Sa we sists RUT ot He dip sir atts eit satis 4 stad wh ati ve , ative es tape Ni ‘eh She itn neat {etl ede sy 5 * 4) {) ty i " i ‘ Ene a uals ! ys) ue BRE bv i ih is eget . fe : nh Y ie} rah et nie a nai 2 a valk deep if " iw \ mh it aie phe tee aa : iY nye tie? ponies daeer 4 Eh rep ee tehy + * F im ste Saget pia i ie ey Hon fies byte fa ey 4 a radaan isstrans etapa ty at reitene tyssdor ty 154) Aye ee dh ; arvana? saflgiase stecaama cea TS Book COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT PLEASANT TALK ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. HENRY WARD BEECHER. NEW EDITION, WITH ADDITIONAL MATTER FROM RECENT WRITINGS, PUBLISHED AND UNPUBLISHED. NEW YORK: a i BS PORD AND COMPANY 1874. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, BY J. B. FORD AND COMPANY, in the Office of the Libranan of Congress, at Wasbingtom. University Press: Wercu, Broriow, & Co., CAMBRIDGR. PREPA TORY. Tuer Pretice to the first edition of this volume, which follows these few words, will give some idea of the book’s origin. Much of the material is of ouly passing importance, und is retained now rather from retrospective imterest. A considerable addition has been made, however, consisting of articles contributed to Mr. Bonner’s New York Ledger, bearing upon rural affiirs, and also an unpublished address upon The Apple. This was delivered at Tona Island, on a fiir summer day, when ladies and gentlemen, several score,—editors, pomologists, singers, preachers, poets, and inventors,—gathered under Dr. ©. W. Grant’s hospitable trees,—for the house was too small to hold them,—to eat apples and pears, to discuss grapes solid and liquid, and to listen to the venerable poet, Mr. Bryant, to Horace Greeley, to Charles Downing, and to notable songsters, whose war- bles put the birds to envious silence,—at any rate, so the compliments ran at the time. The address had better luck at Iona than its great subject did in Paradise ; though it will never give rise to such a literature of results. H. W. BEECHER. Brooktyn, February, 1874. ait aie PR ALO TO THE FIRST EHDITION. No one of our readers will be half so curious to know what this book contains as the author himself. For it is more than twelve years since these pieces were begun, and it is more than ten years since we have looked at them. The publishers have taken the trouble to dig them out from what we supposed to be their lasting burial-place, in the columns of the Western Farmer and Gardener, and they have gone through the press without our own revision. It is now twenty years since we settled at Indianapolis, the capital of Indiana, a place then of fowr, and now of twenty- Jive thousand inhabitants. At that time, and for years afterward, there was not, within our knowledge, any other than political newspapers in the State—no educational journals, no agricultural or family papers. The Indiana Journal at length proposed to introduce an agricultural department, the matter of which should every month be printed, in magazine form, under the title, Indiana Farmer and Gardener, which was afterward changed to the more comprehensive title, Western Farmer and G'ardener. Vi PREFATORY. It may be of some service to the young, as showing how valuable the fragments of time may become, if mention is made of the way in which we became prepared to edit this journal. The continued taxation of daily preaching, extending through months, and once through eighteen consecutive months, without the exception of a single day, began to wear upon the nerves, and made it necessary for us to seek some relaxation. Accordingly we used, after each week- night’s preaching, to drive the sermon out of our heads by some alterative reading. In the State Library were Loudon’s works—his encyclo- pedias of Horticulture, of Agriculture, and of Architecture. We fell upon them, and, for years, almost monopolized them. In our little one-story cottage, after the day’s work was done, we pored over these monuments of an almost incredi- ble industry, and read, we suppose, not only every line, but much of it many times over; until, at length, we had a topographical knowledge of many of the fine English estates quite as intimate, we dare say, as was possessed by many of their truant owners. There was something exceedingly pleasant, and is yet, in the studying over mere catalogues of flowers, trees, fruits, etc. A seedsman’s list, a nurseryman’s catalogue, are more fascinating to us than any story. In this way, through several years, we gradually accumulated materials and became familiar with facts and principles, which paved the way for our editorial labors. Lindley’s Horticulture and Gray’s Structural Botany came in as constant companions, Aud when, at length, through a friend’s liberality, we be- PREFATORY. Vil came the recipients of the London Gardener’s Chronicle, edited by Prof. Lindley, our treasures were inestimable. Many hundred times have we lain awake for hours, unable to throw off the excitement of preaching, and beguiling the time with imaginary visits to the Chiswick Garden, to the more than oriental magnificence of the Duke of Devon- shire’s grounds at Chatsworth. We have had long discus- sions, in that little bedroom at Indianapolis, with Van Mons about pears, with Vibert about roses, with Thompson and Knight of fruits and theories of vegetable life, and with Loudon about everything under the heavens in the horticultural world. This employment of waste hours not only answered a purpose of soothing excited nerves then, but brought us into such relations to the material world, that, we speak with entire moderation, when we say that all the estates of the richest duke in England could not have given us half the pleasure which we have derived from pastures, waysides, and unoccupied prairies. If, when the readers of this book shall have finished it, they shall say, that these papers, well enough for the cir- cumstances in which they originally appeared, have no such merit as to justify their republication in a book form, we beg leave to tell them that their judgment is not original. {t is just what we thought ourselves! But Publishers are willful and must be obeyed | BROOKLYN, June 1, 1859. a: aa a on — i € ‘. , { i’ mil ry uw “i j | A a) ae J ft a = i Valek Men yaa a 2 ae = oo ’ \ y ‘ Aa f Wy ‘ i ' : \ ‘ : y'\ ‘. i LM ’ Py wei 4 TG i 4 ) 5 Tia J . ters TR es ae ; x “isa if a be baie teal ets COON TENTS. PaGE PAGE Political Economy of the Apple........ 1) Country and City...................-. 133 A few Flowers easily raised............ 16| Lime upon Wheat............-..----- 134 Oe 21 | Culture of Hops...........-....06<.s< 136 A Letter from the Farm............... 25 | White Cloyer..-...2.< <<< 2... hess 138 The Cost of Flowers ....-............. an) OWI AGTH ope ea ee 139 DTD Ee SS gos Ss Se So 31 | Clean out your Cellars..........-....- 142 The Value of Robins.................. 34 | When is Haying over? .............:.. 144 DTC Pe ee een 39 | Laying down Land to Grass........... 145 Unveiled Nonsense. .............-..--- 43 Theory of Manure... .~.\<5<- «000-<=- 149 Natural Order of Flowers............-- 46 | Fodder for Cattle. ...............+2.-- 151 itt Sth sho RRS en Bs Sea ee 49 | The Science of Bad Butter ........... 153 DEPOSI So ee ene ee 51 | Cincinnati, the Queen City............ bi SUPETE TOS Ae a5 Seepage sees oes 55 | Care of Animals in Winter........ 161, 243 Hens.... .. © PSA aR sag Detects Sek ae 58 | Winter Nights for Reading............ 163 2 Soe SSS ea ae eo fl) Meniigerntss sc seus ee eee eee 163 Gardening under Difficulties eee 63 Nail up your ae Be Nhs os bane usw ieeeete oe 165 RMI chet Gina ac shen sh, oxcau ss ena 66 | | Ashes and their Use ...........-s2.+.+ 168 PUCEP TUE Ta v2 2 2 RT Bee eee ae ee Seay eae 69 | Bard) Warmers oi /.chs San ls ............... 108 | Guarding Cherry-trees from Cold.. ...- 191 Bhuftless Tricks. .........5..-2-s000--- Vii | Stunde Trees =... hes a2 192, 252 Mins Paltere® 2-2) Se 114 | A Plea for Health and Floriculture..... 195 Single-Crop Farming.................. 117 | Keeping Young Pigs in Winter........ 198 Improved Breeds of Hogs and Cattle... 119 Sweet Potatoes... ........-....+-.-.+- 199 Absorbent Qualities of Flour.......... 122 Management of Bottom Lands......... 199 Portrait of an Anti-Book Farmer...... 194 Cultivation of Wheat................. 202 Good Breeds of Cows...............-. 198 | Pleasures of Horticulture............. 214 Cutting and curing Grass ............. 131 | Practical Use of Leaves ............... 215 x CONTENTS. PAGE Pace Spring Work for Public-spirited Men... 218 | Wine and Horticulture ............... 346 Farmers and Farm Scenes in the West. 220) Do Varieties of Fruit run out? ........ 349 Ornamental Shrubs..............-+- = 224} StrayDerries «ules licislc + ss clay 353, 359, 364 (Gleajeieriey GSiont op coumacanodpttuoodoon 227 | Raspberries, Gooseberries, Currants.... 364 Pulling off Potato Blossoms........... 229 | Spring Work in the Orchard .......... 367 Blading and topping Corn............. 230 | Grapes and Grape Vines........... 372, 3873 WUE STEM a anbno saadodode sWassodene 231) Autumnal Management of Fruit-trees.. 374 ILOWin CE Seesdbaudooapocaont doadoneerc 237 | Pears grafted upon the Apple Stock.... 376 Geological Definitions. ................ 238 | Seedlings from Budded Peaches........ 378 Draining Wet Lands.............se000 240 | Care of Peach-trees...............+... 381 O dear! shall we ever be done Lying?.. 242| Renovating Peach-trees............... 382 PRE ME ATTLIE clojete Lets ele)arniiiele'sivis/siaterss fee 245 | An Apologue or Apple-logue........... 384 Corn and Millet for Fodder............ 245 | Select List of Apples.................. 885 Sanil Siiptelsy ong addossG0000 0b MoggDecE 246 | Origin of some Varieties of-Fruit...... 401 RI BALD Sie cic cosas s sisleiwis e.stelsje.ecre 248, 286!) Phe Quince joa nc aie «ole leis wioiieeeteteetets 403 LEGS S oan Gdd Seino oR Ga GH COcO SACO PDUSGA 250 | Cutting and keeping Grafts. .......... 404 TOUCHES: fot idstots fotale's. o's Favcialelsre atalticlgers 258) | Mrost! Blight.) sre ote) sie o'sle sfa'steleteteleteieta 405 Original Recipes........-.+-++++seeee 254 | Seedling Fruits..........02-sccceceess 407 Cooking Vegetables.....-..++-++-e+--- 256 | Time for Pruning.....0......c..c.ceees 410 Farmers, take a Hint...............-. 260 | Plums and their Enemies............. 413 Mixing Paint and laying it on......... 262)| Reot Grastingy.- +1. :: occ sete 417 Garden! WEEUS oh2cecislscecelecie eam ce's Sie 267/| Blightand: Insects.../..0)- ss osmeem ene 419 Niu Aa oeabomeanoodode Sscessaa sore 269'| Apples for ‘Efops:. . (-.1.. lessee ealeeieeeeeneens 451 Cultivation of Fruit-trees............. 804) Potato Crop: =< iat tieceeeee ne eee 460 A List of Choice Fruits........--.2.+. 316 | Potting Garden Plants for Winter Use.. 468 The Nursery Business............- ..-- 319! Mary Howitt’s Use of Flowers......... 469 The Breeding of Fruits............... 3822) What are Flowers good for?........... 470 Pruning Orchards...) -2- ees ocer 327 | The Blight in the Pear-tree ........... 471 Slitting the Bark of Trees............. 330 | Progress of Horticulture in Indiana.... 489 Downing’s Fruits of America.......... 832| Browne's Poultry Yard ............... 495 Letter from A. J. Downing............ 889 | Close Of the Year..ccccesecececesesses 497 Attention to Orchards .......+seeceees 344 LATE: PAPERS. [- POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE APPLE. {In the Hudson River, nearly opposite Peekskill, and in the very jaws of the “Race” (as the narrow passage through the Highlands is called), there is a small, rocky island, by the name of Iona. The name was borrowed from across the water, by Dr. C. W. Grant’s father-in-law, who owned this gem,—for gem it was and is for those who love rocks, glades, fine old trees, and absolute seclusion. But who ever would have thought of such a place for vineyards? Yet, Iona became the very Jerusalem of grape- vines. Dr. C. W. Grant, formerly of Newburgh, purchased the island, and, adopting the then new grape,—the Dela- ware,—commenced propagating it for commercial purposes. It may be fairly said that no man in America ever gave to grape culture a greater impulse than Dr. Grant. Abundant sales at length brought in abundant revenues. But his ideas expanded with his means, and outran them. The island was to become another Paradise. Here the magnolia was to be propagated in such numbers that every man in America could have it in his yard, holding white cups filled with perfume to his windows. The rhododen- dron was to be sent forth to every farm. New grapes were originated. Every year developed its own marvel. But whether it was pear, Downing’s mulberry, grape, or orna- mental tree, the good democratic heart of Dr. Grant intended 2 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK no narrower field than the continent. Men were to be raised to a higher level by familiarity with better and better grapes. The taste was to be refined. Every creature under the western heavens was to sit under his own grape-vine, and not under one alone, but a whole vineyard of them. Health failed. Business got tangled. The kind doctor sold out. He is gone from his vineyards. The island re- mains. One of these days, in the hands of some one who unites taste and thrift with abundant means, it will become a marvel of beauty. But it will hardly have a pleasanter day than when, in 1864, were gathered there two score or more of ladies and gentlemen,—not a few of them famous in art, in literature, in music, in pomology, and in sanguine plans of fruit culture,— for a good time. Among the contributions to the general amusement, I was appointed Orator to discourse upon The Apple, and the address was to have been published, together with minutes of the proceedings, other speeches, and various interesting matter. But years passed on without progress toward publication. What has become of other things I know not, but this apple-talk has been fished up and saved. I fear it will never again be as fresh or as powerful as in its first estate. For there now hangs upon my cellar wall a huge pan, lacking but a few inches of three feet in diameter, upon which the ladies who had heard the address established and perfected an apple-pie,—sent to me for New Year’s Day of 1865,—of so rare a spirit that every one of the hundreds who tasted it declared it to be as good as it was large. Alas! the pan remains, and the poetry which came singing its merits; but the pie——where is it? So, too, the island of the Hudson stands secure; but where are the joyous people that thronged it on that autumn day ?] THE ADDRESS. I am to discourse of the apple to an audience, many of whom know much more about it than I do, and all of them ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 3) full as much. It does not, on that account, follow that I should not speak. What a terrible blow would fall upon all professions if a teacher should be forbidden to speak upon things of which he knew nothing, and to an audience who knew more about them than he! One large part of the duty of a teacher is to remind his hearers of how much they know, and tempt them to a better use of their knowledge. Instruction is one thing, and important in its place ; but the inspiration of men to a good use of the things that they already know is far more needed. While the character of the ladies and gentlemen present makes it proper for me to hide, with due modesty, my knowledge of the apple in the department of culture, there is what may be called the Political Economy of the Apple, by which I mean the apple in its relation to domestic com- fort and commerce ; and on that subject I think I can speak, if not to edification, at least without fear of being tracked and cornered. The apple is, beyond all question, the American fruit. It stands absolutely alone and unapproachable, grapes not- withstanding. Originating in another hemisphere, neither in its own country, nor in any other to which it has been introduced, has it flourished as in America. It is conceded in Europe that, for size, soundness, flavor, and brilliancy of coloring, the American apple stands first,—a long way first. But it is American in another sense. This is a land in which diffusion is the great law. This arises from our insti- tutions, and from the character which they have imprinted upon our people. In Europe, certain classes, having by their intelligence and wealth and influence the power to attract all things to themselves, set the current from the center toward the surface. In America, the simple doctrines that the common people are the true source of political power, that the government is directly responsible to them, and therefore that moral culture, intelligence, and training in 4 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK politics are indispensable to the common people, on whom every state is to rest safely, have wrought out such results that in all departments of justice and truth, as much as in politics, there is a tendency toward the popularizing of every- thing, and learning, or art, or any department of culture, is made to feel the need of popularity ; a word which is very much despised by classicists, but which may be used in a sense so large as to make it respectable again. Things that reach after the universal, that include in them all men in their better and nobler nature, are in a proper sense pop- ular ; and in this country, amusement and refinement and wealth itself, first or last, are obliged to do homage to the common people, and so to be popular. Nor is it otherwise in respect to horticulture. Of fruits, I think this, above all others, may be called the true democratic fruit. There is some democracy that I think must have sprung from the first apple. Of all fruits, no other can pretend to vie with the apple as the fruit of the common people. This arises from the nature of the tree and from the nature of the fruit. First, as to the tree. Itis so easy of propagation, that any man who is capable of learning how to raise a crop of corn can learn how to plant, graft or bud, transplant, and prune an apple-tree, — and then eat the apples. It is a thoroughly healthy and hardy tree; and that under more conditions and under greater varieties of stress than perhaps any other tree. It is neither dainty nor dyspeptic. It can bear high feeding and put up with low feeding. It is not subject to gout and scrofula, as plums are; to eruptions and ruptures, as the cherry is; or to apoplexy, as the pearis. The apple-tree may be pampered, and may be rendered effeminate in a degree; but this is by artificial perversion. It is naturally tough as an Indian, patient as an ox, and fruitful as the Jewish Rachel. The apple-tree is among trees what the cow is among domestic animals in northern zones, or what the camel of the Bedouin is. And, like all thoroughly good-natured, obliging, patient ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 5 things, it is homely. For beauty is generally unfavorable to good dispositions. (I am talking to the ladies now.) There seems to be some dissent; but this is the orthodox view. It seems as if the evil incident to human nature had struck in, with handsome people, leaving the surface fair; while the homely are so because the virtue within has purged and expelled the evil, and driven it to the skin. Have you never seen a maiden that lovers avoided because she was not comely, who became, nevertheless, and perhaps on that account, the good angel of the house, the natural inter- cessor for afflicted children, the one to stay with the lonely when all the gay had gone a-gadding after pleasure, the soft- handed nurse, the story-teller and the book-reader to the