798 
Dec.  3 
THE  RURAL  NEW-YORKER. 
Difficulty  in  Crossing:  Gladioli. 
W.  V.  F.,  Mero,  Virginia. — In  The  It. 
N.-Y.  for  November  5,  page  727,  the  editor 
says  he  was  unable  to  effect  a  cross  be¬ 
tween  montbretias  and  gladioli  during 
the  past  summer.  This  corresponds  with 
my  experience.  During  the  summers  of 
1887,  1888  and  1889  I  made  about  100 
attempts  to  hybridize  montbretias  and 
gladioli  each  season,  using  pollen  from 
both  plants  on  the  pistils  of  the  other 
interchangeably.  In  1888,  which  was  a 
good  season  for  the  work,  some  of  the 
impregnated  gladioli  produced  a  few 
feeble  seeds  which  barely  germinated 
and  soon  died.  The  montbretias  never 
made  any  attempt  to  produce  seeds.  A 
few  impregnated  with  the  nearly  related 
Tritonia  aurea  seeded  freely  and  produced 
quite  a  large  variety  of  hybrids,  running 
from  pale  lemon  to  clear  orange  scarlet. 
The  best  one  was  over  three  inches  in 
diameter,  bright  orange  with  a  distinct 
scarlet  “wheel”  in  the  inner  third  of  the 
petals.  The  cross  was  imperfectly  devel¬ 
oped  and  dried  up  during  the  following 
winter.  After  hundreds  of  futile  attempts 
I  have  at  last  succeeded  in  producing  a 
true  hybrid  between  Gladiolus  Saunder- 
sonii  and  G.  purpurea  auratus.  I  think  I 
have  planted,  in  the  last  five  years,  a 
pint  of  seed  resulting  from  this  cross, 
but  only  two  germinated,  and  one  of 
these  failed  to  produce  a  healthy  cross. 
It  seeds  freely  and  produces  offsets  plen¬ 
tifully,  and  while  not  of  special  beauty 
in  itself,  I  trust  that  by  further  crossing 
with  the  best  named  varieties  it  may 
develop  a  distinct  and  desirable  strain. 
I  have  also  a  cross-bred  sweet  corn, 
“Ruby,”  a  red-husked  variety  of  Stow- 
ell’s  Evergreen  being  the  mother  plant, 
fertilized  with  pollen  from  the  Brazilian 
flour  corn.  The  crossing  was  done  in 
1891  and  the  grains  of  a  single  ear  were 
planted  in  a  separate  plot.  It  proved  the 
most  productive  and  the  most  vigorous 
grower  of  14  varieties  of  sweet  and  field 
corns  planted  on  my  place.  It  endured 
the  terrible  drought  of  the  past  summer 
without  flinching  and  produced  an  abun¬ 
dance  of  perfectly  filled  ears  of  really 
excellent  quality,  when  other  varieties 
of  table  corn  were  literally  burned  up. 
I  would  expect  great  difficulty  in  fixing 
the  type  of  this  corn  as  the  tendency  to 
reversion  to  the  parent  types  is  strong 
and  deterioration  during  succeeding  gen¬ 
erations  may  be  excessive.  It  is  about 
10  days  later  than  Stowell’s  Evergreen 
and  evidently  requires  a  long,  hot  season 
for  its  development. 
Young:  Trees  in  Old  Orchards. 
E.  Williams,  New  Jersey. — In  plant¬ 
ing  young  trees  in  an  old  orchard  to  fill 
vacancies,  the  advice  to  dig  large  holes 
and  provide  good  soil  and  extra  culture 
till  they  get  established  and  able  to  com¬ 
pete  with  their  older  and  stronger  neigh¬ 
bors  in  the  race  for  life,  is  good.  The 
old  trees  do  undoubtedly  interfere  with 
the  growth  of  the  young  ones  by  shade 
and  feeding,  hence  the  necessity  of  giving 
the  latter  extra  care  and  culture  till  they 
get  established  and  able  to  contest  with 
their  older  and  stronger  neighbors  for  a 
living;  but  it  is  questionable  whether  the 
soil  where  the  old  trees  stood  is  much  ex¬ 
hausted.  When  a  tree  gets  established, 
it  gets  very  little  of  its  nourishment 
from  the  soil  near  the  trunk,  for  the 
roots  push  a  long  way  in  quest  of  food. 
