182 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[Mat, 
The Pea- Weevil. —We do not know if 
seed peas are unusually “ buggy ” or not this 
year, but we have bad an unusual number of 
letters about the “ pea-bug,” as the insect is in¬ 
correctly called. One writer is afraid to plant 
some “ buggy ” peas for fear of introducing 
troublesome insects into his garden. So far as 
we are informed, the pea-weevil attacks the 
pea only. The mother weevil lays her eggs 
upon the outside of the young pod; she does 
not “ sting ” the peas, as many suppose. When 
the larva hatches out it eats its way to the in¬ 
side of the pod and young pea, where it feeds 
on the (marrow) fat of the land, and, unless it 
is first eaten itself by pea-lovers, it forms a 
chrysalis within the shell of the pea, and in 
spring comes out as a small black beetle ready 
to continue the work. It is a general impres¬ 
sion that because the germ is not injured 
“ buggy ” peas are just as good as any other for 
seed. This is a mistake, although the seed 
will germinate; the plants, being deprived of 
their proper nutriment when young, the weevil 
having devoured it, are never so vigorous and 
productive as those from sound peas. Our 
seedsmen have their seed peas grown in local¬ 
ities where the insect has not yet been intro¬ 
duced or where cultivators take pains to destroy 
it. Peas germinate when several years old, and 
if all in a neighborhood would agree to plant 
no infested seed for a year the insect would 
disappear. White says that putting the peas 
in a tightly corked bottle with a tea-spoonful of 
spirits of turpentine will kill the insects with¬ 
out hurting the peas. Others have success¬ 
fully used chloroform in the same manner. If 
the peas are put into water the unsound ones 
will float. In raising peas for seed the insect 
can be avoided by planting in June, after it has 
ceased to operate, though in most localities 
late-planted peas do not succeed very well. 
Notes from the Pines. 
Forced Plants. —Any plant made to grow 
and flower at other than its natural season is 
properly a forced one. When we bring Hya¬ 
cinths and other spring-flowering bulbs into 
bloom in January, they are forced, though that 
is done so frequently and even in an ordinary 
window that we do not look upon it as forc¬ 
ing. There are many plants that we enjoy in 
the open border in spring that we can have 
in flower in the winter, if we take a little fore¬ 
thought, and get up the plants and pot them in 
the fall. I think I mentioned last year what 
gratifying success I had that winter in forcing 
Astilbe tor Spiraea, as some will call it) Japo- 
nica in my study windows. Bleeding Heart 
( D : centra ) is another excellent subject for forc¬ 
ing ; it will do well in a warm window, and 
nothing can be finer. In forcing such plants 
as these the 
Essential Thing to Observe is to give 
the plants a complete rest before we begin to 
start them. In the open border they are kept 
perfectly dormant by the low temperature, and 
when we pot them in the fall they should be 
kept in a cool place. The cellar is often so 
warm that they are excited into growth too 
soon, and this must be prevented by keeping 
them as dry as may be without injury. If kept 
wet in a warmish cellar, they will make a slow 
growth and fail of that absolute rest which 
seems to be necessary. Last fall the ground 
had begun to freeze before I had lifted all my 
plants, and some were grubbed up with a cake 
of frozen earth adhering to them. These were 
put under the greenhouse bench to thaw out, 
so that they could be potted. Some weeks 
after, in overhauling the things stored under 
the benches, I came across some roots without 
a label, which on examination proved to be the 
Bleeding Hearts which were taken up to be 
forced but had been overlooked when the rest 
of the things were potted. They were so dry 
as to be apparently beyond all hope of recov¬ 
ery, and I was about to throw them out, but 
finally concluded to see what they would do, 
and potted them. I never saw the Dicentra 
finer than came from these roots, which had 
been so thoroughly rested that I supposed them 
to be past awakening. 
A Greenhouse Pump. —Early in the winter 
I got tired of the primitive way of dipping 
water from the cistern under the greenhouse 
floor and looked about for a pump. By good 
luck my eye caught the advertisement of the 
People’s Pump, sold by W. S. Blunt, No. 77 
Beekman street. An inspection of the pumps 
gave a favorable impression, and one was or¬ 
dered and put in. It stands under the bench 
of the greenhouse, quite out of the way; the 
handle in use projects into the path, but at 
other times it is fastened up against the edge 
of the bench by a button, and is hardly notice¬ 
able. It can be transformed from a lifting into 
a forcing pump in “a jiffy,” and as either it is 
perfectly satisfactory. The compactness of the 
affair and the ease with which it works are so 
satisfactory that it is almost worth while to 
build a greenhouse just for the fun of having a 
People’s Pump. 
It is not altogether satisfactory to write at 
the end of March notes to be read in May. 