whole brood of eager eyes and hungry ears in the nursery ; in short, the child’s ideal of endless good-nature, self-sacri- fice, and intercessorship, the Virgin Mary of the household,— mother of God to their love, in that she brings down to them the brightest conceptions of what God may peradventure be? And yet, such are stigmatized o/d maids, though more fruitful of everything that is good (except children) than all others. One fault only do we find with them,—that they are in danger of perverting our taste, and leading us to call homeliness beautiful. All this digression, ladies and gentle- men, is on account of my dear Aunt Esther, who brought me up,—a woman so good and modest that she will spend ages in heaven wondering how it happened that she ever got there, and that the angels will always be wondering why she was not there from all eternity. I have said, with some digressions, that the apple-tree is homely; but it is also hardy, and not only in respect to climate. It is almost indifferent to soil and exposure. We should as soon think of coddling an oak-tree or a chest- nut ; we should as soon think of shielding from the winter white pine or hemlock, as an apple-tree. If there is a lot too steep for the plow or two rocky for tools, the farmer dedicates it to an apple orchard. Nor do the trees betray 6 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK histrust. Yet, the apple loves the meadows. It will thrive in sandy loams, and adapt itself to the toughest clay. It will bear as much dryness as a mullein stalk, and as much wet, almost, as a willow. In short, it isa genuine democrat. It can be poor, while it loves to be rich; it can be plain, although it prefers to be ornate; it can be neglected, notwithstanding it welcomes attention. But, whether neglected, abused, or abandoned, it is able to take care of itself, and to be fruitful of excellences. That is what I call being democratic. The apple-tree is the common people’s tree, moreover, because it is the child of every latitude and every longitude on this continent. It will grow in Canada and Maine. It will thrive in Florida and Mexico. It does well on the Atlantic slope; and on the Pacific the apple is portentous. Newton sat in an orchard, and an apple, plumping down on his head, started a train of thought which opened the heavens to us. Had it been in California, the size of the apples there would have saved him the trouble of much thinking there- after, perhaps, opening the heavens to him, and not to us. Wherever Indian corn will grow, the apple will thrive; and wherever timothy-grass will ripen its seed, the apple will exist fruitfully. Nor is the tree unworthy of special mention on account of health and longevity. It is subject to fewer diseases than almost any tree of our country. The worms that infest it are more easily destroyed than those upon the currant or the rose. The leaf is subject to blight in so small a degree, that not one farmer in a hundred ever thinks of it. The trunk is seldom winter-killed. It never cracks. It has no trouble, as the cherry does, in unbuckling the old bark and getting rid of it. The borer is the only important enemy ; and even this is a trifle, if you compare the labor required to destroy it with the pains which men willingly take to secure a crop of potatoes. Acre for acre, an apple orchard will, on an average of years, produce more than half as many ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 7 bushels of fruit as a potato-field,— will it not? And yet, in plowing and planting and after-plowing and hoeing and digging, the potato requires at least five times the annual labor which is needed by the apple. An acre of apple-trees can be kept clean of all enemies and diseases with half the labor of once hoeing a crop of potatoes. And if you have borers it is your own fault, and you ought to be bored! The health of the apple-tree is so great that farmers never think of examining their orchards for disease, any more than they do cedar posts or chestnut rails. And the great lon- gevity of the apple-tree attests its good constitution. Two hundred years it sometimes reaches. I have a tree on my own place in Peekskill that cannot be less than that. Two ladies, one about eighty years of age, called upon us about three years ago, saying that they were brought up on that farm, and inquiring if the old apple-tree yet lived. They said that in their childhood it was called the old apple- tree, and was then a patriarch. It must now be a Methu- selah. And, not to recur to it again, I may say that it is probably the largest recorded apple-tree of the world. I read in no work of any tree whose circumference is greater than twelve or thirteen feet. This morning I measured the Peekskill apple-tree, and found that six inches above the ground it was fourteen feet and six inches, and, at about four feet, or the spring of the limbs, fourteen feet and ten inches. I am sorry to add that the long-suffering old tree gives unmistakable signs of yielding to the infirmities of age. The fruit is sweet, but not especially valuable, except for stock. I do not expect to live to see any of my other trees attain to the size and age of this solitary lingerer of other centuries! I cannot lrelp reverencing a tree whose leaves have trembled to the cannonading of the guns of our Revo- lution, which yielded fruit to Putnam’s soldiers when that hill was a military post, and under whose shadow Washing- ton himself—without any stretch of probability—may have walked, _- > oe ee 8 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK I ought not to omit the good properties of the apple-tree for fuel and cabinet-work. I have for five autumns kept up the bright fire required by the weather in an old-fashioned Franklin fireplace, using apple-wood, procured from old trees pruned or cut up wholly; and, when it is seasoned, I esteem it nearly as good as hickory, fully as good as maple, and far better than seasoned beech. I have also for my best bureau one of apple-wood. It might be mistaken for cherry. It is fine-grained, very hard, solid as mahogany, and grows richer with every year of age. In Europe, the streets and roads are often shaded by fruit trees, the mulberry and the cherry being preferred. In some parts, the public are allowed to help themselves freely. When the fruit of any tree is to be reserved, a wisp of straw is placed around it, which suffices. Upright-growing apple- trees might be employed, with pears and cherries, in our streets and roads, and by their very number, and their abun- dance of fruit, might be taken away one motive of pilfering from juvenile hands. He must be a preordained thief who will go miles to steal that which he can get in broad day- light, without reproach, by his door. One way to stop stealing is to give folks enough without it. I have thus far spoken of the apple tee. Inow pass to the Srwit,—to the apple itself. The question whether it sprang from the wild crab I do not regard as yet settled. It is not known from any historical evidence to have had that origin. You cannot prove that this, that, or the other man, of any age or nation, planted the seed and brought forward the fruit. Nor am I aware that any man has conducted experi- ments on it like those of Van Mons on the pear, or those which Dr. Grant has made on the grape that is cultivated in this country, to show that it sprang from the wild grape of Europe. Until that is done, it will be only a theory, a probable fact, but not a fact proved. And, by the way, it might be worth some man’s while, at his leisure, to take the seeds of the American wild grape, and see if, by any horti- ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 9 cultural Sunday school, he can work them up into good Christian vines. The apple comes nearer to universal uses than any other fruit of the world. Is there another that has such a range of season? It begins in July, and a good cellar brings the apple round into July again, yet unshrunk, and in good flavor. It belts the year. What other fruit, except in the tropics, where there is no winter, and where there are suc- cessive growths, can do that? It is a luxury, too. Kinds may be had so tender, so deli- eate, and,as Dr. Grant—the General Grant of the vineyards —would say, so refreshing, that not the pear, even, would dare to vie with it, or hope to surpass it. The Vanderveer of the Hudson River, the American Golden Russet, need not, in good seasons, well ripened, fear a regiment of pears in pomological convention, even in the city of Boston. It may not rival the melting qualities of the peach, eating which one knows not whether he is eating or drinking. But the peach is the fruit of a day,—ephemeral; and it is doubtful whether one would carry through the year any such relish as is experienced for a few weeks. It is the peculiarity of the apple that it never wearies the taste. It is to fruit what _wheaten bread is to grains. It is a life-long relish. You may be satisfied with apples, but never cloyed. Do you remember your boyhood feats? I was brought up in a great old-fashioned house, with a cellar under every inch of it, through which an ox-cart might have been wheeled after all the bins were full. In this cellar, besides potatoes, beets, and turnips, were stored every year some hundred bushels of apples,—the Rhode Island Greening, the Roxbury Russet, the Russet round the Stem, as it was called, and the Spitzen- berg; not daintily picked, but shaken down; not in aristo- cratic barrels set up in rows, but ox-carts full; not handled softly, but poured from baskets into great bins, as we poured potatoes into their resting-place. If they bruised and rot- ted, let them. We had enough and to spare. Two 10 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK seasons of picking over apples—a sort of grand assizes— put the matter all right. In all my boyhood I never dreamed of apples as things possible to be stolen. So abun- dant were they, so absolutely open to all comers,—who went down into the cellar by the inside stairs instead of the out- side steps,—that we should as soon have thought of being cautioned against taking turnips, or asking leave to take a potato. Apples were as common as air. And that was early in December and January; for I noticed that the sun was no more fond than I was of staying out a great while on those Litchfield hills, but ran in early to warm his fingers, as I did mine. When the day was done, and the candles were lighted, and the supper was out of the way, we all gathered about the great kitchen fire; and soon after George or Henry had to go down for apples. Generally it was Henry. A boy’s hat is a universal instrument. It is a bat to smack butterflies with, .a bag to fetch berries in, a basket for stones to pelt frogs withal, a measure to bring up apples in. And a big-headed boy’s old felt hat was not stingy inits quantities; and when its store ended, the errand could always be repeated. To eat six, eight, and twelve apples in an evening was no great feat for a growing young lad, whose stomach was no more in danger of dyspepsia than the neighborhood mill, through whose body passed thou- sands of bushels of corn, leaving it no fatter at the end of the year than at the beginning. Cloyed with apples? To eat an apple is to want to eat another. We tire of cherries, of peaches, of strawberries, of figs, of grapes, (I say it with reverence in this presence!) but never of apples. Nay, when creature comforts fail, and the heart—hopeless voyager on the troubled sea of life—is sick, apples are comforters ; or, wherefore is it written :— “ As the apple-tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. il me was love. Stay me with flagons,’—undoubtedly of cider !—“ comfort me with apples; for I am sick of love.” If this is the cure of love, we may the better understand why the popular instinct should have resorted to the apple- tree as a cure for ambition, singing, ‘‘We ll hang Jeff Davis on a sour-apple tree.” There is, in this toothsomeness of the apple, together with its utter harmlessness, a provision for nurses and mothers. There is a growing period when children are voracious. They must be filled; and it is a matter of great account to know what to fill them with. If you give them but bread, that seems meager. Pies, cakes, and sweetmeats are mis- chievous; and yet more so are candies and confections. Apples just hit the mark. They are more than a necessary of life, and less than a luxury. They stand just half-way between bread and cake, as wholesome as one and as good as the other. But now I enter upon the realm of uses, culinary and domestic, where, were I an ancient poet, I should stop and invoke all the gods to my aid. But the gods are all gone; and next to them is that blessing of the world, the housewife. Her I invoke, and chiefly one who taught me, by her kitchen magic, to believe that the germ of civilization is in the art and science of the kitchen. Is there, among fruits, one other that has so wide a range, or a range so important, so exquisite, so wonderful, as the range of the apple in the kitchen ? First, consider it as a fruit-vegetable. It might with great advantage take its place upon the table as regularly as the potato or the onion. Far more odorous is the onion, but, I think, far more blessed is the apple. It is an admi- rable accompaniment of meat, which always craves a piquant acid for relish. And when meat is wanting,a scrap of pork in the frying-pan, with sliced apples, will serve the economic table almost as well as if it had been carved from a beef or cut from a sheep. 12 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK We do not use the apple enough in our cooking. As a fruit upon the table it may be used for breakfast, for supper, for dessert. Roasted apples! Baked apples! What visions come before my mind! Not the baked apples of the modern stove, which has humbled their glory. They are still worth eating, but they have lost the stature, the comeliness, and the romance of the old roasted apples, that were placed in due order between the huge andirons, and turned duly by the careful servant, drinking in heat on one side and oxygen on the other, and coming to a degree of luxurious nicety that will never be attained till we go back again to the old fireplace. It was a real pleasure to be sick,—I mean on the hither border of sickness; so that we might not go to school, and so that, while we took a little magnesia, we might feast on delicious roasted apples. And as for baked apples and milk, how can I adequately speak of that most excel- lent dish! Then, again, the apple may be regarded as a confection, serving in the form of tarts, pies,—blessed be the unknown person who invented the apple-pie! Did I know where the grave of that person was, methinks I would make a devout pilgrimage thither, and rear a monument over it that should mark the spot to the latest generations. Of all pies, of every name, the apple-pie is easily the first and chief. And what shall I say of jellies, dumplings, puddings, and various pre- serves, that are made from the apple? It might seem hard, in this enumeration of the many forms in which the apple is made to contribute to the benefit of mankind, not to notice that form in which it defies age, I. refer to the dried apple. No festoons are more comely than were those half-circles that used to decorate the rafters of the old-fashioned kitchen. I confess that no dried fruit is worthy to be called fruit, whether it be huckleberry, or peach, or pear, or apple’ Once dried, these things have lost the soul of their flavor; and no coddling, no soaking, no experi- menting, will ever bring them back to what they were in ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 13 their original fresh life. You cannot give youth to old age in apples any more than among men. And yet, as a sowve- nir, as a sad remembrancer of days gone by, dried apples are very good. Next, we naturally consider the use of apples as food for stock,—for swine, for horses, and for cattle. This use of them is known; but it seems to me that they are not thus employed near so much as their benefits would justify. Last of all, let me speak of cider; for, although the days of temperance have banished cider from its former and almost universal position upon the farmer’s table, it is creep- ing back again. Not daring to come in its own name, it comes in the name of a neighbor, and is called champagne. But whether it comes in one form or another, it still is savory of the orchard ; still it brings warmth to chilly veins; stillit is a contribution to many a homely domestic festival. And though I cannot, as a temperance man, exhort you to make it, I must say, that if you wil/ make it, you had better make it good! But woe to him who takes another step in that direction! Cider-brandy is a national disgrace. How great is the calam- ity that impends over a community that makes cider-brandy may be known by the recent history of the Shenandoah valley; it being declared by several of the Richmond papers that the defeat of Early was owing to the abundance of apple-jack there. It only remains that I should say a single word on the subject of the apple as an article of commerce. Whether fresh or dried, it is still, in that relation, a matter of no small importance. The home market is enlarging every year; and as soon as the apple shall become so cheap that all men may have it no matter how poor they may be, the market must of necessity have become very much augmented. Many men suppose that as orchards increase and fruit multiplies the profits diminish. Such is not the tact. As the com- 14 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK moner kinds multiply, and the common people learn to use them as dhily food, the finer kinds will bear proportionally higher prices ; and cheapness is one of the steps to profit in all things that are consumed in the community. And I should be glad to see the day when, for a few pence, every drayman, every common laborer in every city, should be able to bring as much fruit to his house every day as his family could consume in that day. I should be glad to see in our cities, what is to be seen to some extent in the cities of Europe, the time when a penny or two will enable a man to bring home enough flowers to decorate his table of food twice a day. We have not merely in view the profits of raising fruit when we exhort you to bestow your attention on the apple more and more as an article of commerce; we have also in view the social influence which it may be made to exert. I hold that when in any respect you lift the common people up, whether by giving them a better dwelling, by placing within their reach better furniture, or by enabling them to furnish their table better, you are raising them to- ward self-respect ; you are raising them toward the higher positions in society. For, although all men should start with the democracy, all men have a right to stop with the aris- tocracy. Let all put their feet on the same level; and then let them shoot as high as they please. Blessed is the man that knows how to overtop his neighbors by a fair devel- opment of skill and strength. And every single step of advance in general cultivation, even though it is brought about by so humble an instrumentality as the multiplication of fruit, or anything else that augments the range of healthful enjoyment among the common people, not only stimulates their moral growth, but, through that growth, gives the classes above them a better chance to grow. One of the most eflicient ways of elevating the whole community is to multiply the means of livelihood among the poorest and commonest. es . re, ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 15 I will not finish my remarks with those elaborate statis- tics or with those admirable and eloquent periods with which I should be pleased to entertain you, for two reasons: first, because I would not consume your time at so late an hour ; and, secondly, because I have none of these things at hand! 16 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK Il. A FEW FLOWERS EASILY RAISED. February 22d, 1868. Tue love of flowers is steadily increasing among the com- mon people of America, and anything which shall increase the knowledge and skill of the plain people in the manage- ment of flowers will be a contribution to the public welfare. Those that are rich can command the services of expert gardeners, and need no advice from me. But there are thousands who have ground enough around their dwellings, and yet have little knowledge in the selection of plants and flowers, and little skill in the cultivation of them, to whom I may be of some service if I give such hints as have been derived chiefly from my own experience. Assuming, then, that my reader has given but little atten- tion to the cultivation of flowers, and that he needs to be told the simplest things, I would begin by recommending him to send for a catalogue of flowers to Mr. Vick, Roches- ter, N. Y., or to Mr. B. K. Bliss, of Park Place, New York, or Mr. Thorburn, John Street, also New York; not, as might at first be supposed, for the sake of the list of seeds, but because each catalogue contains brief directions how to prepare the ground, how to sow various kinds of seeds, ete., etc. With such hints as these catalogues afford, one can begin. The very first step is to succeed the first year in admirably raising one or two things. If one undertakes too much before having practical experience he will fail, become disgusted, and give up the whole effort at flowers in discouragement. But the exquisite delight of seeing a bed of flowers, of your own raising, and thoroughly good, will be apt to inspire a real ambition, and lay the foundation for future success with more difficult flowers. