HORTICULTURAL JOTTINGS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVII, Issue 11543, 30 November 1900, Page 7

HORTICULTURAL JOTTINGS.

UNIQUE PEAR TREE. In th« Old Country Mr. Yeomant,, of Norwich, has a pear tree which is alleged to be unique. The tree has no less than 40 varieties of pears grafted on it. By late news some of the early varieties had been gathered, and the others were to be gathered in due course. - TOMATOES. 'According to tho returns of the British Board of Trade for the first seven months of this year 24,000 tons of tomatoes had been imported into England at a value of £466,514. It is asked, Why should not a great portion of this be added to that already produced at home? English-grown tomatoes are always finer in flavour and texture than the foreign produce, and no doubt a ready market is to be found for them. BRITISH AGRICULTURE. In a paper on "Sylviculture," lately road before the British Association, Mr. foamusl Margcrison pointed out that recent s.uppnes of timber wore largely foreign. There was much land in Great Britain only slightly productive at present suitable for growing a native supply of timber, but the nation seemed apathetic in the matter, and sportsmen were fearful of their pleasures being disturbed. Tho crops produced by Continental sylviculture were treble or quadruple those grown in Britain, and, though natural conditions were not less favourable, management was generally inferior. DESSERT APPLES It is reported that threo of tho prettiest dessert apples recently shown, and winning first honours, at the One-and-All Flower Show were the well-known Devonshire Quarrendon and the less known or grown Irish Peach and Beauty of Bath. All three may be truly described as undersized, exquisitely coloured, and daintily finished, while the quality is of the bost, forming three more illustrations of tho old adago'about the best thing often being made up with tho smallest bundles. The Irish Peach is perhaps best known in gardens ap tho Early Crofton, and has long been highly appreciated for dessert through July and August. It has that rich blend of green, scarlet, and gold which never fails to satisfy tho eye or gratify the palate. I first saw (says an orchardist) Beauty of Bath in tho nurseries of Messrs. Cooling, of Bath, shortly after its introduction, and formed a most favourable impression of its beauty and quality. Further experience of its quality and popularity, and its frequent highest honours of first at oui great shows, as woll as tho favourable opinions of other high authorities, would lead one to plant Beauty of Bath largely as a dessert apple, second to none except tho Ribston or tho Paradise. FLOWERS OF EGYPT. Very interesting is the fact in connection with the vast colleotion of plants and flowers taken from ancient Egyptian tombs by a Frenchman known as Marietto Bey that exactly similar plants are still to bo found growing in the valley of the Nile. The closest examination fails to reveal the slightest difference between the plants that flourished fifty centuries ago and those which the traveller sees today ; exactly such flowers as the boy Moses and tho ohildren of Joseph picked still bloom ♦unchanged, even in colour. There are to bo seen in the Bey's colleotion blue sprays of larkspur which loving hands laid upon the bodies of thoso who died a thousand years beforo Abraham and Sarah went down into Egypt. In the tombs of later date have been found, together with holyhocks and chrysanthemums), the various fruit 3, vegetables, and grain for which tho land has over been renowned, as figs, date?, olives, grapes, pomegranates, onions, boanc', barley, and wheat. Around the neck 3 and upon the breasts of those who died at the time Solomon reigned in Jerusalem, about 1000 8.C., wero found garlands of celery, which docs not appear to have been used at that time a3 a vegetable by tho Egyptians. All theso plants, when they were prepared for the funeral ceremonies. wero subjected to great heat, by which their form and colour wore preserved. DURABILITY OF WOODS. With the object of testing tho durability of different timbers, experiments were recently made in America by driving sticks into the ground of different kinds of wood. Each stick was two feet long and a half-inch square, half an inch in length being loft projecting above the ground. In tho course of five years it was found that the sticks of oak, elm, ash, fir, soft mahogany, and nearly ©very variety of pine were totally rotten. Larch, hard pine," and tea wood were decayed on the outside only, while acacia, with the exception of being slightly attacked on the oxterior were otherwise sound. Hard mahogany and ced?.r of Lebanon were in tolerably good condition, but only Virginian cedar was found as good aa when put into the ground. These results are of importance to builders, showing what timbers should be avoided and what others used in preference, especially for underground work. When kept dry, the duration of some timbers is very great, as beams still exist which are known to be 1100 years old. Piles driven by the Romans prior to the Christian era have been examined of late, and found to be perfectly sound, after an immersion of nearly 2000 years. It has been said that in America hardwood stumps decay in five or six years, spruce stumps in about tho same time, hemlook stumps in eight to nine years, cedar the same, but pine stumps never. THE HURRICANE TREE. In Nassau, the capital city of the Bahama Islands, they say " the tree in the public square"—not the trees. Now the public square of Nassau is quite as large as that of most cities of the size, but there is only one treo in it. and that tree literally fills the square, and spreads its shade over all the public buildings in the neighbourhood, for it is the largest tree in the world at its base, although it is hardly taller than a threestorey house. It is variously known as a ceiba, or a silk-cotton tree, but tho people •-.t low islands of the West Indians call it the hurricane tree. For no matter how hard the wind blows it cannot disturb the mighty buttressed trunks of the ceiba. In the hurricane of last spring all the palms and many of the other trees of Nassau were overturned, but the great hurricane tree, although it lost all its leaves, did not lose so much as a branch. Its trunk throws out great, curving winglike braces, some of them 20ft wide and nearly as high. These extend into the ground on all sides and brace the tree against all attack, while the great branches spread a thick shade overhead. In the tropio sunshine of midsummer, even thousand, of people may gather in the cool of its shadow. No one knows how old the great tree is, but it must have been growing hundreds, it not thousands, of years. A very old pioturo in the library at Nassau shows the tree as big as it is at present, and even the oldest native cannot remember when it was a bit smaller. —»