Spring work has hardly begun, and in May one 
will not care to think about in-door plants. 
With so large and miscellaneous a collection 
as I have, it is a matter of interest, after cold 
weather is fairly over, to go about and see how 
things have passed the winter. It is a succes¬ 
sion of surprises. Many plants that one would 
expect to find hardy are found dead, and others 
that were left to be killed by the winter will 
be found to survive. It is a great pity that we 
have nothing in this country to correspond to 
the French garden of Acclimatation. There is 
no direction in which experiments can be more 
usefully made than in testing the hardiness of 
different plants. It is true that the nativity of 
a plant is some guide, but by no means a cer¬ 
tain one, as some of our persistent weeds are 
from tropical countries. We now and then find 
out by accident that a plant heretofore thought 
to belong only to the greenhouse is really 
hardy. Few persons can afford to experiment 
largely in this matter, and there should be 
some public garden where it could be done. 
Primula Japonica. —At last I have flow¬ 
ered this much talked of and high priced 
novelty. Year before last Mr. Hogg gave me 
a plant of the “siraon pure” right from Japan, 
but it daily grew smaller. Last fall he gave me 
another, which was left out in a frame, until 
January, and Mr. Chitty of Bellevue Nursery, 
Paterson, N. J., sent me this spring two more 
that had been similarly treated. One of these 
plants was put in the coolest part of the green¬ 
house and the other two in a window of my 
study, and all three came on finely. Many 
have complained of failure with this plant, but 
it has been due to too tender treatment. It is, 
no doubt, perfectly hardy—though no one that 
I have heard of has risked his $3 or $5 plants 
to establish the fact—and should be treated like 
any other hardy perennial. If wanted in bloom 
in the house, then it should have the same 
treatment as other hardy plants that are forced. 
The plant is a beautiful one, but mine do not 
bear out the extravagant encomiums of the 
English horticultural journals or the highly 
colored plates of the foreign catalogues. It is 
handsome and showy, but has not afforded me 
so much pleasure as another Primrose, 
Primula Involuchata, about which no one 
has exhausted all the adjectives and exclama¬ 
tion points. A plant of this modest species 
came from Mr. George Such, at South Amboy. 
The leaves are of a peculiar silvery whiteness, 
and the plant would be a handsome one if it 
did not flower. It throws up a cluster of long 
tubular, delicate yellow flowers of the fragrance 
of a spring morning. 
Planting Timber. —It will be but a very 
few years before timber becomes veiy much 
enhanced in value. Ten years more will see 
the supply in the north-west greatly reduced in 
quantity. No more profitable use of land can 
be made than to plant walnut, chestnut, oak, 
hickory, spruce, ash, maple, poplar, and other 
trees that have a value in the arts for their tim¬ 
ber. It is highly probable that, as pine be¬ 
comes more costly, it will be used only as joists, 
rafters, and flooring, and that brick and stone 
will be more commonly employed as building 
materials. When this occurs the stock of pine, 
throughout the country, will be found to last 
almost indefinitely. The more valuable pine 
trees grow very slowly and would hardly be 
profitable to plant. 
Crossing-Hybridizing. 
There would appear to be just now an un¬ 
usual interest in the matter of improving plants 
by crossing or hybridizing, to judge from the 
letters we have had asking us to describe the 
process. Crossing and hybridizing are terms 
often and incorrectly used to express the same 
thing. Crossing takes place between varieties 
of the same species, while hybridizing should 
only be applied to the operation as applied to 
plants of different species. The latter are very 
often infertile and can not be propagated by 
seed. We are asked for directions to perform 
the operation, but can only give the most gen¬ 
eral ones. Whoever would experiment in this 
matter must have some knowledge of the struc¬ 
ture of flowers and be a close observer. The 
production of a cross or a hybrid is effected by 
fertilizing the pistil of one plant by the pollen 
of another plant. To understand this simple 
statement requires a knowledge of flower struc¬ 
ture that many have never acquired. In every 
perfect flower there are two sets of organs en¬ 
gaged in the production of the seed. A magni¬ 
fied flower of the grape (fig. 1) will serve to 
illustrate. The bottle-shaped central body, b, 
is the pistil which contains some minute 
greenish pulpy bodies which may become 
seeds, but which will never mature into seeds 
unless they receive some influence from with¬ 
out ; in other words, they must be fertilized. 
Here in the grape there is an abundant provi¬ 
sion for fertilizing the pistil in the bodies which 
surround it, one of which is marked a. These 
are the stamens, each of which consists of a 
two lobed pouch upon a stalk. This pouch is 
the anther and the stalk the filament. When 
the flower is fully developed, each half of the 
pouch or anther cracks open by a slit and lets 
