THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN. 
137 
IRecent publications. 
The Cornell Agricultural Experiment Station has published bulletins 
on “The Quince Curculio” and “Some Spraying Mixtures.” 
A new edition of Professor Bailey’s “Principles of Fruit Growing” 
has a chapter devoted to the subject of describing and classifying 
fruits. . The preface written from Europe compares European and 
American fruit growing. 
Among recent United States Department of Agriculture bulletins 
are : “The Periodical Cicada,” pp. 148, by C. Marlatt; “The Larger 
Apple-tree Borers;” “Principal Poisonous Plants of the United 
States ; ” “Some Edible and Poisonous Fungi“Changes in Railway 
Rates.” 
The weekly publication known as American Gardening, which, since 
October, 1893, has been owned and published by the A. T. De La Mare 
Printing and Publishing Co., Limited, was, on October 24, 1898, sold 
to James W. Withers, with the Florists’ Exchange for the past five 
years, who will publish American Gardening hereafter, Leonard Bar¬ 
ron continuing as editor. 
The Youth’s Companion is sent to half a million homes every week 
and is read by young and old. The best of fiction, poetry, sketches of 
travel, instructive articles, comment on current events and selected 
miscellany and anecdotes fill its columns from week to week and from 
year to year. The publishers promise that the volume for 1889 will 
surpass all former ones, in variety, interest and value. Among the two 
hundred distinguished contributors already engaged are Hon. John D. 
Long, secretary of the navy, Edward Everett Hale, Henry M. Stanley, 
Sarah Orne Jewett, W. D. Howells, Poultney Bigelow, Herbert E. 
Hamblen, Hon. Carl Schurz, Rt. Hon. James Bryce, John Burroughs, 
Robert Barr, Thomas Nelson Page, Bret Harte, William Black, Alfred 
Austin. Andrew Lang and Dr. William A. Hammond. All subscribers 
to the 1899 volume will receive The Companion’s new calendar, exqui¬ 
sitely colored, with a border of stamped gold. Boston : The Youth’s 
Companion, 211 Columbus ave. 
“ Bush Fruits; a Horticultural Monograph of Raspberries, Black, 
berries, Dewberries, Currants, Gooseberries and other Shrub-like 
Fruits,” by Fred W. Card, professor of Horticulture in the Rhode 
Island College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, and horticulturist to 
the Experiment Station, has just been issued by the Macmillans. 
Nurserymen will remember Professor Card as having read papers be¬ 
fore the American Association, of great interest, while he was professor 
of horticulture in the University of Nebraska. The book is one of the 
Rural Science Series edited by Professor L. II. Bailey. It is the first 
of a series of monographs on the various types of American fruits. 
The aim, says Professor Bailey, is to treat general truths and principles 
rather than mere details of practice ; to enable the reader to think out 
local problems for himself, the very thing needed by the nurseryman. 
The domestication of the bush fruits is one of the most recent develop¬ 
ments of American horticulture, and the subject is all the more inter¬ 
esting because all the important types excepting the currant, are 
evolutions from the species of our own woods. Cloth. Pp. 549. 
Illustrated. $1.25. New York : The Macmillan Co., 66 Fifth ave. 
The nurserymen of the country welcome Professor L. H. Bailey who 
has returned from a trip to Europe. That he has been busy during 
his absence is evidenced by the frequency with which he has been 
heard from since his return. Almost as soon as he arrived there ap¬ 
peared from the Macmillan Company, New York and London, his 
entertaining and instructive volume entitled “Sketch of the Evolution 
of Our Native Fruits.” In his preface which is dated Munich, Ger¬ 
many, April 18, 1898, Professor Bailey says that three motives run 
through the book : An attempt to expound the progress of evolution 
in objects which are familiar and which have not yet been greatly 
modified by man ; an effort to make a simple historical record from un¬ 
explored fields ; a desire to suggest treasures of experience and narra¬ 
tive which are a part of the development of agriculture and from which 
the explorer must one day bring material for history and inspiration 
for story. Such a volume must surely be of the greatest interest to 
nurserymen. The studies were begun ten years ago ; their prosecution 
required much travel including a visit to European herbaria in which- 
the types of certain species of plants are deposited. The book is in 
tended as a companion to the author’s “The Survival of the Unlike.” 
Its contents include chapters on “The Rise of the American Grape,” 
“Strange History of the Mulberries,” “Evolution of American Plums 
and Cherries,” “Native Apples,” “Origin of American Raspberry 
Growing,” “Evolution of Blackberry and Dewberry Culture,” “Vari¬ 
ous Types of Berry-like Fruits,” “Various Types of Tree Fruits,” 
“ General Remarks on the Improvement of Our Native Fruits.” Cloth, 
pp. 485. Illustrations 125. $1.50. New York: The Macmillan Co., 
66 Fifth avenue. 
BAST OR RAFFIA. 
Regarding these terms the Gardeners’ Magazine of London, 
England, says ; 
Bast is the strips of the bast fibers, or inner bark of the 
Lime Tree, and consequently was formerly known as Linden 
Bast, the Lime (Tilli europaea) being often known as the Lin¬ 
den Tree. This material is now seldom used for tying pur¬ 
poses, having been superseded by raffia. Raffia, rafia, or 
raphia, is obtained from a Madagascar Palm (Raffia Ruffia), 
also from Raphia taedigera, and is the cuticle stripped from 
huge fronds of these giant palms. Some of the palms in our 
West African dependencies yield a raffia, and probablj a con¬ 
siderable industry will arise in this direction ; at present Mad¬ 
agascar supplies almost the whole of the raffia of commerce. 
The old name of “ bast ” is in some gardens still applied to 
raffia by old hands. 
FALL DUG TREES. 
W. B. Cleves, Broome Co., N. Y., writes in Rural New 
Yorker; “I received a lot of peach trees from a north¬ 
ern nursery last November, and heeled them in on a dry 
southern slope, covering the roots and about one foot of the 
stems. I set them out last spring, and did not lose one. After 
planting, I cut them back to about 20 inches. I received at 
the same time apple, pear, cherry, plum and quince trees, 
treated all alike, and have lost but one apple, one pear, and ten 
cherry trees out of about one thousand trees. The spring was 
very favorable, rains continuing until after planting was accom¬ 
plished. About fifty trees were planted out in the fall, and 
.these seem to have done no better than those kept over winter. 
Last spring, I got apple trees from cold storage, from a promi¬ 
nent nursery company, and 15 per cent, of these are dead. 
Locality, Broome County, Southern New York, altitude 1,500 
feet, soil clay loam, exposure both northern and southern.” 
©bituar\>. 
William Cavers of the firm of Cavers Brothers, Galt, On¬ 
tario, died suddenly November 4th, aged 39 years. 
Robert Bowne Parsons, who was killed at Flushing, L. I., on 
November 1, by a railway train, was formerly a well known 
nurseryman. In 1875 he retired from active work, at the time 
that his brother, the well known Samuel B. Parsons, with 
whom he had been in partnership, established the now famous 
Kissena nurseries. In 1840 Samuel Parsons established a 
nursery business for his sons, Robert and Samuel. They con¬ 
ducted an extensive business. Both Robert and Samuel B. 
Parsons made frequent trips to Europe to examine the nursery 
stocks there and made wide selections which they introduced 
into America. The firm also became interested in the trees of 
Japan and they were probably the first to introduce them to 
America. 
