory 
research. The excellent work which is being done in every part of 
the botanical field has received the warm sympathy of our colleagues 
abroad. I need only recall to your recollection, as a striking evidence • 
of this, the remarkable gathering of foreign botanists which will ever 
make the meeting of this Association at Manchester a memorable, 
event to all of us. The reflection rises sadly to the mind that it 
can never be repeated. Not many months, as you know, had passed 
before the two most prominent figures in that happy assemblage 
had been removed from us by the inexorable hand of death. In 
Asa Gray we miss a figure which we could never admit belonged 
wholly to the other side of the Atlantic. In technical botany we 
recognised him as altogether in harmony with the methods of work and 
standard of excellence of our own most distinguished taxonomists. 
But, apart from this, he had that power of grasping large and far- 
reaching ideas, which, I do not doubt, would have brought him dis¬ 
tinction in any branch of science. We owe to him the classical dis¬ 
cussion of theifactsof plant distribution in thenorthern hemisphere which 
is one of the corner-stones of modern geographical botany. He was one 
of the earliest of distinguished naturalists who gave his adhesion to the- 
theory of Mr. Darwin. A man of simple and sincere piety, the doctrine 
of descent never presented any difficulty to him. He will remain in our 
memories as a figure endowed with a sweetness and elevation of 
character which may be compared even with that of Mr. Darwin 
himself. 
In De Bary we seem to have suffered no less a personal loss than in 
the case of Gray. Though, before last year, I do not know that he had 
ever been in England, so many of our botanists had worked under him 
that his influence was widely felt amongst us. And it may be said that 
this was almost equally so in every part of the civilised world. His 
position as a teacher was in this respect probably unique, and the tradi¬ 
tions of his method of work must permanently affect the progress of 
botany, and, indeed, have an even wider effect. This is not the occa¬ 
sion to dwell on each of his scientific achievements. It is sufficient to 
say that we owe to him the foundation of a rational vegetable patho¬ 
logy. He first grasped the true conditions of parasitism in plants, and 
not content with working out the complex phases of the life-history of 
the invading organism, he never lost sight of the conditions which per¬ 
mitted or inhibited its invasion. He treated the problem, whether on 
the side of the host or of the parasite, as a whole—as a biological pro¬ 
blem, in fact, in the widest sense. It is this thorough grasp of the con¬ 
ditions of the problem that gives such a peculiar value to his last pub¬ 
lished book, the “ Lecture on Bacteria,” an admirable translation of 
which we owe to Prof. Balfour. To this I shall have again to refer. I 
must content myself with saying now, that in this and all his work 
there is that note of highest excellence which consists in lifting detail 
to the level of the widest generality. To a weak man this is a pitfall,, 
in which a firm grasp of fact is lost in rash speculation. But when, as- 
in De Bary’s case, a true scientific insight is inspired by something akin 
to genius, the most fruitful conceptions are the result. Yet De Bary 
never sacrificed exactness to brilliancy, and to the inflexible love of 
truth which pervaded both his work and his personal intercourse we may- 
trace the secret of the extraordinary influence which he exerted over hi» 
pupils. 
SYSTEMATIC BOTANY. 
As the head of one of the great national establishments of the country 
devoted to the cultivation of systematic botany, I need hardly apologise 
for devoting a few words to the present position of that branch of the 
science. Of its fundamental importance I have myself no manner of 
* doubt. But as my judgment may seem in such a matter not wholly free 