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. Li I will suppose a young lady, who never has cultivated flowers, but who can afford to hire a man’s services for one or two days in the spring. She is to perform all the rest of the work herself. What shall she plant ? Morning-glories. If possible, select a place which the morning sun will not reach before nine or ten o’clock in the forenoon, in order to save the daily bloom from withering before you have had half enough enjoyment. Let the ground be made mellow, and enriched with black dirt from the woods, or with old and well-decayed barn-yard manure, or, if neither are convenient, with a pint of saperphos- phate of lime to each square yard of ground, well mixed into the soil. This can now be bought in almost every large town, or the merchant who sells seeds will procure it for you. The common sorts of morning-glories, if combined, will answer well. But one who would do the best should have two beds, one of the Convolvulus, and the other of Zpomea. The difference is of importance only to a botanist. To the common eye the flowers are the same. Of Jpomeas there is a puce-colored one, which blossoms late in the afternoon, named Buona Now; a mazarine-blue, shading to red (Learii); a sky-blue with white edge, called in the catalogue —don’t be afraid!—Jpomea hederacea superba grandi- flora, i. e. the superb great-flowering ivy-leaved ZJpomea. And then there is a very fine variety of this same one, whose Latin name you will get by adding to the above the com- pound word Afro-violacea. One more name, viz. pomea limbata elegantissima. Plant the seeds as soon as the frost is finally out of the ground. Let there be pales, or strings, or trellis, arranged for them to climb upon, and you will have all summer long, and till the frost kills them, a magnificent show of exquisite blossoms every morning; Sundays as well as week-days, for flowers wear their Sunday clothes all through the week. We have derived as much pleasure from these morning-glories = 18 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK as from any one thing in our garden. They are healthy and hearty growers, not infested with insects, profuse in bloom, surpassing all blossoms in exquisite form and delicacy, and, what is of prime importance, holding forth thyough the whole summer, whether hot or cold, wet or dry.! - The common morning-glory will sow itself, and ‘come up every year in the same place; but the seed of the Jpomea must be saved and planted every spring anew. Now, let some sweet girl begin her flower-life with morning-glories— nothing else—the first year, and see if she will ever let a summer go by afterward without flowers! A bed of China Aster, although blossoming for only a few weeks, may be had with so little trouble that one may well undertake it. Send for the best kind, say Zruffants Giant Emperor, or his new Peony-flowered. Plant them in rows six inches apart, in a seed-bed. Keep them clean from all weeds. When grown from an inch to two inches high, transplant them to a prepared bed, placing them about fifteen inches apart each way. The ground should be rich, light, and gently hoed, at least once a week, to keep the surface open. If very large flowers are wanted, not more than three blooms should be allowed to one root. We prefer, however, to give the plant a rich soil and let it yield its flowers, large and small, to suit itself, The seed should be saved from the largest blossoms only. A particular favorite with us is the Petunia. If fine seed is secured, a bed of seedlings may be easily grown which will be splendid the whole summer long. The directions for the aster may be followed for Petunias, except that the plants should stand two feet apart. Select a place where they will have air and sun all day. They are generous, and will roll out billows of color through the whole summer, and even after.the light early frosts have cut down many other things. There are two other beds on which we depend for color every summer, and could no more afford to miss than we — ee ee a ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 19 could the sunsets, viz. Dwarf Convolvulus and Esch- scholizia. A bed of Dwarf or Convolvulus Minor, say six by twelve feet, will be an object of pleasure all summer long. They are to be planted where they are to stand, as they will not bear transplanting good-naturedly. Sow in rows eight inches apart, and when well up thin out, leaving the plants a foot apart. There are five or six varieties, and the mixed seed, from a reputable seedsman, should contain them all. No one will be willing to go without a bed of Dwarf Con- volvulus who has once seen how easily they are raised, and how splendid and long-continued is their blossom- ing. Manage the Eschscholizia in almost exactly the same way. There are three shades of color,—pale yellow, bright yellow, and orange. The foliage is extremely deli- cate. The buds are very shapely, and the full bloom gives brilliancy to the whole region where the bed is planted. No one knows this flower who has not seen its effect in beds, or on long borders. In a similar way the Poppy should be raised. Get seed of the Carnation Poppy and the Peony-flowered Poppy. It will not bear trans- planting well. A bed of Portulacca will be so brilliant that it will almost put your eyes out when the sun shines; and it is so easy to raise, that success is no credit. Prepare a bed, say four by six feet, or larger if you choose, and rake it off smoothly. The seeds are extremely minute. Take a pinch of them as if they were snuff, and then do by them what everybody ought to do by snuff;—sift them evenly all over the ground. Then just touch the ground with the tips of the rake-teeth, stirring it very lightly. Take a spade and spat the surface gently, so as to bring the soil home to the seed. Keep weeds away, and for the rest do nothing but enjoy the labor of your hands. It will come up of itself every year, and become a weed if you wish it to. There, we have mentioned enough flowers for a beginning. 20 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK They are all hardy, profuse bloomers, and, with the excep- tion of the aster, last all summer, and form masses of color which will charm the eye every time you look out of your window. A girl can do all that is to be done, except work- ing the ground, and even that ought not to be so hard as it would be to go without flowers. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. _ 21 1g0e FLOWER-FARMING. February 29th, 1868. I ACKNOWLEDGE the merits of flower-gardening, but a kind of necessity has compelled me to practice flower-farm- ing. Ido not live upon my little farm, on the Hudson, ex- cept for a few months in midsummer. To keep a professional gardener befits more ample means than mine. Yet I must have flowers; I am as set and determined to have flowers as my farmer, Mr. Turner, is to have vegetables; and there is a friendly quarrel on hand all the season, a kind of border warfare, between flowers and vegetables, which shall have this spot, and which shall secure that nook; whether in this southern slope it shall be onions or gladioluses; whether a row of lettuce shall edge that patch, or of asters. I think, on a calm review, that I have rather gained on Mr. Turner. The fact is, I found that he had me at advantage, being always on the place, and having the whole spring to himself. So I shrewdly tampered with the man himself, and before he knew what he was about, I had infected him with the flower mania (and this is a disorder which I have never known cured); so that I had an ally in the very enemy’s camp. Indeed, I begin to fear that my manager will get ahead of me yet in skill and love of flowers! I can see many and sufficient reasons for parterres of flowers, for borders of mixed plants, for clumps and ribbons ; but I can see no reason for supposing that flowers grow to advantage on/y in these formal methods. In a plantation of tomatoes, if every alternate plant in the outer row is a petunia you will find a charming effect in the red fruit of the one and the profuse blossoming of the other ; and on these outer rows the tomatoes may be left to ripen ee, PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK for seed, as being more exposed to the sun, thus adding the beauty of their rich color. I do not know why a square plat of beets or onions may not be edged with asters, or with balsams. Sometimes I plant a few alternate rows of flowers with my root crops, and find that carrots and stocks, alternated, are admirable friends. When the main crops are in, there are always some outlying edges, some places about the walls, which would be surely filled in with cabbages, if I did not jump at the chance. I have great luck with tropealums, nasturtiums, and particularly with labias, which are as easy of culture, on a farm, asa bean. And I have a fancy that when one comes upon a heap of stones in a corner, covered over with all varieties of tropealum, he takes more pleasure in them than if found just where one would look for them, in a flower-bed. If I should lay down a rule, it would be that, in arable land, or in shrubbery and forest, no man should have to walk more than twenty paces to find a flower. If a lady should meet you on any acre on your farm, you ought to be able then and there to make up for her an acceptable bouquet. In an unexpected way, I am like to have my rule kept for me. For, in autumn, the stems and haulms of flowers go to the barn-yard and join all other stuff fit for compost ; and when, in the spring, it is hauled out, I find, on every part of the farm, that stray seeds have shaken out, and sown them- selves, and produced volunteer flowers. Indeed, the primrose family are getting too familiar; larkspurs are everywhere ; coreopsis glitters all over the fields; poppies have turned vagrants; and the portulacca has fairly become a weed. Farms should be carried on for profit and pleasure; and, as I fail in the former, I am determined to make up in the latter element. Now and then, on the outer row of Indian corn, a convol- vulus, climbing to the very top and full of blossoms, will ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 23 cheat nothing and enrich the eye a great deal. There is always a spot or two, amidst field crops, where a Kicinus sanguineus (castor bean) will do bravely; and I will aftirm that no fancier will be able to get past it without stopping to look at its generous palms. Where stone-walls prevail, what can be less expensive and what more beautiful than to cover them with the Chinese honeysuckles, with, now and then, the new and hardy golden-veined honeysuckle, with other hardy sorts, easily propagated? There is also our own wild clematis, and to this may be joined, at little expense, several of the new varieties in this charming family, which may be obtained of nurserymen. If one has young evergreen trees,—say the Norway spruce,—a few of the finer kinds of morning-glory (Jpo- meas), planted near and suffered to run up among the branches and peep out of the green openings, will have a beautiful effect all summer long, and the tree will suffer no harm, as it sometimes does when the bitter-sweet, the ampe- lopsis, and other woody vines, take possession of them. Stumps are not deemed ornamental, and yet I have seen them turned to an admirable account. [If still standing on their own roots, but decayed at the core, let them be hol- lowed out, deeply as may be, filled with good soil, and flowers planted in them, nasturtiums or petunias or the linums or dwarf morning-glories. Stumps that have been pulled up by the roots, and rolled into a corner, may be dressed out with ferns, vines, and mosses, and a tasteful hand will array them in such beauty that the farmer will be re- luctant another season to give them up to the axe and the stove. Flowers peeping out of unlikely spots give a surprise of pleasure. Therefore stick in a flower just where it would not be expected. No matter if it “was never done before,” or if “farmers don’t do so in these parts,” or if “flowers are a trouble, and don’t bring any money.” They bring what 24 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK money often fails to bring,—refinement and _ pleasure. There is no use, my old friend under a rough coat, in mak- ing believe that you don’t like flowers. I know that you do. Somewhere in you is a spot, if the rubbish can be cleared away, which a flower always touches. There is no reason why rich gentlemen should own all the flowers. Hard-working farmers and mechanics have as much right to them as if they lived without working. What shall I say of the gladiolus? It is the flower for the million! It is as easy to manage as a potato. It blos- soms long, and better if cut and carried into the house than if left out doors. Its varieties of color are endless. It is healthy; multiplies its corms rapidly, can be kept in winter in a common cellar, if dried off a little first; and is calculated to return as much pleasure for a small outlay as any flower in vogue. A few dozen to start with will convince any man of the truth of my words. Let me dissuade you, my dear readers, from too great an addiction to mere profit. Don’t wait for a regular garden of flowers, but stick them in, in nooks and corners, all about the homestead. eee SS lee ee ee ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 25 IV. A LETTER FROM THE FARM. PEEKSKILL, May 28th, 1868. My pear Mr. Bonner: You must expect no article from me this week. Iam engaged. I was never more busy in my life. Let me relate my occupations. At about half past three in the morning, I wake. The light is just com- ing. I do not care for that, as Ido not propose to get up at such an hour. But the birds do care. They evidently wind up their singing apparatus overnight. For, when the first bird breaks the silence, in an instant the rest go off, as if a spring had been touched which moved them all. Was ever such noise! There are robins without count, wood- thrushes, orioles, sparrows, bobolinks, meadow-larks, blue- birds, yellow-birds, wrens, warblers, catbirds (as the North- ern mocking-bird is called), martins, twittering swallows. Think of the noise made by mixing all these bird-notes to- gether! Add a rooster, and a solemn old crow to carry the bass. Then consider that of each kind there are scores, and of some kinds hundreds, within ear reach, and you will have some faint conception of the opening chant of the day. You may not believe that I wake so early. But I do. You may be still less inclined to believe that, after listening for ten minutes to this mixture, I again go to sleep. But I solemnly do. Nor do I think of getting up before six o'clock. Whether I should emerge even then, if it were not for the savory odor that begins to steal through my cottage, I cannot tell. After breakfast, there are so many things to be donegfirst that I neglect them all. The morn- ing is so fine, the young leaves are so beautiful, the bloom on the orchards is so gorgeous, the sounds and sights are so many and so winning, that I am apt to sit down on the 2 26 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK veranda, for just a moment, and for just another, and for a series of them, until an hour goes by. Do not blame me! Do not laugh at such farming and such a farmer. The soil overhead bears larger and better crops, for a sensible man, than does the soil under feet. There are blossoms in the clouds. There is fruit upon invisible trees, to those who know how to pluck it. But then sky-gazing and this dallying with the landscape will not do. What crowds of things require the eye and hand! Flowers must be transplanted. Flower-seeds must be sown; shrubs and trees pruned; vines looked after; a walk taken over the hill to see after some evergreens, with many pauses to gaze upon the landscape, and many birds watched as they are confidentially exhibiting their domestic traits before you. The kittens, too, at the barn, must be visited, the calf, the new cow. Then every gar- dener knows how much time is consumed in noticing the new plants; for instance, I have some eight new strawber- ries that need watching, each one purporting to be a world’s wonder. I am quite anxious about eight or ten new kinds of clematis; two new species of honeysuckle; eight or ten new and rare evergreens; and ever so many other things,— shrubs and flowers. What shall I say of the new peas, new beans, rare cucumbers, early melons, extraordinary pota- toes? Speaking of potatoes, do you know anything of the Harly Rose? Let me tell you. One hundred bushels were sold this spring, to one man, for eighty dollars a bushel! Since then, they have been selling by the pownd, at the increasing prices of one, two, and three dollars a pound. It takes about three potatoes to make a pound. Now for a story—true, for I had it from Timothy Tit- comb’s lips. A friend sent him this potato, with injunctions to give it the utmost care. He planted it in his garden, and when it ripened, last summer, not informed of its exceeding preciousness, he proceeded to eat. In a reasonable time he OO ee ee ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 27 consumed three barrels, which at the lowest price were worth about seven hundred dollars! I have a very nice plat of these potatoes, and should like to sell them to you in advance. As an inducement, I offer mine at fifty dollars a bushel! But this is confidential. I do not wish to be overrun with purchasers, scrambling for a chance! Do you not see that it is impossible for me, amid such in- cessant and weighty cares, to compose an article? The air is white with apple-blossoms; the trees are all singing; the steaming ground beseeches me to grant it a portion of flower-seeds; by night the whippoorwills, and by day the wood-thrush and mocking-bird, fill my imagination with all sorts of fancies, and how can I write? 