'5j 
NEW YORK, APRIL 24, 1886 
PRICE FIVE CENTS. 
$2.00 PER YEAR. 
Entered according to Act oi Congrefe. in the year K«6. l>y the Rural New-Yorker in the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 
In common parlance, Duchesse d’ Angouleme 
is simply Duchess; Williams’ Boncretien is, 
and doubtless always will be, Bartlett; Hovey’s 
Seedling and Wilson’s Albany Seedling are 
Hovey aud Wilson; Stump the World is 
Stump, while Miner’s Great Prolific is sim¬ 
mered down to Miner, and so ad libitum. 
This nuisance of long, sensational names 
has grown with the growth of pomology, too 
often of late apparently for deceptive pur¬ 
poses, till it has become irksome to the public, 
new fruits. A variety of circumstances, such 
as soil, climate, location and treatment, will 
affect either favorably or otherwise a new or 
untried kind. If those who have grown the 
true Japan Chestnut would tell us their ex¬ 
perience through the Rural, a large amount 
of information as to the soil, climate aud 
location where the trees succeed would be ac¬ 
cumulated. Their growth and productive¬ 
ness have been satisfactory here. We have 
imported young seedling trees direct from 
feet from the ground, and in three years they 
produced some very fine fruit. We have im¬ 
ported direct from Japan some very large aud 
fine nuts measuring five inches and upward. 
These we planted m the greenhouse in three- 
inch pots. They grew finely and were one foot 
high by the time the weather was mild enough 
to transplant in open field, and three years 
afterwards they bore, a dozen or more to a 
tree, large nuts which ripened earlier and 
sold for a higher price than the Spanish and 
French sorts, bringing 50 cents per quart in 
market, while the others sold for 25 cents. 
From this it would appear that there must be 
several varieties in Jnpan not all of uniform 
size and quality. We have succeeded best 
by planting large seeds of the best qual ity, or 
grafting from the best trees, as the seedling 
ti'ees that we have imported have not always 
produced very large fruit, william parry. 
Burlington Co., N. J. 
CAYUGA GRAPE, 
S y^s) E received last Fall, 
, rS/Y) specimens of the Ca- 
yoga Grape (Fig. 167), 
f f from the originator, D. 
|y | S. Maiwiu,Watertown, 
||[ 1 N. Y. Bunch long, 
If I not shouldered; berries 
(•L black, with a heavy 
hloom, adhering firmly 
t to the peduncle; from 
half to five-eighths of 
an inch long. Skin 
vJT'rj thick, tough, but pleas¬ 
es ant, even wheu eaten 
QJ close. Seeds one to 
two, rarely three in uuml>er. Pulp soft, ten- 
tier, juicy, sweet, vinous and of high flavor, 
separating easily from the seeds. Eaten 
October 10—in fine order. 
THE BEST APPLE FOR NEW ENGLAND, AND 
WHY. 
Almost every locality has some variety of 
apple which is most profitable and has the 
largest run in the market orchard. Thus in 
New England it is the Baldwin; near Phila¬ 
delphia Smith's Cider; in the Mississippi 
V alley, Ben Davis. The law of adaptedness 
must settle which has the pre-eminence. In 
New England, the Baldwin unquestionably is 
the market apple. Why? 1st. It is a good 
grower, making a well-shaped tree. 2d. It is 
quite productive in alternate years, and with 
high culture and proper thinning every year. 
2. The fruit keeps aud ships well, and is also 
desirable in shape and color. 4th. It is a 
variety widely aud favorably known in the 
markets of the world. p. m. a. 
Middlefield, Conn. 
OLD FRUITS UNDER NEW NAMES. 