The  reason  why  field  crops  do  not  grow 
well  under  trees  arises  more  from  lack 
of  sunshine  than  of  fertility.  A  young 
orchard  is  not  a  proper  pasture  ground 
for  cattle,  though  sheep  or  hogs  might 
be  used  as  fertilizing  and  cultivating 
mediums,  but  not  for  pruning.  I  have  a 
young  orchard  on  the  site  of  an  old  one, 
but  the  trees  occupy  the  centers  of  the 
squares  formed  by  the  old  trees  which 
were  rooted  out.  The  ground  has  been 
under  constant  cultivation  for  15  to  20 
years  and  the  trees  have  done  fairly  well. 
T.  H.  Hoskins,  Vermont. — As  to  plant¬ 
ing  young  trees  in  an  old  orchard,  and 
the  prospect  of  their  profitable  growth 
there,  very  little  depends,  I  think,  upon 
what  sort  of  trees  preceded  the  new  or¬ 
chard  on  the  ground.  One  of  the  most 
successful  orchards  in  Maine  is  planted 
among  the  stumps  of  removed  forest 
trees.  I  am  aware  that  there  is  some 
sort  of  superstition  about  trees  “pois¬ 
oning  the  ground  ”  for  trees  of  the  same 
or  other  species  succeeding  the  old  sorts ; 
but  I  am  not  aware  that  the  propounders 
of  this  notion  have  ever  gone  far  on  the 
road  toward  proving  it.  It  seems  to  be¬ 
long  to  that  class  of  propositions  border¬ 
ing  on  the  supernatural,  which,  for  that 
reason,  perhaps,  are  supposed  to  stand 
independent  of  evidence. 
My  experience,  and  the  experience  oi 
the  great  majority  of  successful  orchard- 
ists,  I  think,  is  that,  if  the  land  is  suit¬ 
able  in  other  respects,  the  presence  of 
old  fruit  trees  on  it  offers  no  other  dis¬ 
advantage  than  arises  from  the  necessity 
of  removing  them  in  order  to  give  suit¬ 
able  preparation  to  the  ground,  and  an 
equal  chance  for  all.  But  this  disad¬ 
vantage,  if  there  are  many  old  trees,  may 
be,  and  often  is,  a  serious  objection,  suffi¬ 
cient  in  some  eases,  to  determine  the  se¬ 
lection  of  another  site. 
As  to  the  presence  of  the  roots  of  dead 
trees  in  the  ground  offering  an  impedi¬ 
ment,  it  is  true  that  they  do  impede 
plowing ;  but,  farther  than  that,  I  have 
long  i  egarded  them  as  being  positively 
beneficial,  especially  on  heavy  or  hard- 
pan  soils.  These  old  roots  go  deep  into 
the  ground,  and,  when  dead,  as  they 
slowly  decay,  they  act  efficiently  for 
years  as  underdrains ;  and  I  believe  that 
very  often,  where  such  land  has  at  length 
seemed  to  have  entirely  lost  its  produc¬ 
tive  power,  or  “  life,”  as  some  old  farmers 
say,  it  is  because  the  decay  of  these  old 
roots,  and  the  closing  of  their  cavities  by 
plowing,  have  cut  off  the  action  of  these 
drains.  Here  I  might  refer  to  an  expe¬ 
rience  of  my  own.  Several  years  ago, 
while  the  snow  was  going  off,  my  “  hired 
man  ”  came  in,  quite  excited,  and  said  he 
would  bet  that  he  had  found  a  smuggler’s 
cave.  (We  live  near  the  Canada  line.)  I 
went  out  with  him  into  a  plowed  field, 
partly  covered  with  fast-melting  snow. 
There  he  showed  me  what  was  truly  a 
curious  sight — quite  a  strong  stream  of 
water  in  a  nearly  level  field  pouring  into 
and  disappearing  through  a  small  hole 
in  the  ground.  When  the  land  dried 
off,  a  little  digging  on  the  spot  revealed, 
not  a  smuggler’s  cave,  but  a  deep  cavity, 
extending  far  below  the  frozen  surface, 
which  received  and  absorbed  the  stream 
referred  to.  It  was  evidently  produced 
by  the  decay  of  the  enormous  roots  of  an 
ancient  monarch  of  the  primeval  forest. 
As  to  old  orchards  in  which  only  a  few 
trees  are  gone,  if  the  remainder  are 
thrifty  and  productive,  it  would  have  to 
be  a  pretty  large  vacancy  where  I  would 
undertake  to  plant  any  young  trees. 
