668 
THE GARDENING WORLD 
August 1 , 1903. 
alcohol for technical and industrial purposes, and it has been 
repeated this year. It is estimated that half the Potato crop 
of Germany is used for human food. The Germans are great 
Potato eaters, and recent improvements in desiccating Potatos 
have caused them to become a staple food in the army and 
navy. As food for domestic animals Potatos play an important 
part in the economy of German farming. Such maize as is use 1 
for fattening stock has to be imported, and Potatos, both raw 
and steamed, are therefore used to feed cattle, pigs, sheep, and 
poultry. But the large percentage of water which they contain 
causes them to deteriorate in storage, especially after germina¬ 
tion commences. Besides alcohol, which is in a category of its 
own, the technical products of the Potato are starch, starch 
syrup, Potato flour, dextrin, and starch sugar. 
* * * 
Success with Feoral Decorations.^ Mrs. Townsend, the Lee 
Floral Stores, 3, Manor Park Parade, High Road, Lee, has won 
no less than three extra-special prizes at the Lee, Blackheath, 
and West Kent Horticultural Society’s show, which was held in 
the grounds of Mr. John Penn, M.P. These prizes were ob¬ 
tained for hand bouquets, ladies’ sprays, and gentlemen s but¬ 
ton-holes respectively, and as the competitors, some of old- 
standing, numbered about 50, Mrs. Townsend’s success is very 
creditable. 
* * * 
Fortunes in Potatos. —Those who bad the good sense to plant 
early Potatos last March in the fruitful soil of Inchdorry Island 
and other spots around Clomakilty, Co. Cork, are reaping the 
benefits of a big demand. Last year three or four local land¬ 
owners promised to experiment, and under the superintendence 
of an official from the Agricultural Department quantities of 
Puritan Potatos—an excellent table variety—were planted on 
March 14th last. On June 17th one of the growers, Mr. J. 
Crowley, raised his plot of two and a-half acres. Buyers from 
Liverpool had contracted to pay him at the rate of £50 an acre 
for the lot, the grower to dig and forward the produce by rail 
and steamer to Liverpool in specially prepared barrels.. Each 
acre yielded an average of five or six tons of substantial and 
evenly-sized Potatos. Early Peas, Turnips, and Strawberries 
have also been tried with encouraging success. 
* * * 
Birmingham Botanical Gardens. —Mr. W. B. Latham, who 
has been curator of the Botanical Gardens, Edgbaston, Birming¬ 
ham, since December, 1867, is retiring from this post in Sep¬ 
tember next. He succeeded Mr. Catlin, and was selected from 
200 candidates for the post. Mr. Latham is an old Kewite, and 
is to be succeeded by another, namely, Mr. Thomas Humphreys, 
at present assistant superintendent of the Royal Horticultural 
Society’s Gardens at Chiswick. Previous to that he managed the 
propagating department in the Aboretum, Royal, Gardens, Kew. 
He was also for some time in the nurseries of Messrs. Dicksons, 
Limited, Chester, so that he has a wide experience in the pro¬ 
pagation and .management of young trees. Since he went to 
Chiswick he has been in close contact with all the exhibitors 
who come to the London shows, and has had active experience 
in the management of shows- under the direction of Mr. S. T. 
Wright, the superintendent. We wish Mr. Humphreys every 
success in the new sphere of labour to which he is called. 
* * * 
The Koea Tree. —The Kola nuts of commerce are the pro¬ 
duct of the West African tree, Cola acuminata. They are. em¬ 
ployed to some extent in Europe as a drug, and also as a stimu¬ 
lating food-stuff of the same character as tea or coffee. Atten¬ 
tion is directed in a recent number of the Journal d’Agriculture 
Tropicale (February, 1903) to a species of Kola (Cola Ballayi) 
growing in the French Congo, the fruit of which resembles that 
of Cola acuminata, and possesses similar properties, lliis tree 
grows well up to an altitude of about 1,400 ft., either on the 
banks of rivers amid thick undergrowth or on the open plain, 
but requires a clay soil containing iron. It attains maturity 
in ten years, and yields in the wild state 10 lbs. to 110 lbs.. ox 
nuts per annum, a quantity which is easily doubled .by cultiva¬ 
tion. The nuts are used by the natives as a sustaining food¬ 
stuff ; they are collected just before ripening and buried in 
ant-heaps, when the ants remove the yellowish white skin with¬ 
out attacking the nut, and at the same time covering it with 
a coating of loam, which prevents access of air to the nut, and 
so acts as a preservative. The nuts were for some years ex¬ 
ported in considerable quantities from the Congo, but the pre¬ 
sence in several cargoes of larvae of an insect which destroyed 
the kernels stopped this trade. The creation of an export trad? 
in these nuts would be of great value to this part of Africa, 
where much of the soil is quite un suited for the cultivation of 
other economic plants. 