It was with consiuerable surprise that I read 
the article of C. M. Hovey under the above 
heading, in the Rural of Feb. 12th and 20th 
last, and I am still 
more surprised that so 
usually discreet and careful a correspondent 
as Hortlcola should accept (page 219) the same 
premises and conclusions. My surprise is not 
that they reverence old ami honored names— 
we all very naturally do so—but that they 
reason and draw conclusions from the unwar¬ 
rantable assumption that the American Born¬ 
ological Society claims the right to dictate a 
change in such names: and is, in fact, doing 
this through its Committee on Revision of its 
C atalogue, and jierhaps otherwise. As I 
understand the matter, the utmost that the 
society or its committee does or can claim is, 
that its duty in this direction is to register 
the decisions and practices of the pomologi- 
eal public, so far as uaines of fruits are con¬ 
cerned; aud, as leading and influential pomolo- 
gists, to indicate, in their transactions, the 
most effective means of giving system, dig¬ 
nity and something of science to the nomen¬ 
clature of fruits. In doing this, the fact has 
liecome patent that there has been such, free 
aud inappropriate use made of certain words, 
such as Pippin, Beauty, Favorite, Belle, 
Beurre aud many others, that they have, in 
part, it not wholly, ceased to possess signifi¬ 
cance as attachments to the names of fruits, 
aud, as a natural sequence, there is a notable 
aud obviously increasing tendency on the 
part of the public to lop these off as needless 
excrescences, Thu Revising Committee seems 
to have noted and acted u|>on this fact, but 
in so conservative a degree that the late 
Charles Downing, in a letter to the w riter, 
i emarked that they might properly have gone 
even further. 
1 understand the mission of the American 
Pomological Society, hi this matter, to be 
precisely identical with that or the ortlioepist, 
in the spelling, aefluiug and pronunciation of 
HARDINESS OF PISSARD’S PLUM, ETC. 
In a late Rural, Mr. F. K. Phoenix reports 
that Prunus Pissardii was killed by the cold 
last Winter at Bloomington, 111. This is noth¬ 
ing remarkable, as I think it will be found 
killed the present Wiuter all over the north¬ 
western prairie country. I had some fine 
specimens two years old, that I neglected to 
protect, and they are killed to the ground. It 
is called perfecrly hardy by Eastern nursery¬ 
men, who offer it for sale; but 1 do not think 
there is a live specimen in Iowa or Northern 
Illinois that has stood out the present Winter 
unprotected. So far as it bos been tested 
here, it is no hardier than an ordinary peach 
tree. Prauus Simonii is hardy hero, as is also 
the double-flowering plum Pruuus triloba, 
l'he Rural asks as to Hie severity of the 
climate of Bloomington. 111., in eomparisou 
with that of Painesville, Ohio, or Rochester, 
N. Y. Bloomington is in a prairie country, 
while Painesville and Rochester arc not, aud 
wheu the “blizzards’’ come over the prairie, 
ami the mercury falls to, say, 30* below zero, 
it is much more severe on trees, shrubs and 
plants than it is when the air is still, even if 
the degree of cold is the same. Another rea¬ 
son why it is more severe in the West is be¬ 
cause of the lack of snow, for if we have a 
heavy snow it does not lie stillsothat it affords 
any protection to plants: but it blows into 
drifts, and the ground freezes as hard and 
deep as if we had no snow. The peach winter¬ 
kills in all the prairie region of Iowa, North¬ 
ern liliuois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, etc., while 
in the same latitude iu Ohio or New York, it 
is grown with considerable success. I have 
not tried the Japan Chestnut, and do uot be¬ 
lieve it w ould lie hardy here. h. a. t. 
Crescent City, la. 
The Earhart Raspberry. —I have 
scanned ana sifted all the statements I have 
CAYUGA GRAPE 
From Nature, 
who are vindicating their power, if uot their 
right, to lighten the tiresome incubus. 
South Haven, Mich, T. t. lyon. 
JAPAN CHESTNUTS. 
In a late Rural, we are told “to be careful 
about commending the Japan Chestnut too 
highly.” lhat is u safe rule to apply to all 
Japan, some of which bore very large, hand¬ 
some nuts, while others were smaller. We also 
imported grafted trees, the fruit of which also 
varied much in size, quality aud time of ripen¬ 
ing. 
i' 1-0111 those which bore the finest aud best 
fruit, we cut cions and grafted them into 
common American chestnut trees about eight 