Some  20  years  ago  I  was  taken,  by  the 
late  Charles  Gibb,  of  Montreal,  to  see  the 
ample  grounds,  then  for  sale,  of  one  of 
the  old  city  families,  in  which  there  were 
many  things  of  horticultural  interest. 
They  were  in  the  charge  of  an  old  gar¬ 
dener,  who  had  the  produce  for  his  care; 
and  he  showed  us  15  enormous  Fameuse 
trees,  which  had  one  acre  all  to  them¬ 
selves.  They  were  loaded  as  I  never  saw 
trees  loaded,  with  the  finest  fruit,  the  outer 
limbs  bending  to  the  earth  ;  and  when 
one  got  under  them  and  looked  up,  it  was 
like  a  great  circus  tent.  This  gardener 
told  me  that  he  had  just  sold  these  apples 
just  as  they  were,  on  the  trees,  for  $800. 
I  do  not  think  there  would  have  been 
the  least  hope  for  trees  planted  in  the 
open  spaces  between  these  monarchs  of 
the  orchard.  These  15  trees  doubtless 
fully  occupied  all  the  ground  allotted  to 
them.  The  earth  was  grassed  about 
them,  and  the  grass  was  never  removed  ; 
nor  was  the  land  manured.  But  it  was 
the  deep,  rich  limestone  soil  of  the  Island 
of  Montreal. 
J.  S.  Harris,  Minnesota. — In  nearly 
every  instance  so  far  as  my  experience 
and  observation  extend,  the  planting  of 
young  trees  in  an  old  orchard  has  been  a 
failure.  There  is  a  combination  of  causes 
for  this,  such  as  shade  cast  by  the  sur¬ 
rounding  trees,  exhaustion  of  the  soil  of 
all  possible  elements  that  are  essential 
for  vigorous  and  healthy  growth  as  well 
as  for  the  development  of  fruitfulness, 
and  the  presence  in  the  soil  of  worms 
and  disease,  due  to  dead  and  decaying 
roots.  A  large  hole  filled  with  fresh  soil 
with  most  planters  would  mean  one  from 
three  to  four  feet  in  diameter,  and  one 
of  this  size  would  prove  only  a  temporary 
benefit.  The  stump  of  the  dead  tree  and 
all  roots  from  it  should  be  removed  and 
the  ground  deeply  dug,  thoroughly 
manured  and  dreRsed  with  wood  ashes  or 
lime  for  a  diameter  of  sixteen  to  twenty 
feet,  a  year  or  more  before  the  young 
tree  is  to  be  planted,  and  the  tree  should 
be  kept  growing  vigorously  by  culti¬ 
vation  and  the  manuring  of  the  surface. 
Even  this  would  not  prove  a  great  success 
unless  the  trees  were  planted  35  or  40 
feet  apart.  An  orchard  should  never  be 
pastured  with  horses  or  cattle.  Beef  and 
fruit  cannot  be  successfully  grown  on 
the  same  land.  It  is  not  reasonable  to 
expect  regular  and  paying  crops  of  fruit 
from  an  orchard  that  has  been  starved, 
horn-pruned  and  cattle-browsed  for 
25  or  30  years.  I  would  not  advise  root¬ 
ing  out  the  old  orchard  at  once,  but 
would  attempt  to  recuperate  it  by  dig¬ 
ging  about  and  dunging  it,  and  at  once 
I  would  set  out  a  new  orchard  to  take  its 
place  on  new  and  well  prepared  ground. 
I  very  much  doubt  the  expediency  of 
relying  upon  old  orchards  for  fruit. 
Young  trees  well  cared  for  produce  fruit 
of  the  finest  quality,  and  the  expense  of 
gathering  and  handling  is  much  greater 
in  case  of  a  large  tree  than  a  smaller  one. 
Besides,  the  taste  of  consumers  is  im¬ 
proving  and  finer  grades  of  fruit  are 
demanded.  When  good  apples  are  pro¬ 
duced  in  abundance  the  knotty,  scabby 
bruised  sorts  from  horn-pruned  trees  on 
old,  starved  Blue  Grass  land  will  hardly 
be  considered  fit  for  making  cider,  for 
the  West  will  not  always  be  a  dumping 
ground  for  them. 
^ijscrUattMug 
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A  Veteran 
Mr.  Joseph  lie  in  - 
merich,  529  E.  146th 
St.,  N.  Y.  City,  in  1862, 
at  the  battle  of  Fair 
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