|
|
tempting red Cuthbert and Marlboros, and the magnificent Nemaha "black caps."
The innermost cellar of all is reserved for testing the keeping qualities of fruits. The heavy double doors swing open with an impressive tardiness. An odor, musty and sweet, floats outward; the odor of wine, unpressed, hoarded in the same delicate globes in which Nature herself distilled it. The grapes were removed last March, but their fragrant presence clings to the damp walls and the earthen floor and mingles with the perfume of big Ben Davis apples, white Pewaukee, and strangely marked Fallawaters, red russets and brown, and with green Mount Vernon and Columbia pears. They are all as firm and bright as when they were stored ten months ago, and bid fair to hold their own for another year.
The warm midsummer air is wonderfully dry and full of life after the tomblike chill of the cellars, and the botanical gardens look brighter than when they vanished a few minutes ago. The simple prettiness of the phlox, the challenging richness of the peonies, the delicacy of the spiræa, the intense scarlet of the Oriental poppies draw the attention, now here, now there, among the silver spruces and the fairy-like Japanese maples and the weeping poplars, elms, willows, mulberries, and larches, which droop like tearful nymphs about the lawns. Everywhere the "permanent and indestructible" white labels of iron on an iron standard proclaim the superintendence of the station. They name the plants and shrubs growing in orchard and field, and furnish the index of this living notebook of the cultivator, the textbook of the student. All the experimental work is done by the students, and thus a circulatory medium more definite and far reaching than the bulletin is obtained.
As the servant of the public, the horticultural department of the station is continually occupied with a variety of tests, but its favorite work has been in the line of experimenting with the varieties of fruits and vegetables.
Whenever a new name appears, it is sought out, studied carefully, its possibilities developed, and a report made to buyers.
One hundred and twenty-five varieties of strawberries have been tabulated, the tables giving their vigor, amount of rust, firmness, shape, flavor, color, sweetness, texture, productiveness, time of blooming, and time of the ripening of the first berry. Similar tables have been prepared for raspberries, blackberries, apples, peaches, pears, and grapes. With flowers, the productiveness is measured by the number of blossoms. Tags are affixed to the blossoms just before they mature, and the number recorded. Only the flowers thus marked are cut.
Vegetables, however comely and wholesome, do not attract the general interest vouchsafed to flowers and fruit. Who ever heard of a cabbage collector, or a fancier of bunch-onions? But the mania of the vineyard and of the orchard may become as potent as the fever which possesses the bibliophile or the numismatist, and more so. The rarity of Aldines, and the quaintness of Elzevirs, go unrecognized by the masses. A coin of Ephesus, or of Alexandria, is to them but the object of a moment's curiosity, but the bloom upon the grape, the fine flavor of the peach, the spicy fragrance of the carnation, the texture of the rose,— these satisfy the highest appreciation and tempt the most unstimulated. Seldom, indeed, do those who pass the station fail to pause and look up at the sunny vineyards on the hill and across the flourishing orchards and fair gardens below it.
With agriculture it is quite another affair. Some knowledge of the science is requisite to an appreciation of the results. Under the marble curves of a Venus or an Apollo, the anatomist sees the articulation of bones and the play of muscles; under radiant meadow and wind-tossed field, the agriculturist sees drainage, cultivation, the rotation of crops. He is beginning to be aware of the very kind of fertilizer used, especially since the institution of soil tests in February, 1889, when Prof. W. 0. Atwater, Director of the Office of Experiment Stations of the United States Department of Agriculture, summoned the directors of the experiment stations, and others interested in field and plot experiment, to adopt
-- page 76 --
|
These pages are © Laurel O'Donnell, 2005, all rights reserved
Copying these pages without written permission for the purpose of republishing
in print or electronic format is strictly forbidden
This page was last updated on
12 Sep 2005
|