La Fameuse Apples

Though also with another French name, Pomme de Neige, is an American seedling. It is becoming as popular in the north of Europe as of America.

Hardy Apples

It is not frost merely, but a combination of peculiar circumstances irrespective of mere temperature, which constitutes hardiness. Even in France, apple trees suffer in winter sometimes. They have also to get up their lists of extra hardy apples. In a list of these, "French Iron clads," we see the names of our Baldwin and Roxbury Russet.

Pear Growing In The West

Those who have been taught that it is useless to try pears in the West may take comfort from the following, which we take from an essay by Mr. B. O. Curtis: " I have three trees of the Seckel, thirty-one years old, large, fine trees. One is a dwarf now with strong pear roots, and is two-thirds as large as the Standard. These, and a row of young bearing dwarfs are healthy and sound; only one of the standard trees has lost a few branches by blight."

Red Bietigheimer Apple

A colored plate of this German variety is given in the Canadian Horticulturist for April. It is represented as four and three-quarters inches wide, and three deep, bright red, striped with crimson. It is said to be the largest and handsomest apple under culture, and is in season from October till February.

Fungus On The Fameuse

The most profitable Canadian apple, the Fameuse, is said to suffer severely in Canada, from a black fungus spot on the leaves.

The Larch In Europe

The young wood of the larch is not durable. The wood of the ma-turer tree is that which gave the larch its good reputation. It is very subject to a disease which browns the tips of the leaves while the tree is growing. When it once gets this disease it seems to hold on to the tree through life, and the timber is much affected in durability. There is some talk in Europe of trying the Japan larch, Larix leptolepis.

Timber Under British Control

Britain is not yet suffering from a dearth of timber. According to recent figures the total extent of the forests in the British possessions is 340,000,000 acres of timbered land.

Value Of The Mesquite

The mesquite, so prevalent in west Texas, a species of locust, furnishes good fuel and contains a larger quantity of tannin in its wood than oak in its bark. It, however, is of low stature, hardly reaching more than twenty feet in height, and ordinarily not more than one foot in diameter.