28 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK Wi: THE COST OF FLOWERS. June 18th, 1868. Tue charms of flowers have been sung ever since letters have existed. But in our day the passion for flowers has wonderfully increased, and the cultivation of them, which is a thing very different from the sentiment of admiration, has become so common that it is considered as an evidence of bad taste for one having any ground not to have flowers about the dwelling-house. But how few who only receive flowers as gifts, or pur- chase them, know the pains and penalties of flower-raising ! It may be imagined that one has only to scratch open the ground, bury the seed, and then patiently wait for nature to do the rest. Listen! First comes the seed-buying. We do not think seedsmen any less honest than other men. In- deed, the conduct of those with whom we have dealt for ten years past leads us to think that they are honorable and honest in intent. But that does not insure good seeds. They buy of other seedsmen, in foreign lands, who may not be honest, or are obliged to trust seed-raisers. And so it comes to pass that seeds, like thousands of other articles in this wicked and adulterous generation, are adulterated. Italian carnation seed come up miserable single pinks, of very poor colors; balsams are not half so choice as is the price at which the seed is sold; not one in ten of this year’s ipomea seed (convolvulus) will stir out of the ground,— and so of stock, sweet-william, ete. But, that past, and our seed well planted, there often comes a deluge, and washes the seed-beds to pieces, or a long wet spell rots the seed in the ground. At length we gather up what we can, and transplant the a a i i ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 29 remnant, and patiently wait for the flowers. But we are not the only ones waiting for them. A legion of various insects seem to think that all our flowers were pianted for them. We have been often asked why were insects cre- ated? If it is fair to say that the cause of their existence may be learned from the effects which they produce, we boldly aver that they were made to humble man’s arro- gance, and to teach him how much mightier is insect weak- ness than human power. A grasshopper is contemptible. The farmer can crush him at a step. But let the plague of grasshoppers be let loose, and all his fields be deluged with them; and how easily do myriads of creatures that are individually weak overwhelm him and destroy all his labor! We have a realizing sense of the unequal war which is waged between man and insects. It seems in late years as if horticulture might as well be abandoned. Cherries and plums go down before the curculio; apples before the can- ker-worm, the tent-worm, and the apple-worm; currants before a worm peculiar to itself; melons before half a dozen kinds of enemies (not including roguish boys). Among flowers the destruction is equally great. As soon as the rose fairly shakes out its leaves it is attacked: one bug cuts circles out of the leaves, as if busy with a pair of scissors making diagrams; then comes the ¢hrip, that can neither be caught, nor wet with soapsuds, nor dusted with lime, nor pinched with the fingers,—a nimble fellow, mi- nute as a speck of flour, but numerous as dust. Close upon its heels comes the s/ug, whose remorseless appetite leaves nothing behind it but the ribs and frame of the leaf. Next come the rose-bugs proper, of a finer appetite, disdaining anything less delicate than rose-petals. Of these the num- ber is surpassing; their devastation pitiable. There stand my bushes stripped of leaves and blighted in flowers. Of course there are remedies enough. One rose-bush may be treated with hand-picking, or pinching, or washes, 30 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK but one or two hundred rose-bushes would require formida- ble engineering. Year by year the number of insects increases. New flowers come into the blighted circle. Aphides, grubs, worms, moles, flies—at the root, or on the top—resist your labor at every step. They never tire. They seem never to be full. They get up before you do, and eat on all night, after you are asleep. Well, we are born into a world which pays few premiums to lazy men. Whatever is worth having is worth working for. At any rate, Providence seems to design that no man shall gather who does not sow and tend. Of every lazy man it may well be said, What does he in this world? This is a place for workers. “He that will not work shall not eat,” is an inspired command. It is as true of the garden as of the field, of flowers as of fruit and grain. God sends millions of insects over all our gardens and flower-beds, saying, “ We are sent to make you work.” Every insect is some malignant enchanter, and every fair-faced flower, like a maiden lost in the wilderness, beseeches us to deliver it from its enemies! ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 31 VE HAYING. July 2d, 1868. Atas for the poetry of farming! All the songs of milk- maids must be now listened for in the old English poets. The whetting of the mower’s scythe is almost over—quite over on my farm! Instead of that, one hears the sharp rattle of the mower, and sees the driving-man quite at his ease riding round and round the meadow, for all the world as if he were out airing. Whereas, heretofore, two acres would be counted a large day’s work, ten and twelve are easily accomplished now! Nor is the contrast less remarkable in all the after-work. When I was a boy, I was placed in line with all the men that could be mustered, to shake out the hay with forks; and after a few hours, all hands were called to go over the ground and turn it. To do this rapidly, and yet so that the bottom side should really come to the top, was no small knack. Now, a tedder, with one man riding, will literally do the work of ten men, and do it far better than the most expert can. Have you ever seen atedder? I have a per- fect one. The grass rolls up behind it and foams, I was going to say, like water behind the wheels of a steamer. The grass leaps up and whirls as if it were amazingly tickled with such dealings. The result is, that unless the grass is very heavy, and the weather very bad, you may cut your hay in the morning and get it into your barn before night, in far better condition than it used to be when it required never less than two, and generally a part of three days to cure it. But I have forgotten the horse-rake, Instead of the old- fashioned, long-handled rake, and the five or six men pull- ou PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK ing and hauling to get the grass into windrows, that same fellow, with that same horse, rides his luxurious rake, and in a fifth part of the time formerly required puts it into equally good shape. Indeed, haying, if it has lost its poetry, has also lost its drudgery. A man can now manage a hundred acres of grass easier than he formerly could twenty. The only thing that remains to be made easy is pitching on and off the load. It is true that horse-forks have been invented, but I have never seen any that did their work well; and in my barn, at any rate, the old work of pitching and mowing remains; and if you wish to know what fun is, get on to the mow, under the slate roof of my barn, on a hot day, and let Tim pitch off hay as he will if I give him the wink. You will have to step lively, and even then you will often be seen emerging from heaps of hay thrown over you, like a rat from a bunch of oakum. And then it is so pleasant, when a man is all a-sweat, to have his shirt filled with hay-seed, each particular particle of which makes be- lieve that it is a flea, and wiggles and tickles upon every square inch of his skin, until he is half desperate. It is the 2d of July, and my grass is all cut, and the last load is rolling into the barn while I write. How sweet it smells! How jolly the children are that have been mounted on the top of the load! And their little scarlet jackets peep out from their nest while Tim stands guard and nurse. A child that has not ridden up from the mead- ow to the barn on a load of hay has yet to learn one of the luxuries of exultant childhood. What care they for jolts, when the whole load is a vast and multiplex spring? The more the wagon jounces the better they like it! Then come the bars, leading into the lane with maple-trees on each side. The limbs reach down, and the green leaves kiss the children over and over again. So would I, if I were a green leaf, and not consider myself so green after all! And so the — load slowly rolls up the hiil. There is no such thing as mo- mentum in an ox. He is always at a dead pull and at the i =a ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 33 very hardest. But the children like it. The slower they move the longer is the ride! Let them take all the comfort they can. By and by they will be grown, and own fine car- riages, and roll in style through the streets. But there is many a fair face that rides in a silk-lined coach, with a sad heart, and would go back if she could, O, how gladly, to her joyous ride on a load of hay! 34 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK VIL. THE VALUE OF ROBINS. October 10th. Tue game-law has relaxed its authority. The gun is set free. I hear it in the woods, in the fields, on the hills, Sundays and week-days, bang! bang! bang! as if it could not express its joy, and even celebrating its own emancipa- tion. Well, let them fire, only so they keep off my hill. It is true that the birds have finished their service, and are now of little use, either as songsters or as worm-exterminators —more’s the pity! But are their past services to be for- gotten ? Let me speak of the robin. He is an immense feeder, and omnivorous. Nothing seems to come amiss—fruit, worm, or seed. Glutton he is not, for he does not eat more than he really needs; but he needs more than most birds of his size. It is a disputed question, among farmers, whether the robin is a profitable bird. Whether he does not damage the fruit crop out of all proportion to his services in the crusade against insects. I grieve to say, that my own household is divided, and that Iam the only one that is openly and wholly a friend to the robin. He is an early riser, and no sooner has he sung his morning hymn than he begins breakfast. Now, in the month of June cherries ripen. I havea cherry orchard. When fully grown, there will be enough for robins and men. But at present my trees are like precocious children; they blossom enormously, but set little fruit. The question now is, Whose is that fruit? The people in the house declare that it belongs to us. The robins out of doors say little about it, but actions >. ' ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 35 speak louder than words. Rising earlier than we do, they get their breakfast before the smoke rises from my chimneys. I will not permit them to be driven away, and still less to be shot. I plead their services. I recount their deeds of valor against insects; their service of song. But it is all in vain. Iam voted down. All manner of threats are thrown out by the boys, “if I would only let them.” But I won’t let them ! There are two distinct grounds on which these birds are to be preserved and encouraged. The first ground is the refin- ing pleasure which they give to every person of true suscep- tibility. Thousands there are who live in the country who will regard this as sheer sentimentality. They are robust people, who drive around all day with vigorous industry, and have always done so, until at length their very standard of manhood is made up of some kind of physical force. He is a man that can lift the largest weight, run the longest and fastest, cut the most grain, climb most lithely, wrestle the most dextrously. And if he can make a shrewd bargain, has an eye for the points in an ox or horse, has the knack of making money, and a good-natured way of pushing about among men, he is considered, and considers himself, to be a real up-and-down man! But where are the finer traits? God made blossom bulbs in every nature, and if men do not blossom they are deficient in the higher elements. To disregard qualities of beauty, in form, color, motion, and song, is so far to indicate a deformity of one’s own na- ture. We never think one to be more manly who cares nothing for the unmarketable graces of the natural world, than he who makes them a part of his daily enjoyment. The argument is conclusive to a fine nature, when one says, “ Birds are too beautiful to be killed.” It may be re- plied that noxious insects and animals are beautiful, too, and yet are destroyed by the humane and refined, because they are mischievous. We admit the statement, and are willing 36 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK to apply it to birds. When they are really destructive to crops, or when they are, at proper seasons, needful for food, it is no inhumanity to take their lives. They must take their part and lot with the whole creation, which every- where eats and is eaten. But to return to our robin. There is no season of the year when the robin does not prevent more mischief than he accomplishes. He is an enormous eater, and, for the most part, he prefers a meat diet. No one who has not taken pains to observe and estimate can form any. conception of the insects and worms devoured by the robin between March and August—that is, during the whole nesting pe- riod. One robin eats, in a single season, what, if built into a solid form, would be more than a whole ox. Fruit is but a small part of his diet; cherries, strawberries, and grapes, for a while, suffer from his depredations. Yet, if there were no birds these very things would suffer far more. Insects are more to be dreaded than birds. They elude our vigi- lance, they work secretly, they swarm in such numbers as to defy man’s power. But birds keep them down. They de- stroy myriads of eggs, of grubs, of tender worms, and of fruit-loving insects. To destroy birds for the sake of saving fruit is like throwing down the fence about one’s garden to keep the pigs out! Even admit, as some do and we do not, that blackbirds and crows deserve to be shot for destroying the planter’s seed. We claim that the robin does not be- long to their company. He preserves a hundred-fold more than he destroys. On every ground, then, of humanity, of good taste, and of thrift, robins should be spared. They are our best friends. They are, beyond all question, the finest song-bird of the temperate zone. They are a watch and guard against insect depredations in orchard and garden, and, with other birds, they make possible the raising of fruit, which, with- out them, it is no exaggeration to say, would be utterly im- possible. They are, next to the wren and sparrows, the ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 37 most companionable of birds, hovering about the dwellings of man, and following him, step by step, as he subdues the wilderness, and singing the song of triumph for the axe and the plow. One word as to the robin’s song. Whoever has read Au- dubon’s description of the wood-thrush’s song, and the still more glowing account by a writer in the Atlantic Monthly of two or three years ago, will surely be disappointed on first hearing it. In any proper sense, it has no song, but only a few sweet sentences, which it utters in a sad and almost melancholy way, sitting solitary in some forest edge, or tree overhanging a brook. The bird is a recluse. So, one im- agines a tender-hearted woman, disappointed in love, yet not embittered, might sing from the casement of a nunnery a hymn of mingled resignation and regret. But, to com- pare this monosyllabic song of the wood-thrush to the rob- in’s, is like comparing a ballad to an oratorio, or the tinkling of a guitar to the sweet tone of a piano-forte under the hands of some Perabo. The robin is an out-door bird. He lives in the sunshine. He attracts no sympathy by delicate ways. He is alto- gether robust, and full of dashing life. When twenty or thirty robins between three and four o’clock in a June morning are at full voice, it would be no exaggeration to compare it to arain of music. It is no dainty thrumming, —no parceling out of a sweet note or two, with more rests than notes. It is a musical rush, the exultation of a healthy, hearty bird, that sings by the half-hour, without pause, and is ever ready to sing again. The evening song of the robin I most love to hear. Heard from the top of some orchard tree, or of some meadow maple, while his note has the fire and brilliancy of his morning song, there is in it a slight undertone of sad- ness. Indeed, this evening song seems to be a mate-call. For ten or fifteen minutes the bird will send out its mellow call over all the region, if peradventure the truant mother tt, 38 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK may come home. A slight impatience mixes with its clos- ing notes. He flies to a neighboring tree, utters two or three sharp single notes, and then, beginning again, swells out his long call louder than before, warbling five to ten minutes. He pauses. No bird returns. He sits silent. Perhaps he remembers that there had been a little domes- tic quarrel during the day, and if his mate is dead, he may never be able to say to her, “I am sorry.” A nest full of little birds needs the mother. The twilight is deepening. Once more, its brilliance now toned down by.an unmistak- able sadness, he sends out far and near through the dew- damp air a song which is more a lamentation than a call. If there be no response, he flies silently away, and the air rests. But, sometimes, just as his song is ending, it breaks out into a sharp note of surprise. A flutter is heard, and two birds fly hastily away. The wanderer has come home again ! Can one, all summer long, follow birds with sympathy, and enter into their gentle life, throwing around it, by the imagination, the charm of the affections, and then consent to their destruction as if they had been mere birds from a coop? Shoot and eat my birds? It is but a step this side of cannibalism. The next step beyond, and one would hanker after Jenny Lind or Miss Kellogg. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 39 VITl. SOUNDS OF TREES. July 24th. THE sounds and motions of trees constitute subtle but important elements of pleasure. It is not epough that a tree have a comely form as a whole; that it cast a dense shade in the sultry days of summer; that, perhaps, it yield a nut or fruit; and that, finally, when it gives up its life to the inevitable ax, its prostrate trunk shall furnish good timber. Besides these uses of bodily comfort and of econ- omy, a tree, like a rich-hearted person, has a hundred name- less ways which we hardly stop to analyze, but which, were they suddenly taken away, we should miss. The murmuring of trees is profoundly affecting to a sen- sitive spirit. In some moods of imagination one cannot help feeling that trees have a low song, or a conversation of leaves. They whisper, or speak, or cry out, and even roar. No one knows this last quality so well as those who have been in old oak forests in a storm, with violent wind. A dense forest opposes such a resistance to the free passage of the air, that the sound is much deadened. But in a park or oak-opening, where spaces are left for the motion of the air, and among open-branched trees, a storm moves with such power and majesty, that not even the battles of thun- der-clouds are more sublime, and, under certain circum- stances, it becomes terrific. At the beginning of the tem- pest, the trees sway and toss as if seeking to escape; as the violence increases, the branches bounce back, the leaves, turning their white under sides to the light, fairly scream. The huge boughs creak and strain like a ship in a storm. Now and then some branches which have grown across each other are drawn back and forth, as if demons were 40 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK scraping infernal bass-viols. Occasionally a branch breaks with a wild crash, or some infirm tree, caught unawares in a huge puff of the storm, goes down with crashing as it falls, and with a thunder-stroke when it reaches the ground. I would go farther to hear a storm-concert in an old forest, than any music that man ever made. No one who is famil- iar with forest sounds but is sure, when he hears Beetho- ven’s music, that much of it was inspired by the sounds of winds among trees. There are milder joys, however, in tree converse. Only this morning I awakened to hear it rain. That steady splash of drops which a northeast wind brings on is not easily mistaken. I flatter myself that my ear is too well trained to all the ordinary sounds of nature to be easily deceived. I rise, and throw back the blinds, when lo! not a drop is fall- ing. It is the wind in my maple-trees. I had thought of that, and listened with the most discriminating attention, and was sure that it was rain! Twice in our life we lived in houses built on the edge of the original forests. These had been thinned out, and recesses opened up. It happened in both cases that an ash and a hickory had been left, which shot up, without side branches, to a great height. The trunks were supple and tough. Whenever the winds moved gently, these long and lithe trees moved with singular grace and beauty. As there was no perceptible wind along the ground, their movements seemed voluntary. And yet there was in it that kind of irresolution which one sees in sleep-walking. But as soon as the breath became a breeze, the wide circles through which these rooted gymnasts moved was wonderful. They seemed going forth in every direction, and yet surely and quickly springing back to position again. And in every motion, such was their elasticity, they manifested the ut- ‘ most grace. The sighing of winds in a pine forest has no -paralle] sound except upon the sea-shore. Of all sounds of leaves it is the sweetest and saddest, to certain moods of summer leisure. aii ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 41 The pine sings, like the poet, with no every-day voice, but in a tone apart from all common sounds. It has the power to change the associations, and to quicken the poetic sensibility, as no other singing tree can do. Every one should have this old harper, like a seer or a priest among trees, about his dwelling. Under an old pine would natu- rally be found the young maiden, whose new lover was far across the seas. In the sounds that would descend she could not fail to hear the voices of the sea,—the roar of winds, the plash of waves running in upon the shore. A young mother, whose first-born had returned to God who gave it, would go at twilight to the pines; for, to her ear, the whole air must needs seem full of spirit voices. They would sing to her thoughts in just such sad strains as soothe sorrow. Nor would it be strange if; in the rise and fall of these sylvan syllables, she should imagine that she heard her babe again, calling to her from the air. Every country place should have that very coquette among trees, the aspen. It seems never to sleep. Its twinkling fingers are playing in the air at some arch fantasy almost without pause. If you sit at a window with a book, it will wink and blink, and beckon, and coax, till you cannot help speaking to it! That must be a still day that does not see the aspen quiver! A single leaf sometimes will begin to wag, and not another on the whole tree will move. Some- times a hidden breath will catch at a lower branch, then, shifting, will leave that still, while it shakes a topmost twig. Though the air may move so gently that your cheek does not feel it, this sensitive tree will seem all a shiver, and turn its leaves upward with shuddering chill. It is the daintiest fairy of all the trees. One should have an aspen on every side of his house, that no window should be without a chance to look upon its nods and becks, and to rejoice in its innocent witcheries. I have seen such fair sprites, too, in’ human form. But one does not get off so easily, if he sports too much with them. The aspen leaf makes no wounds. 42 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK Its frolics spin no silken threads which one cannot follow, and which will not break! The musical qualities of trees have not been considered enough, in planting around our dwellings. The great-leaved magnolias have no fine sound. Willows have but little. Cedars, yew-trees, and Lombardy poplars are almost silent. It is said that the Lombardy poplar is the male tree, the female having never come over. It is very likely. It is stiff enough to be an old bachelor. It spreads out no side branches. Its top dies early. It casts a penurious shadow. But my hand is tired. The winds move; all the leaves call me. Let me go forth. ? This ocean above me is sure to cure trouble. The winds sound, the trees sing. My soul yearns. Its thoughts and moods below may roll like a disturbed sea; but, drawn up into the heavenly air, like the waters of the sea, they forget their wrath, and descend again in gentle dews and nourish- ing rains. AROUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 45 IX. UNVEILED NONSENSE. August 28th. My pear Mr. Bonner: Are you not a censor of all your contributors? Do you not read cautiously all matter sent to the Ledger, to prevent the entrance thereinto of any injurious sentiments? And yet you have allowed blasphemy in your columns? Youhave! Or else the Christian In- telligencer, the Dutch Reformed religious journal of New York, by one of its contributors, is greatly mistaken. An article appears there signed “ Puritan,” and entitled “ Veiled Profanity.” It begins with an extract from an article of one of your contributors :— 2 “Henry Ward Beecher says, ‘The only way to exterminate the Canada thistle is to plant it for a crop, and propose to make money out of it. Then worms will gnaw it, bugs will bite it, beetles will bore it, aphides will suck it, birds will peck it, heat will scorch it, rains will drown it, and mildew and blight will cover it.’ ” And now guess, if you can, what harm lies couched in these words. Put on your spectacles. Nothing wrong, do you say? O, but there is! Yow, a Scotch-Irish-Presby- terian, and can’t see heresy! Fie, for shame, to be beaten by a Dutchman! Now, let our Jntelligencer’s man express himself. The italics are his, not mine :— “These bugs, beetles, aphides, heat, rain, and mildew are the messengers of God. If they are sent, they are on an errand for God! Now, if the above extract has a point, it is that when man- kind plant a crop of any kind of grain or seed, God takes a mali- cious pleasure in defeating such schemes.” This is exquisite! If mildew attacks my grape-vines, it is on an errand for God, and if I sprinkle it with sulphur as a remedy, I put brimstone into the very face of God’s 44 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK messenger! When it rains—is not rain, too, God’s mes- senger?—does “Puritan” dare to open a blasphemous umbrella, and push it up in the very face of this divine messenger? When a child is attacked by one of “God’s messengers ”—measles, canker-rash, dysentery, scarlet-fever —would it be a very great sin to send for a doctor on pur- pose that he might resist these divine messengers? There are insects which attack men, against one of which we set up combs, and against another sulphur. “ Nay,” says Puritan. “If they are sent, they are on an errand for God” “Puritan” goes on :— “ Such a sentiment is far deeper in its tone than a mere murmur. Especially as Mr. Beecher’s farm at Fishkill is well known to be cultivated with reference to making money.” Yes, we confess it. A “murmur” very imperfectly ex- presses our feelings as we dig at a Canada thistle, or squirt whale-oil soapsuds over a myriad of “ Puritan’s ” divine mes- sengers, called aphides. A grumble would not be too strong a word to use on such occasions. Nay, the reverend gentle- man has been known to say, in a paroxysm of horticultural impiety, “I wish every rose-bug on the place was dead!” which must seem to “ Puritan” a piece of horrible de- pravity. I did not before know that I had a farm in Fishkill. My experience with the farm at Peekskill, “ which is well known to be cultivated with reference to making money,” is such, that if it be true that I own another farm at Fishkill, I shall consider myself on the straight road to the poor- house! But there is more coming :— “The charge of the reverend gentleman amounts to this,—that whenever he attempts to raise a crop of wheat, corn, flax, or grass, God sends beetles, bugs, aphides, heat, rain, and mildew, to blast his designs. “ This has the ring of Cain when his sacrifice was rejected. That primeval sinner vented his anger towards God on his holy brother. Mr. H. W. Beecher vents his anger towards the real cause of his ee ee eee a ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 45 mildewed crops, by charging the innocent instruments in their Mak- er’s hand. If this is not blasphemy in one as well informed as Mr. Beecher is, we have read his words amiss. “ PURITAN.” ' I may have been mistaken, but it has seemed to me that every crop that I have ever attempted to raise has had swarms of “messengers” sent upon it. But, until now, I never suspected that God sent them, in any other sense than that in which he sends diseases, famines, tyrants, literary “ Puritans,” and all other evils which afflict humanity. But what is to be done about this matter? If it be “blas- phemy ” to speak against bugs, it can be little short of sacri- lege to smash them. Here have I been, in the blindness of unrepented depravity, slaughtering millions of “the messen- gers of God” called aphides! I have ruthlessly slain those other angelic “messengers” called mosquitoes, who came singing to me with misplaced confidence. I have even railed at fleas, and spoken irreverently of gnats. I have gone fur- ther: on a sultry summer’s day, after dinner, I have turned out of my room every one of those “messengers of God” which wicked boys call flies—every one but one, I mean; and, just as the sounds grew faint and sight dim, and I was sinking into that entrancing experience, the first virgin mo- ments of slumber, an affectionate fly settled on my nose, ran down to kiss my lips, and, like a traveler on a new conti- nent, set about exploring my whole face. Instead of greet- ing this “messenger” divine as “ Puritan” would, I confess to a lively vexation. And if speaking of flies in a very disrespectful manner is blasphemous, I must confess to the charge! But soberly, Mr. Bonner, is it not pitiable to have among us men pretending to intelligence, who bring religion into discredit by such hopeless stupidity ? In the velocipede rinks, besides those for speed, premiums are offered to the men who can ride the slowest. “ Puritan” should enter himself. If anybody can go slower, he must be a marvel of torpidity. 46 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK X. NATURAL ORDER OF FLOWERS. May 21st. He must have an artist’s eye for color and form who can arrange a hundred flowers as tastefully, in any other way, as by strolling through a garden, picking here one and there one, and adding them to the bouquet in the accidental order in which they chance to come. Thus we see every summer day the fair lady coming in from the breezy side-hill with gorgeous colors, and most witching effects. If only she could be changed to alabaster, was ever a finer show of flowers in so fine a vase? But instead, allowed to remain as they were gathered, the flowers are laid upon the table, divided and rearranged on some principle of taste, I know not what, but never regain that charming naturalness and grace which they first had. As to the bouquets put up for market, the less said about them the better. They are mere pillories in which, like innocent children put into the stocks, flowers are punished! Squeezed, tied on sticks, formal and pedantic, the flowers lose their rare charms, their delicacy, their individuality, their exquisite variety of form, every element of floral beauty except color. They are used as mere pigments. They are poor studies in color. There are few who really know any- thing about flowers by their finer qualities. The elder Park —who committed the capital crime of leaving Brooklyn and going back to Scotland to live—loved flowers after the true sort. We remember one day going to his green-house in Amity Street, and after a world of talk about all sorts of things, and looking over all his azaleas, camellias, laurusti- nus, and what not, he drew us bashfully into a side apart- ment, and with the diffidence of a girl, said, pointing to an ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 47 exquisite little fern hardly so large as our forefinger, grow- ing in the border under some orange-plants, “There, I should not dare to tell anybody but you that I have taken more real pleasure in that one little thing than in all the whole establishment.” We perfectly understood him. The fern was of the most delicate sort. It seemed to hover between form and spirit,—if there be such a thing as soul in plant- life. All around it were large and vigorous plants growing lush and stalwart. This dainty little fairy fern appealed to the child-loving side of human nature, to the unworldly and uncommercial faculties. We always respected Park the better for this weakness. No man can have such a sen- timent for flowers, who has not in him feelings as fresh and delicate as the flowers which he admires. But with what complacency can such a one look upon the merchandise of flowers which is exhibited at every party, every wedding, every vulgar jam of rich people, who tor- ment themselves through untimely hours for the sake of tor- menting their host? Look at the atrocious bridal bouquets! The bride, the bridesmaids, come forth bearing each a huge melange of orange-blossoms and rosebuds, wedged together into a pyramidal wart of flowers! If, instead, the bride were to issue forth bearing in her hand a sprig of orange-blossoms just as it grew, just as it was plucked from the branch, or two or three simple rosebuds on the one stem, loosely clus- tered, and with their own fresh green leaves, or a simple white lily, would not every one feel how superior flowers were for such an occasion, in their own simplicity and individuality, than when, as generally happens, they are smothered up in an artificial heap, in which all naturalness is utterly lost? A single blossom of carnation with a geranium leaf; an exquisite saffrano rosebud just beginning to open, with a fresh leaf from its own bush for company; a stem of mign- onette, girt round with a dozen fragrant blue violets; a long sprig of mauvandia-vine, with its charming blue bells, hang- 48 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK ing from a tall wineglass, or carelessly trailing round it,— these, and such little things, confer a pleasure on those who have a sensitive eye for grace and simplicity, which nothing else can. We would not be understood as objecting to all masses of flowers, nor to large combinations. For coarser and more distant effects, they are permissible. But even then, the more they can be made to have a loose, airy, open habit, the finer will be their effect. But first, simplicity, naturalness, singleness, and individ- ualism in flowers; afterward and inferior, though permis- sible, artificial structures and combinations. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 49 pa ROSES. July 2d. JUNE is the paradise of roses. In this month they break forth into unparalleled splendor. All Rosedom is out in holiday apparel; and roses white and black, green and pink, scarlet, crimson, and yellow, striped and mottled, double and single, in clusters and solitary, moss-roses, damask-roses, Noisette, perpetual, Bourbon, China, tea, musk, and all other tribes and names, hang in exuberant beauty. The air is full of their fragrance. The eye can turn nowhere that it is not attracted to a glowing bush of roses. At first one is exhilarated. He wanders from bush to bush and cuts the finest specimens, until there is no room or dish for more. So many roses, and. so few to see them! What would not people shut up in cities give to see such luxuriance of beauty! How strange that those who have ground do not gather about them these favorites of every sense! The air and soil that nourish nettles and thistles, plantain and dock, would bring forth roses with equal kindness. There is enough ground wasted around country houses to furnish root-room for a hundred kinds of roses, without detriment either to fruit trees or ornamental shade trees. Men ad- mire them when they see them in a friend’s house; they are always pleased to receive a lapful as a present to their wife or mother or daughter; but it does not enter their head that they, too, might have roses to give away. Roses are easy of culture, easy of propagation, requiring almost as little care as dandelions or daisies. The wonder is that every other man is not an enthusiast, and in the month of June a gentle fanatic. Floral insanity is one of the most charming inflictions to which man is heir! One 50 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK never wishes to be cured, nor should any one wish to cure him. The garden is infectious. Flowers are “catching,” or the love of them is. Men begin with one or two. In afew years they are struck through with floral zeal. Not bees are more sedulous in their researches into flowers than many a man is, and one finds, after the strife and heat and toil of his ambitious life, that there is more pure satisfac- tion in his garden than in all the other pursuits that prom- ise so much of pleasure and yield so little. It is pleasant to find in men whose hard and loveless side you see in society, so much that is gentle and beauty- loving in private. Hard capitalists, sharp politicians, grind- ing business men, will often be found, at home, in full sym- pathy with the gentlest aspects of nature. One is surprised to find how rich and sweet these monsters often turn out to be! Here is the man whom you have for years heard de- scribed, in all the newspapers, as a spectacle of wickedness or a monument of folly. You are, by some convulsion of nature, thrown into his company, and travel for days with him. To your surprise his manners are gentle, his conver- sation pleasing, his attentions to all about him considerate. This must be artifice. It is a veil to hide that hideous heart of which you have heard so much. You watch and wait. But watching and waiting only satisfy you that this sup- posed monster is a kind man, with a world of sympathy for beautiful things. And when, in after-months, you have been at his summer-house, and know him in his vineyard and his garden, you smile at yourself that you were ever subject to that illusion which is so often raised about public men. A man is not always to be trusted because he loves fine horses, or because he follows the stream or hunts in the fields. But if a man that loves flowers, and loves them enough to labor for them, is not to be trusted, where in this wicked world shall we go for trust? A man that carries a garden in his heart has got back again a part of the Eden from which our great forefather was expelled. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 51 XII. CHESTNUTS. July 30th. I Fancy that trees have dispositions. At any rate, they have those qualities which suggest dispositions to all who are in sympathy with nature, and who look upon facts as letters of an alphabet, by which one may spell out the hid- den meanings of things. Some trees, like the apple, suggest goodness and humility. They put on no airs. They do not exalt themselves. They are patient of climate, full of beauty in blossom, and, in autumn, beautiful in fruit. The oak, when well grown, has the beauty of rugged strength, and sometimes it has grandeur. Certain live-oak trees on Helena Island, near Beaufort, 8. C., with long, pendant moss, like a Druid’s beard, impressed us with a feeling of the sublime in vegetation which we never ex- perience in the presence of any other tree. Down on our backs we lay, and gazed up into their vast tops with a pleasure never since renewed. These were the types of patriarchal dignity. The American elm is the tree of grace and beauty. It is stately without stiffness. It carries itself up to such a height that its drooping boughs do not suggest feebleness, as the weeping-willow does. And yet, one never has the feeling of sympathy with it or of personal intercourse. One may sit under its branches, but no one ever sat on or among them. We admire, but do not sympathize. Still less did any one ever love a hickory-tree. They are beautiful and stately, but self-contained. When young, they are dandies; and when old, aristocrats. Not so the chestnut-tree. This darling old fellow is a very grandfather among trees. What a great, open bosom De PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK it has! Its boughs are arranged with express reference to ease in climbing. Nature was in a good mood when the chestnut-tree came forth. It is, when well grown, a stately tree, wide-spreading, and of great size. Even in the forest the chestnut is a noble tree. But one never sees its full development except when it has grown in the open fields. It then assumes immense proportions. Having a tendency when cut down to send up many shoots from the stump, old trees are often found with four or five trunks springing from the same root. In such cases, no other American tree covers so wide a space of ground. Not even the oak at- tains to greater size or longevity. The Tortworth chestnut, in England, is supposed to have been standing before the Conquest, 1066, and must be not far from a thousand years old. The longest known tree in America is the “Rice” chestnut, on the estate of Marshall I. Rice, at Newton Centre, Mass. It measures twenty-four feet and three tenths in circumference at the base, seventy-six feet in height, and spreads its limbs ninety-three feet. It is vigor- ous, and still bears enormous crops. This, however, is a mere stripling compared with the famous chestnut-tree of Mount Attna, whose trunk measured about one hundred and sixty feet in circumference, or some fifty-three feet in diameter, and which could shelter a hundred horsemen be- neath its branches! But this tree, long hollow, is about giving up the ghost, even if it has not already done so, no doubt dying in the peaceful consciousness of having spent a virtuous life, and fed thousands of people with two thousand years’ full of nuts! There is living in vigor at Sancerre, in France, a tree which, at six feet from the ground, measures thirty feet in circumference. Michaux says that he measured several trees in the Carolina mountains of fifteen or sixteen feet in circumference; which, if a boy is expected to climb them, is full large enough. A chestnut-tree in full bloom is a fine sight. It blos-— ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 53 soms about the first of July, in clusters of long, yellowish- white filaments, like a tuft of coarse wool-rolls. The whole top of the tree is silvered over. We have never seen them so finely in blossom as this year, and we foresee a grand harvest for the boys. O, those golden days of October! The thought of them brings back the days of boyhood, the brilliant foliage of the forest just putting on its regal gar- ments; the merry sport of squirrels racing on the ground (if one lies dead-still to watch), or scampering up the trunks, and leaping from tree to tree with chirk and bark, if dis- turbed. It was a great day when, with bag and basket, the whole family was summoned to go “ a-chestnuting!” There was frolic enough, and climbing enough, and shaking enough, and rattling nuts enough, and a sly kiss or two,—but never enough,—and lunch enough, and appetite enough. The silver brook on the hillside carried down, on its mur- muring current, the golden leaves which the trees, with every puff of wind, sent shimmering down through the air. Barefooted, as we were all summer long, the prickly chest- nut burs were too sharp for our little tough feet, and we were glad to pick our way cautiously under the trees. Long live the chestnut-tree, and the chestnut woods on the mountain-side, and the boys and girls who frolic under their boughs! And long live the winter nights, with the homely fare of apples and nuts, and no stronger drink than cider; and a merry crowd of boys and girls, with here and there the spectacled old folks; all before a roaring hickory fire, in an old-fashioned fireplace, big as the western horizon with the sun going down in it, and with a roguish stick of chestnut wood in it, which opens such a fusillade of snaps and cracks as sets the girls to screaming, and throws out such mischievous coals upon the calico dresses, as. obliges every humane boy to run to the relief of his sweetheart all on fire! ‘No doubt many an old gentleman will read this article 54 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK with a face growing more and more full of smiles, and taking off his spectacles at the end, and, looking kindly over at his aged dame, will say, “Do you remember, Polly, when we were at Squire Judson’s—” “ Well, well, father, you are too old to be talking about such youthful follies.” Never- theless, she smiles and looks kindly over at the old rogue who kissed her that night, proposed on the way home, and was married before Christmas. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 55 XI. GREEN PEAS. August 20th. Wauat a comfort is the consciousness of usefulness! One may dig on his farm or delve in his library for weeks, with nothing to show for it, and with no murmuring applause. But let him once spread the table, put the pot to boiling, and set forth a meal; and the praise of housekeepers begins to ascend, sweet as frankincense or new-made apple-pies. But we are praise-proof in culinary matters. There are others around here that are liable to the puffing-up of van- ity, if their domestic performances are loudly applauded. But we, of the stronger sex, can hear our beefsteak com- mended without a wrinkle upon our tranquil humility. We can have our coffee criticised without a flush of indignation. Even our method of cooking vegetables may be underval- ued, without exciting us to controversy; so tranquil is our soul, when once under the inspiration of the ewisine. But some there are who mingle praise with suggestion—a cup of criticism with sugar in it. Thus :— “ We heartily thank him for his descriptions in ‘ Summer Dinners,’ and would mildly suggest, if he would add a pint of nice, thick cream to a quart of peas, taken from milk that has stood just six hours in a - cool, airy, and clean cellar—said milk must be milk, to start with; none of your blue, watery stuff, such as some cows are said to give, but rich, golden milk, caught in bright tin pails, so polished that they reflect the happy faces of all who wish to take a peep at them: —with such a dish, I think we could tempt—well, Henry Ward, to dine with us; could n’t we? especially if we add an apple-pie made after a receipt you gave in the Ledger several years ago. “ Yours, very respectfully, “ Twenty-year-old Dor If one wishes a new and composite dish, let the peas be 56 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK smothered in cream. But, if one wishes peas, pure and simple, in their own flavor,—a flavor chosen out of the whole vegetable realm, and not repeated in any other grow- ing thing,—let him not, let her not, audaciously introduce any rival flavor. Peas are good; cream is good; peas and cream are good,—each in its own severalty. But let each one stand in its own name. Do not call peas and cream, peas. One’s tenderest culinary susceptibility is touched, to be asked if he will take some green peas, and then to find himself eating peas and cream! The Hnolich receipts recommend a sprig or ‘two of mint to be thrown in while green peas are cooking. We do not challenge their right to do it. They may put in anise and cummin too, if they choose. But we do protest, in the name of kitchen literature, against calling such experimen- tal compounds by the ever-dear name of “ green peas.” All smooth peas are tasteless compared with the wrinkled peas. It is proper that wrinkles should bring sweetness. The smooth-faced varieties are fairer to look upon. But they are not inwardly rich. That these should be flavored, enriched, and spiced with herbs, is not altogether against nature or analogy. Still, if on some bright summer day, soon after the twelve musical strokes on the village bell, we shall find ourselves the guest of the sprightly “ Dot,” we shall lay aside all pre- conceived notions and all prejudices ; and ifit prove to be that peas absorb cream into their bosoms without losing their peahood—nay, if this wedding shall prove, as all true wed- dings should, that individuality is developed and established —we shall gladly repent, confess, and recant our foregoing protest. Another fair heart has suffered itself to fall into shocking doubts. “Dear Sir: It is with great pleasure that I read your weekly articles in the Ledger, and I have especially relished your ‘ Summer Dinner,’ which was got up in such good style. But—and this is ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 57 what is very important—did you have to ask your wife the differ- ent names of the vegetables, and how to cook them? Or do you believe in Men’s Rights, and so know how to do your own cooking, seasoning, and eating?” The family should be sacred! This attempt to pry into its secrets must not succeed. This question answered, the next one would be, whether we wrote our own articles for the Ledger, or whether some one dictated them to us? And then would come questions as to who wrote the ser- mons? Then, when once the stream had broken over the bounds of proper privacy, it would rush through kitchen and pantry, closet and cupboard, cellar and attic, until the slime of curiosity would lie thick on all the sacred places of the household. “ Ask our wife,” forsooth! We asked her once for all, some years ago, and the answer lasts, full and strong, until this day. 58 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK XIV. HENS. April 22d. Tue day is bright and windy. The sky has sunk back to the uttermost, and the arch seems wonderfully deep above your head. Little cloud-ships go sailing about in the heay- ens as busily as if they carried freight to long-expectant owners. It is a day for the country. The city palls on the jaded nerve. I long to hear the hens cackle. There are lively times now in barn and barn-yard, I’ll warrant you. If I were lying on the east veranda of a cottage that I wot of, I should see flocks of pure white Leghorns, wind-blown, shining in the sunlight, searching for a morsel in and out of the shrubbery, and hear the cocks crowing, and the hens crooning. The Leghorn, of true blood, leads the race of fowls for continuous eggs, in season and out of season; eggs large enough, of fine quality, and sprung from hens that never think of chickens. For a true Leghorn seldom wants to sit. They believe in division of labor. They provide eges; others must hatch them. Other fowls may surpass them on the spit or gridiron, but, as egg-layers, they easily take the lead. They are hardy, handsome, and immensely productive. As it is just as easy to keep good fowls as poor ones, thrifty housekeepers should secure a good laying breed. Not every pure white fowl is a Leghorn. There are many White Spanish sold as Leghorns. They may be known by their gray or pearl-colored legs. The pure Leghorn has a yellow leg, a single comb, quite long and usually lapping down. This breed is well known about New York, but no description of it can be found in English poultry-books. Indeed, we are informed that Tegetmayer, the standard au- ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 59 thority, but recently knew anything about them, and then from a coop sent from New York. The Brahmas and Cochins have good qualities. They are large, even huge. They are peaceable, and the Cochins do not scratch,—an important fact to all who have a garden, and who yet desire to let their poultry run at large. They are good layers, admirable mothers, and yield a fine carcass for the table, but the meat is not fine, though fairly good. But a more ungainly thing than buff Cochins the eye never saw. A flock of Leghorns is a delight to the eye. One is never tired of watching them. Their forms are symmet- rical, and every motion is graceful. But the huge poddy Cochins waddle before you like over-fat buffoons. They are grotesque, good-natured, clumsy, useful creatures; but they have a great love of sitting. Every Cochin hen would love to bring out two broods in a season; while the white Leghorns fill their nests with eggs, and then think their whole duty done. We keep Cochin hens to sit on Leghorn egos. Better mothers cannot be. I hear my hens cackle! These bright spring days are passing, and the concert of the barn-yard is in full play, but T am tied up to the pen! Currant-bushes are pushing out their blossom-buds; rhubarb is showing its red knuckles above the ground; willows are pushing out their silky cat- kins; birds have come—everything has come but me! I cannot sprout yet. Patience! I shall be green enough in a few weeks. The city shall not always prevail. In due sea- son I shall go to grass. Already I smell it. The odor of new grass can be perceived but for a few days only in spring. It should be noticed then, for it is unlike any other perfume, and will be perceived no more until another year. How happy are they that dwell among open fields,—or how happy they might be if they but knew their privileges! 60 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK XV. FARMING. May 138th. Ir one wishes to make money out of the soil, upon an Eastern farm, he must live upon it, study it, watch it, calk and groove it so that no leak shall be possible, economize rigidly, work fearfully, sell the best, use the unsalable, — in short, he must be a drudge or a genius. Not a genius in literature or art, but in money-making. Only think how some old-fashioned New England ministers lived on a salary of four hundred dollars; educated seven or eight children ; worked their farm during the week, and preached on Sun- day; and died rich, that is, worth anywhere from fifty to a hundred thousand dollars, which, fifty years ago, was as much as two hundred and fifty thousand dollars are now; for the purchasing power of gold and silver is steadily de- clining, and of course more of it is required for the same purposes. But only now and then did such a man and minister turn up; and the general impression, even in his case, was, that the farm was better tilled than the parish. But the small farmers in the old States north of the Del- aware have a hard life. If they get on, it is by vigorous economy following excessive industry. There is a good deal of sentiment wasted on the delights of farming. But in New England, we suspect that for every farmer who lives in abundance or comparative ease, there are five, and perhaps ten, that fare coarsely, and are not half as well clothed and housed as the average mechanic. First-rate farmers are few; third and fourth rate farmers are many, and a hard time they have. But as one goes westward, to better soil, larger farms, and more congenial climate, things ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 61 change. Farmers are prosperous without such exacting toil. Their dwellings grow better, particularly in the northern parts of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and the great Northwest. If one has money and leisure, he may carry on a farm in the Eastern States with great enjoyment. That is as pleasant a way to spend money as can well be devised, not even excepting the management of fast horses and fast yachts ; for both of these deteriorate in the using, and some go under, while the farm steadily rises in value and force. But with the exception of the owners of un- commonly good land here and there, not much money is to be made at farming in the East. The farm is an institution designed to promote health and comfort in the expenditure of money. Money is the one manure which the farm greedily covets. We say these things, not to discourage farming, but to dissuade the annual host from going out to make their for- tunes on a farm, who, in five years, will come back stripped bare of everything but disgust—not of that. No man would think of going from the law, or from a store, into a mechanical trade without having served an apprenticeship, or having become in some way familiar with it. Lawyers do not set up at cabinet-making, nor go into steel works, nor set up for builders or painters. But when business is dull, and health delicate, many a professional man, many a clerk or unsuccessful merchant, concludes to buy a “snug farm,” and retire from the cares of the town or city, to lead the joyous life of a farmer. He has no knowledge of farming; but it requires none! Farming is simple. You rise with the dewy morn; you go forth to your prodigal acres; you rest under the trees bending with fruit ; you eat from your bountiful table the food that sprung from your own soil,—and ever so much more romance of the same sort. Prosperous farming requires knowledge, tact at managing men, skill in laying out work, incessant industry, very close 62 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK calculations, good judgment in buying, and a good capacity of selling. In short, the qualities which go to make up a good merchant, a good manufacturer, and a good scientist ought to be combined in a first-class farmer. There are more passable orators born every year than there are first- class farmers. If any one doubts the truth of these views, let him try a farm for a few years! ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 63 XVI. GARDENING UNDER DIFFICULTIES. Ir is not every one who can toss off his provocations with so good a grace as our correspondent, whose letter we insert :— New York, April 19th. Dear Mr. BeEcHER: Suppose you were fond of flowers and shrubs, and thatthe plat of Mother Earth allotted you was at the back of your city house, say about seventeen feet square,—the most of it occupied by the space for drying clothes ; the rest a hard clayey soil, baked by the sun so quickly that you wish the Israelites might have had it to make brick, and one that no amount of foreign ad- mixture improves. Suppose the florist came every spring, hoed and raked, and dis- tributed roses, verbenas, geraniums, and the like, at regular inter- vals, also sticks, bare evidence of the burial-place of various cherished bulbs that never come up, but seem, like your carnations, to disap- pear with the wheelbarrow. Suppose the occupants of the tenement-house close to your rear fence,—who always, in all the stories of the day, nurse a geranium in a cracked pot,—instead of thanking you for the pleasant sight under their windows, garnished your bed with egg-shells, old paper collars, rags, bones, empty spools, and other debris handy for the purpose. Suppose the nine thousand and ninety cats and their families roosted on the fence in the twilight, and tried their claws on your shrubs, and the softness of your soil generally, in the small hours of the night. Suppose, with the first green leaves, the worms came also, and the green lice, and the ants, and made your bushes a sorrow and a vex- ation. Suppose the hoop of the laundress was over it all, so to speak, and the hose always burst when the weather was dry, and your watering- pot held about a teacupful. 