Cheap Carriage of Fruit. —A Tasmanian fruit exporter is 
offering to carry fruit from any port in Huon (Tasmania) to 
London next season for 3s. 3d. net per bushel. It is believed 
that a Hobart firm will carry fruit from Hobart to London for 
2s. lOd. per bushel. This wild enable Apples to be sold in 
London at 7s. 6d., with a good profit for growers. 
* * * 
A Corner in Lemons.- —A strange story comes from New 
Orleans to the effect that a comer in lemons has been achieved 
by a fruit trust, with the result that prices have gone up over 100 
per cent, in the United States. Close upon the heels of that re¬ 
port comes a contradiction. For the credit of human nature let 
us hope that the contradiction is true. It is difficult to believe 
that there are men with souls so dead as to corner the necessary 
ingredient of lemon-squashes in the sweltering heat of summer. 
* * * 
A New Potato. —For some years a Potato, semi-aquatic, and 
originally grown in Uruguay, has been cultivated in the neigh¬ 
bourhood of Marseilles. M. Heckel, director of the Colonial 
Institute of that city, has made a report to the French Minister 
of Agriculture on the subject, in which he says that the growing 
of the Potato in question, which he calls the “ Commersion,” is 
a most promising industry. It defies frost, and has eatable 
foliage, the cutting of which does not diminish the number of 
tubers. Moreover, the “ Commersion ” is subject to no Potato 
disease. 
* * * 
Avenues of Paris.- —-The beautiful Paris avenues have long 
been the admiration of Europe, And now another is contem¬ 
plated which will put all the rest into the shade. Incidentally 
it will also furnish another illustration of the truth that the third 
Republics is little more than the Empire m commission. The 
avenue, in short, is just the realisation a century after date of a 
brilliant idea of Napoleon, who one day indicated his_ notion of 
an avenue by drawing a straight line on a map of the city from 
the Place de la Concorde to the heart of the forest of St. Germain, 
the distance being 10f miles. This road is now to be built 33 
yards in width and level along the whole length. 
* * 
The Negro Question in America. —Great interest is being 
taken in the trial begun, on June 30tli, at Montgomery 
(Alabama), in which the defendants are landlords, constables, 
magistrates, and others charged with maintaining a system of 
negro slavery. The grand jury found 99 indictments.. The Post 
publishes five: columns from a staff correspondent giving details 
of the new slavery. The correspondent declares that negroes 
are picked up indiscriminately by constables, who charge them 
with carrying razors, stealing a ride in a train, vagrancy, debt, 
allowing a mule to bite another man’s corn, or other fictitious 
offences. They are then taken before complaisant magistrates, 
who impose a fine. Then a planter comes, pays the fines, and 
takes the culprits into slavery. The negroes, tied in, groups, are 
taken, to plantations, where they are. set to work in the fields. 
Guards are placed over them, and the plantations are patrolled 
by men armed with rifles. Whippings are frequent ; a negress 
was whipped to death last year. If the negroes run away they 
are chased by hounds. The correspondent says that this slavery 
has existed for years and is increasing, but the Southerners, who 
resented Northern criticism, did mot- suspect its actual propor- 
Hay Fever and its Remedy.— It is the season of “ hav fever,” 
and sufferers from it may be glad to hear that Professor Dunbar, 
director of the Hygienic Institute of Hamburg, has traced the 
source of it to a toxic principle of the pollen of grasses and various 
flowers. Roses and other fragrant flowers, do not seem to yield 
it, but they have an etiological action in crises of hay fever. Dr. 
Dunbar has also drawn from this toxine an antidote, or anti¬ 
toxin©. The alcoholic extract of the toxine is injected into the 
veins of horses, and it renders the serum of their blood antitoxic. 
A drop of saline solution of the toxine put into the eye or nose 
of a person brings on the symptoms of hay fever, but if the person 
is first made immune by the serum the toxine onlv produces a 
slight passing irritation of the nose or eye. His results have been 
confirmed by well-known specialists, but peiliaps there is more hi 
the disease than we ygt know. The sensibility of the subject goes 
for much, as there are some authenticated cases in which an 
attack of hay fever has been induced by the mere sight of a 
picture of haymaking, or by giving the subject a bouquet of 
artificial flowers to smell. Whether the serum is a sure pre¬ 
ventive of hay fever or not, it may soften the crises of the ail¬ 
ment, and for many that will be sufficient. 
