Three Best Plums

Charles A. Green names the three best market plums for western New York as Bradshaw, Lombard and Reine Claude.

Three Good Russian Plums

We have grown Moldavka larger than Lombard, and when it ripens on the tree it is a far better plum. The tree is an iron clad, where Lombard is as tender as a peach; a heavy bearer, never rots, and t h e curculio and gonger let it alone almost entirely. (See Fig. 1).

The Early Red grows away up at Winnipeg - the hardiest of the hardy. It also is of fine size and excellent quality. (Fig. 2.) The leaves are small and thick, letting the sun into the tree and fruit, yet the wood never sun-scalds and the fruit never rots.

The Voronesh Yellow gets as large as Bradshaw, is pear-shaped, and of prime quality for any use. (Fig. 3.) The tree is perfect in the northwest. A mistake was made in my last year's bulletin, in saying that the fruit of this fine variety is round. The true Voronesh Yellow is always distinctly pear-shaped. - J. L. Budd, Agricultural College, Iowa.

Timbers And How To Know Them

By Dr. Robert Hartig, translated by William Somerville. Edinburgh ; David Douglas. Pp. 83. Illustrated. This neat little hand-book affords the means for the identification of timbers from characters of the wood itself. The illustrations represent sections of wood magnified five times, or as they would appear under an ordinary pocket lens, and upon the features thus brought out, in connection with more obvious characters, the classifications and determinations are made. This method, although seemingly somewhat arbitrary, nevertheless brings natural groups together. It is just such a little hand-book as we need in this country. The book will serve the American student a useful purpose, although comparatively few of the species described are common to America.

The Toad-Stool Nuisance. N. N. C

It is possible that a layer of straw or tar paper laid over the manure in a hot-bed would prevent the growth of toad-stools but we are of the opinion that the better way would be to weed out the stools as they appear, which must be done carefully.

Tobias Gage Plum

On the farm of James Tobias there originated more than fifty years ago a plum that is evidently a seedling of the Green Gage. In the growth of the tree, size, shape, color and season of the fruit it is identical with the Green Gage, but the tree is hardier and, without exception, all who have tested both sorts agree that this seedling, which for present convenience I shall call Tobias Gage, is considerably the better plum. One defect of the Green Gage is that it cracks during wet weather. The Tobias Gage never cracks in any weather except an occasional fruit from over-ripeness. Most plums are at their best when mellow, but the Tobias Gage when fully ripe, and just before it is mellow, is as crisp as any apple, very juicy and more sprightly in flavor than when mellow. That it is a seedling here is evident from the fact that it has always been propagated from suckers.