64 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK What would you do, Mr. Beecher? Would you give over the space to old shoes and ugliness, or would you fly in the face of mani- Jest destiny and cultivate ? Dejectedly yours, BREEZE. The very first thing to be done with a tenacious and ob- stinate clay soil is to have it dug out and carted away bodily, and its place supplied with good fresh loam. This would be a serious job if there were several acres. But when there is but a plat of seventeen feet square, and the larger part of that reserved for laundry purposes, only bor- ders being used for flowers, the amount to be removed would be comparatively small, and the satisfaction would be ample repayment. Any one with a cart can carry off the clay, but not every one can get good soil. An honest florist.or garden jobber could put you in the way of that. If you will have a garden, it is best to be your own gardener. Adam and Eve set the example. The cats may be managed in various ways. A black-and- tan terrier kept in the back yard has a wonderful influence on cats, arousing in them a strong local prejudice. If the boys in the neighborhood knew that a premium were offered for cat scalps, it would be found greatly to interest the cats. At any rate, their number would grow less. As to worms and aphides, no one is fit to own flowers who, in so small a space as seventeen feet square, cannot exterminate them,—worms by hand picking, and aphides by whale-oil soapsuds. A vigorous fidelity will in a short time put the last worm hors de combat. The whale-oil soap may be had at any large seed-store,—directions for use accom- panying the little jar. A tin garden syringe may be had at the same place, costing but little, lasting, with care, twenty years, and carrying the soapsuds like spray over every leaf and twig. We, too, in Brooklyn have lawn dresses with equatorial hoops, and yet manage to have many a charming patch of ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 69. flowers. But, of all things in this world, a garden needs the presence of its owner. If you do not love it enough to care for it as you would for a baby, better let it alone. Flowers know who love them. They will not be put off with arm’s-length cordiality. But, if you love them, you will easily overcome a hundred obstacles, and rejoice in your flowers all the more because they are the trophies of your patience and industry. 66 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK XVII. CORN. September 19th. We have artists who give themselves to specialties. One delights to know fruits. Another loves architecture, or landscape, or figures, or animals, or grasses and flowers. Now it has always seemed strange that the noblest of all grasses, maize, or Indian corn, has never found an enthusi- astic lover. It has been painted often, but never yet inter- preted. No one has done by it what has been done by the lily, the rose, the convolvulus. And yet, where shall we find any union of strength and grace more perfect among herbaceous plants? The jointed stem, robust and stiff, gives off at each articulation the most gracefully curved sword-leaves, which diminish in length as the plant goes up to its fimbriated top, forming a symmet- rical whole not to be equalled among field plants. If one will wander along the edges of a cornfield, he will often see an exquisite picture, such as Nature loves to make. The wild convolvulus, which often fills the fence corners, has crept out of the grass into the furrow and twined around the corn, climbing to its very top, and, having power yet to grow, returns upon itself and fashions festoons of exquisite leaves and white blossoms, which hang down in every neg- ligent form of beauty. Other vines too, besides the convol- vulus, try their arts, and none fail; but none succeed so charmingly as this queen of twining vines. A specialist might devote himself to corn without fear of exhausting the subject. Of all the grains it is the true type of republicanism. It knows how to live in the community without losing its individuality. The smaller grains— wheat, barley, and such like—produce their effects only in a ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 67 masses. Individual stalks are quite insignificant. It is the community, and not the individual, that is beautiful. But a field of corn does not swallow up in itself the stems which form its mass. Every plant yet retains it nobility. If corn is sown so thickly that it cannot find room for de- velopment, the whole degenerates into mere grass, and loses its proper force and beauty. But the husbandman has found out what rulers yet but slowly learn, and reluctantly, —that the force and beauty of the whole is to be sought in the development and strength of each single plant. Indi- viduality and community are not only compatible, but each is the indispensable factor of the other. Or, turn the subject in another light. Each stalk of corn is a father and mother. It does not live for itself. When it hastens on in the hot days of July, it is not its own beauty that it seeks. It takes that on the way to a higher end. In the cool juices of that polished stem glows the sacred fire of parentage. The arched and rustling leaves borrow of the sun and air food for the coming brood. No sooner does the tassel break forth at the top, than out peer the infant ears nestling at the side of the noble stem. Nor does the parent blossom into its final beauty until the ex- quisite silk hangs from the nascent ears of corn to feed upon the parent’s life, and in that find its own. No sooner do the new-born kernels swell, than the parent bequeaths itself and all its inward stores to its offspring. The long leaves swing idly in the air, as things that have nothing more to do. Every day the winds evoke a shriller sound from their motions. When the cob has covered itself with golden kernels, rich and ripe, the parent dies,— dies mourning sadly, shall we think? What though it shall live a hundred-fold in its children? All memory or con- sciousness will be gone. It has spent its life and beauty for others. But how strong, how fresh, how full, how beautiful its life, while doing its appointed work! How little does it really care to live when the end of living is accomplished! 68 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK It did the work at hand, and drew all its beauty from that doing, then took its place in the great economy of nature, falling back to nothing. With such thoughts men looked upon the fields thousands of years ago, and sighed, “As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.” It was thousands of years afterward that one said, “ As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly..... Death is swallowed up in victory.” The grass of the field may image forth the secular side of human life, but it can go no further than the grave. Be- yond that it cannot point. Only one garden ever was that set forth the sure hope of immortality. “In the place where He was crucified, there was a garden... .. There laid they Jesus.” ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 69 XVIII. DANDELIONS. June 8th. THERE are many charms connected with the ideal life of the tropics. The chief drawback is, that manhood deli- quesces and runs out under the equator. This is not paid for by luscious bananas, oranges, orchids, or ever-blooming vines and trees. Enjoyment palls when it flows unceasingly and without break. To live in summer forever, without one ungarlanded hour in the year, might, for aught we know, sate us with sweetness. The tropics were not made to live in all the year. They are a refuge for one or two months. After frost and snow have had their full meal, and the northern winds have by familiarity bred contempt and influenzas, it is a good thing to go to sleep on the good steamer Moro Castle, and wake up in Cuba, or Jamaica, or to go on through the Gulf of Mexico to the Magdalena valley in Northern South Amer- ica, which the painter Church once told me he regarded as the most perfect climate that he had ever found in all his travels. But as soon as the contrast is satisfied, we are sure that one in the tropics must long for the northern zones, north- ern fruits and northern flowers; for calm days without pes- tilent insects; for grass, and for DANDELIONS! Now I have got upon my real subject. The foregoing sentences were in the nature of a rhetorical introduction,— a sly and adroit way of getting people to listen to the praises of one of the brightest charms of our northern spring days. I am moved to celebrate this brilliant, and yet, I fear, not much-prized flower, from the glory of my morning view. 70 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK Out of my back windows I look down on four or five grassy yards, all well kept and lying well open to the sun. Soon after the grass springs you may see such a gorgeous array of dandelions as might make a florist fairly envious! They jut out from the edges of the walks, they crowd the narrow strips of grass at the lower end, they fairly jostle each other like a crowd pouring out of a public hall, in their strife to get into the light and open their golden crowns to the sun. So brilliant are they and so hardy, that we are apt to miss the sentiment that lives in them. They are not of the flowers that impudently push themselves forward, demanding us to look at them whether we will or no. With all their amazing brilliancy, they are still coy love- flowers, that wait for the sun, as a bride for the bridegroom. For dandelions do not wake up in the morning before we do. They wait till the sun has long called them, and then they fling open their golden disks, and shine with a real de- light of existence, with a cheer and abundance which ought to strike joy into the heart of a misanthrope. Soon after noon is at its highest, the dandelion, thinking that the world is bright enough, and that the sun can man- age the rest of the day, folds itself up, laces the golden filaments with the green lepals, and retires to meditation. Thus it plays courtier in the morning, and nun in the after- noon. But what aname! Dens leonis! or Dent-de-lion! Or, if you fly to the systematic name,—the harsh Taraxacum! Shall such a home-loving, radiant creature be called Lion’s Tooth, because some impertinent, prying botanist fancied that he had espied the shape of a lion’s tooth in its minor forms ? Just as soon as we have got politics settled, business reformed, and human nature elevated, I am determined to form a society for the reformation of botanical names. Botany has been the Noah’s Ark of pedants. Every absurd od ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 71 whim of every pragmatical professor has been turned into Greek or Latin, and hung about the neck of unhappy flow- er. One might as well hang a dictionary around a child’s neck by way of ornament, as to impose on flowers such out- rageous and outlandish names as now defend the science of botany from all approach, as a fort is defended by a line of chevaux-de-frise. But blessings on those cheery children of the sun! They are born of brightness; their whole life is like a smile of love. They are not a flower for the hand; they are not to be worn in the bosom. They do not love the house, or the pressure of a close bouquet. Their life is in the free open air. They shine out on you along your daily walk. They crowd your yard with golden coin, which, good for nothing in the market, may yet have the power to confer more en- joyment than could golden dollars or ducats. This is my annual tribute. To-day I look out of my window, and thank God for the gifts which he sends me by the hand of Dandelions! Do they know my thoughts as I gaze on them? Is there not some sympathy between things in nature which wake up the soul to delight, and aid the soul thus aroused? Behind signs and signals, back of all articulate utterance, may there not be a subtler relationship which will yet be discovered, as connecting the inward and the outward with a living relationship ? 72 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK XIX. HOW TO BEAUTIFY HOMES. August 25th. No one needs to be told how much a house is adorned by vines ; and yet many are averse to their liberal use from the impression that they make a house damp. It is true that they may, but it is not necessary that they should. Vines do not codlect dampness. If any part of the house wall needs the sun to warm it, and is covered by a vine from its influence, it may favor dampness. But an ivy vine, on the other hand, is reputed to make a wall dry, and has sometimes been employed to correct the undue moisture to which certain portions of a dwelling are subject. A grape vine, trained upon slats, which shall have a few inches of air-space underneath it, will not injure the house. Upon porches, over trellises, vines may be trained with charming effect, and without offending those who are superstitiously prejudiced against vines on the house. The kinds of vines must be left, in the case of thousands, to accident. .Men that are obliged to count the very last penny in their expenses cannot send many orders to florists for beautiful things, but must take what they can get in their own neighborhood. We will mention a few things now generally diffused. The Glycine, or Wistaria, is one of the noblest. It will run a hundred feet or more, and grow in time to have a trunk like a small tree. Nothing can surpass it at its blos- soming period. It is like a vision of the garden of heaven. It may be raised by dayers, but will be found somewhat slow in taking hold after transplantation. Its arms may be carried out in tier above tier to cover the whole side of the house, when economy of space is no object; but where one ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 73 desires to spare for other things, the Wéistaria may be trained upon a corner, or along the eaves. There is nothing more beautiful in its summer greenness or gorgeous in its autumn reds and purples, than the Vir- ginia Creeper—Ampelopsis hederacea. There is a variety called Ampelopsis Veitchii, or Veitch’s, which is extremely beautiful. It clings to wood or brick with as much tenacity as the ivy. Its foliage is fine, and its habit fits it to fill small spaces. It is a plant that, having once owned, no one would part with. If one wishes a dense screen, there is no vine that grows more rapidly or that is more hardy than the Aristoloicha sipho, or Dutchman’s pipe. One might as well attempt to look through a brick wall as through the opaque mass made by its enormous leaves. But-its coarseness fits it chiefly for hiding ungainly things or shading from the light. The Trumpet Creeper is effective at a distance, but its coarseness excludes it from familiar nearness. Few people are aware of the vast improvements which have taken place in the Clematis. Every one knows the wild white clematis, which is beautiful in blossom, and almost as fine when its seeds are ripened. It abounds in our fields, and bears transplantation easily. The new kinds, or those comparatively new, deserve to be better known. Fortune’s, Henderson’s, Jackman’s, the Prince of Wales, Standish’s, together with Helena, Sophia, Lanuginosa, are obtainable at our first-class nurseries, and may be easily propagated. Besides these, there are every year new vari- eties introduced. There is no vine that we should spare with more reluctance. The sheets of gorgeous bloom, which, by judicious selection of kinds, will last from June to September, the perfect hardiness of the plant, and the ease with which it is trained, fit it eminently for small places and sunny spots. For it loves the full blaze, and will not flourish well even when planted with other vines that at all shade it. Indeed, to have the best effect of 74 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK clematis, it should be trained in a clear and open space to a trellis of its own. But, of all vines, none is more popular, and deservedly so, than the honeysuckle. The kinds are numerous. But if but one can be had, let it be the Halleana, or Hall’s Japan honeysuckle. It cannot be distinguished from the Brachypoda, in leaf or blossom; but it excels that immeas- urably in the habit of blossoming all summer. The Fleau- oso, or Chinese, is fine, but we consider it second to Hall’s, which ought to be better known and more widely diffused than it is. By planting it on open soil, without support, it spreads over the ground, and roots at every joint, so that, hundreds of new plants may be gained every year. There is a beautiful golden honeysuckle—auwrea reticu- lata. This ought not to be planted by the side of green- leaved varieties. It produces the effect of a diseased or weak branch, rather than of contrast and variety. But the golden-leaved, if planted by itself, and well grown, is gor- geous. It is perfectly hardy, and is of good growth and constitution. If one has a yard of ground, he may have a vine which will give unfeigned pleasure through the whole summer. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 75 XX. BIRCH AND ASPEN. September 28th. Looxine out from my window upon the dark sides of the mountains, upon the massive clouds, upon the wind-blown trees, I see my pet, the birch, all in a shiver with each blast. The American white birch has all the grace and delicacy of its European namesake, and, besides, a sensibility which it borrows from the aspen, or shares with it. One should have, on every side of a country house, a group of aspens and birches. Planted together, they will give you motion in charming variety. On other trees the leaves are so rigid in the stem, that a wind strong enough to set them in full activity is strong enough to set all the branches in motion. We recognize the force, and, in large trees, the grandeur of motion. When a strong wind moves the whole tree, it swings its great boughs hither and thither, all its leaves and twigs utter their voices, which in chorus often rise to aroar. Yet, though the whole tree is agitated, and seems convulsed, one sees that it is only upon the ex- terior; while the top and sides are in full motion, the trunk stands firm, and seems motionless. Not till its very roots give way will it move, and then it does not bend, but goes down with stiff trunk. The elastic birch, with long and slender limbs, avoiding horizontal positions and aiming at the zenith, flexible to the last degree, moves in the wind with a grace and elasticity which has no parallel. The American aspen has a shivering leaf upon a rigid branch. It stands quite stiff and motionless in bough, while its leaves are quivering and shivering in the most in- dustrious manner. Right over against the east door of the 76 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK Twin Mountain House, New Hampshire, at a little distance, is a group of aspens, which are my perpetual delight. They are my wind-meters, or, rather, zephyr measurers. On a hot noon, when no air seems stirring, and the trees about them doze and slumber, like good men at church, these twinklers, like roguish boys, are dancing in an imaginary breeze, and playing with themselves, without a particle of wind, so far ‘as I can perceive. Now a shiver runs over them from head to foot; then the topmost leaves shake and swirl, while the bottom rests. Gradually the motion dies away all over, and the frolic ends. No, a single leaf begins to wag; it goes on in single blessedness, with accelerated pace, up and down, round and round, until, for the life of me, I cannot help bursting into a fit of laughter at this solitary dance. At times, in certain moods, one cannot help thinking that the aspen is striving to communicate something. It seems so sigh and pant. It supplicates as one that suffers. Then, changing suddenly, it coaxes and winks and blinks at you as if it was only in fun. It will stand perfectly still a minute as if looking to see what you will do, and then a laughing ripple runs all over it. It frolics with the same tireless grace as a kitten. Indeed, it is a kind of compound kitten- tree, each particular leaf a kitten, all frolicking together; though there is not one of them, if the rest won’t play, that is not ready, kitten-like, as it were, to chase its own tail. Why have landscape gardeners done so little with birches and aspens? Maples, oaks, ashes, and evergreens are well; but in what other direction shall we look for such grace in form, such susceptibility to aerial influences, and such ex- quisite motion both of branch and leaf, as we find in the aspen and birch? The birches grow rapidly, are extremely hardy, and will flourish upon poor soil, though loving a generous soil better. In ten years, with birch and aspen, one may rejoice in a thick grove. If the yellow locust be added to these, and the silver maple, one who plants at sixty may hope to see high over his head a respectable young ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. {i forest, dense enough for shade and high enough to begin to comfort the imagination. Long live the aspen and the birch! Only the young have just grounds for prejudice; but even boys soon out- grow the birch, and watch its sinewy motion without a thought of moving too, in shivering accord. 78 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK XXI. AUTUMN. November 2d. Tue summer is gone. The autumn is here. Not this year, as last, in the plenitude of color, but more soberly, frugally, and sedately. The autumn of 1871 was eminently a color season. Only once in three or four years does Na- ture make a full pallet. Then the colors are pure, intense, tender, and fresh. Such was last year. The scarlets were brilliant, the orange was pure, the crocuses and yellows were clear and rich. But, as autumnal days steal upon us now, we see already that we shall have picture-forests of only second or third rate brilliancy. The hickories are of a rusty and spotted golden brown. The maples are fine, yet not exquisite. The sumach is always brilliant. So are some of the vines. The pepperidge-tree (Vyssa sylvatica) is very fine. If any one doubts it, let him go over to Prospect Park, in Brooklyn, not far from the stone cottage, on the south side, and he will have an opportunity to review his opinion, and to wonder why it is that one of the most magnificent color trees of the American forests is so little known or introduced into decorated grounds. It ranks among the very first in merit, and stands among the very last in use. By the way, the parks of New York and Brooklyn should be used for something else and more than mere walking and driving. They are the best schools that America possesses for the study of trees and shrubs. There are few things which our climate will allow to grow that may not be found here, under circumstances which tend to produce their most ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 79 favorable development. Gentlemen who have country places may, by some little pains, here see just what things they need, how to combine them for the best effects, and how to provide for them soil and site. Once possessed, the love of trees becomes a passion, and inspires more pleasure than one can imagine who has never become an enthusiast in that direction. One may learn, particularly in the Brooklyn Park, the value of the new golden evergreens of various sorts. They are destined to work a revolution in yards and gardens. Some of the more choice ones are marvels of brilliancy, and carry their glowing yellows right through the winter. One may learn in these parks how to decorate rocks. There is many a place in the country abounding in outcropping ledges, huge bowlders, or jutting rocks, which the pro- prietor wishes he could dig out and cart away. But he is rich who has large rocks upon his grounds. If one will see what use can be made of them, what a frame they furnish for mosses, ferns, vines, and various elegant shrubs, he will cease foolishly spending money to get rid of that which many men would gladly spend money to obtain. It is a fortunate thing for our country that so much atten- tion is now paid to the planting of trees. We hope to see the day when no longer ninety-nine in every hundred that are planted in streets or yards shall be maples and elms. What a sight would be a road on which one could ride for a mile through an avenue of scarlet oaks, and then for a mile through stately avenue of tulip-trees, and then through lines of scarlet maples, pepperidge-trees, cypress, or long rows of gentlemanly walnut-trees! The time will come when, on the great roads, one may travel a whole day in the shade of stately trees. It is not enough to plant your own grounds. Every village should line its streets with shade trees. It is not enough to plant shade trees in the streets. They ought to 80 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK outrun the town, and reach from village to village, until the whole region is filled with shadowed roads. In doing this, we ought to avoid the monotony of a few varieties end- lessly reproduced, and make a generous use of the noble sorts that are so abundantly scattered over our forests and fields. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 81 XXII. PLANT TREES! Apnriz is the time for planting trees. Too much cannot be said to induce people to fill their villages, and the great roads between village and village, with fine shade trees, and private grounds with the choicer kinds. To write a g@od hymn or plant a good tree makes one a benefactor to his generation. It is hardly to be expected that the old men, hard-work- ing, and with enough to do at any rate, will trouble them- selves to plant trees along public roads. But we may hope for such service from enterprising young men, and even more from the public spirit of young women. Several instances have come to our knowledge in which women have formed associations for beautifying towns and villages by tree-planting, and in a few years have transformed the places. Nor is it unworthy of mention that this has been done by the influence of articles in the New York Ledger. A tree-planting week might be made a festival week; or persons might agree to secure a given number during the season. And here it may be well to say, that, although spring and fall are the best seasons for transplanting, yet trees may be moved in any month in the year,—in the middle of August, ifneed be. A long row of maples, in Peekskill, were moved —in consequence of grading and fence-building—during the month of July, and only two of them experienced any permanent injury. But it should be borne in mind that only smail trees should be removed in hot months, and after the foliage is expanded, unless one has a mind to go to great expense. 82 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK But trees six or eight feet high, if taken with ample roots,, and especially if moved in damp or wet weather, may be safely transplanted in midsummer. Of course, it will re- quire twice the care and labor which the same tree would need in spring, to produce the same result. The three or four trees usually planted in grounds are maples, elms, horse-chestnuts, and locusts. These are very well. But there are many kinds of maple seldom seen that deserve a place; such as the English field maple (Acer compestre), and notably the American red maple, called swamp maple (Acer rubrum), the former for its finely cut leaves, and the latter for early blossoms and for the exquis- ite scarlet autumn hues of its leaves. The cut-leaf or fern-leaf white birch is now common in nurseries. It grows rapidly, is extremely graceful, has leaves delicate as a fern, and in winter throws against the sky a tracery of twigs which is beautiful to look upon. It ought to be in every small collection. The liguidomen has a very beautiful leaf, star-like, and changes in autumn to a purplish bronze, quite distinct from all other leaves. If one can get the ¢wpelo, which abounds in New England, and may be found in some nurseries, he will secure a tree much neglected, but which ought to be universally diffused. Few people know how beautiful is the sassafras-tree, when well grown. In the woods it is hardly more than a shrub, or scrawny tree; but when planted young in an open space, and in good soil, it has a peculiar beauty of its own which is not repeated in any other tree. Why are magnolias so seldom planted? They are as hardy as maples—some of them at least. The JZ conspicua, the AL. soulangiana, M. glanca, and MM. tripetala are easily had, are fine all summer, and are the glory of the spring when their flowers expand. The American and the English beech, and also the pur- ple beech, should be more often planted. An old beech- tree, grown on good soil, in an open field, and not mutilated, ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 83 has nothing to fear when standing among all the kings of trees. No trees that we saw in England impressed us as did the beeches at Warwick Castle. In street planting, and along roadsides, nothing could be finer than the tulip-tree, which grows rapidly, is clean, and bears fine blossoms in early summer. They should be trans- planted when small, as they easily die off if moved when large. The same is true of chestnuts, walnuts, and pecan- nuts. Of evergreens I shall not speak, as they deserve a sepa- rate mention. But do not plant them in the city, nor in any close yard. They do not thrive, and become disfigure- ments rather than ornaments. 84 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK XXII. FAREWELL TO “SUMMER REST.” In this bright October day I know, not what Eve felt in leaving Paradise, but what John Milton imagined that she felt. To be sure, I have no such garden as hers must have been, and besides, I leave at a different season of the year; for she inquires feelingly, “Who now shall train these flowers?” whereas my flowers are so nearly spent that there is no need of training them. Tuberoses are gone, verbenas are gone, phloxes, common roses, and all the garden tribe, except scarlet sage, faithful marigolds, that never flinch to the last, and petunias, that are more graceful than they, and full as constant. Besides, there is the slow- footed chrysanthemum, too late for summer, often too late for autumn,—that never gets its Sunday jacket on until it is time to take it off again. But the amplitude of the floral harvest has been reaped. Now we only glean. Still one leaves a home of two months—summer months—not with- out a fluttermg somewhere about the heart. The still days, the deep days, the mellow days, without taxation or excitement, are over. Now for the plunge and rush! Now for men. Farewell, Nature! Good by, top of the hill! from which not a dwelling can be seen, only an horizon of mountains; and where, so often, just after the sun sets, we have lingered alone, in the mys- tery and inexplicable delight of an evening solitary hour, lifted far above the surrounding earth, and almost as one suspended in the very ether. Good by, homely stone wall! along which have grown so many weeds which we naughtily admired and cherished, contrary to good farming manners; where so many shrubs, finding good soil, shot up into thickets laced with wild ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 85 grape vines. Old tumble-down stone wall! Every stone colored and built over with weather-stains of hard moss; stones covered with brilliant ampelopsis, with the three- leaved ivy, fair to see, foul to touch, and with the rampant bitter-sweet! Let no one despise a stone wall, nor judge of it only from the cow’s point of view. It is the city of refuge to all the little fry. Squirrels run in and out, with saucy alertness, every summer’s day. Hares and rabbits find it a bulwark. The hoary old fat woodchuck rejoices in it as in a fenced city. Birds, too, wrens and sparrows, creep in and out, like children playing bo-peep. On these sturdy stones have we sat hours and hours, asking no softer cush- ion, and desiring no finer spectacle than God sent down from the heavens, or displayed upon the earth. The winter will soon vault into my seat, and a white shroud cover down the neglected old wall on the hill-top! Good by! Neither can a sensitive nature forget his summer com- panions, or stint them in their meed of praise and gratitude. Worms whose metamorphosis we have watched; spiders’ whose webs glitter along the grass at morning ‘and at evening, or mark out geometric figures among the trees, —spiders red, brown, black, green, gray, yellow, and speck- led; soft-winged moths, gorgeous butterflies, steel-colored and shining black crickets, locusts, and grasshoppers, and all the rabble of creaking, singing, fiddling fellows besides, which swarm in air and earth,—we bid you all a hearty good- by. Sooth to say, we part from some of you without regret. But for the million we feel a true yearning,—so much have we watched your ways, so many hours has our soul been fed by you through our eyes. Ye area part of the Great Father’s family. O, how goodly a book is that which God has opened in this world! Every day is a separate leaf,—nay, not leaf, but volume, with text and note and picture, with every dainty quip and quirk of graceful art, with stores of knowledge illimitable, if one will only humble himself to receive it! 86 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK ABOUT FRUITS, ETC. One should not willingly be ungrateful, even to the small- est creatures, or to inanimate objects, that have served his pleasure. And so, to reed and grass, bush and tree, stone and hill, brook and lake, all creeping things and all things that fly, to early birds and late chir ping locusts, we wave our hand in grateful thanks! But to that Providence over all, source of their joy and mine, what words can express what every manly heart must feel? Only the life itself can give thanks for life! PLEASANT TALK ABOUT FRUIT, FLOWERS AND FARMING. PRELIMINARY. We understand very well that every region must fashion its system of agriculture upon the nature of its soil, its cli- mate, etc. The principles of agriculture may be alike in every zone, but the processes depend upon circumstances. It would be folly for a new country, without commerce, to imitate an old country with an active commerce; it would be folly, where land is cheap, abundant, and naturally fer- tile, to adopt the habits of those who are stinted in lands, who have a redundant population, and who find a market for even the weeds which are indigenous to the soil. The husbandry of Holland is suited to a wet soil, and of Eng- land to a humid atmosphere and a very even annual tem- perature. But our soil is subject to extreme wet in spring and dryness in summer, to severe cold and intense heat. A farm whose bottom-lands are reinvigorated by yearly inun- dations, may thrive under an exacting husbandry that would exhaust an upland farm in a few years. Modes of agricul- ture must be suited to circumstances. Nevertheless, the experiments and discoveries and practices of every land are worth our careful attention, We do not import clothes— 88 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK but we do cloth, to be made up to suit our own habits and wants. The two extremes of husbandry are, the adoption of every novelty and every experiment indiscriminately, and the rejection of every new thing and every improvement, as indiscriminately. Wisdom consists in “ proving all things and holding fast that which is good.” We do not advocate large outlays for expensive machines—for fancy cattle, for every new thing that turns up. But when, after full trial, it is ascertained what are the best farm horses, the best breed of cattle, the best milch cows, the most profitable breed of hogs and sheep, and the most skillful routine of cultivation, we think our farmers ought to profit by the knowledge. It is never a good economy to have poor things when you can just as well have the best. This, then, is OUR CREED. We believe in small farms and thorough cultivation. We believe that soil loves to eat, as well as its owner, and ought, therefore, to be manured. We believe in large crops which leave the land better than they found it—making both the farmer and the farm rich at once. We believe in going to the bottom of things and, there- fore, in deep plowing, and enough of it. All the better it with a sub-soil plow. We believe that every farm should own a good farmer. We believe that the best fertilizer of any soil, is a spirit of industry, enterprise, and intelligence—without this, lime and gypsum, bones and green manure, marl and guano will be of little use. We believe in good fences, good barns, good farmhouses, good stock, good orchards, and children enough to gather the fruit. We believe in a clean kitchen, a neat wife in it, a spin- ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 89 ning-piano, a clean cupboard, a clean dairy, and a clean con- science. We firmly disbelieve in farmers that will not improve; in farms that grow poorer every year; in starveling cattle ; in farmers’? boys turning into clerks and merchants; in farmers’ daughters unwilling to work, and in all farmers ashamed of their vocation, or who drink whisky till honest people are ashamed of them. ALMANAC FOR THE YEAR. 1. Work ror January.—lIf you have done as you ought to have done, you have a snug ice-house, with double walls, the space between which is filled with non-conducting sub- stances, as pulverized charcoal, or dried saw-dust, or tan- bark, which are mentioned in the order of their value. Cut your blocks of ice of a size and shape with reference to close packing. Cover over thickly with clean straw when the stock of ice is all in. Look out not to lose all your chance in waiting for a better one; sometimes careful folks mean to have such glorious ice, that an open winter cheats them out of any at all. Warmntu.—The best fire in winter is made up of exercise, and the poorest, of whisky. He that keeps warm on liquor is like a man who pulls his house to pieces to feed the fire place. The prudent and temperate use of liquor is to let it alone. If you don’t touch it, it certainly won’t hurt you; he that says there is no danger, boasts that he is something more than other men. The way to summer your cattle well is to winter them well; and half the secret of good wintering is to keep them warm. Animal heat is generated in proportion to the abun- dance and excellence of their food. Exposure to the cold air withdraws heat rapidly, and of course makes more food 90 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK necessary to re-supply it, just as an open door makes it necessary to have more wood in the stove. If your stock run down in the winter and come out lean and feeble, all the summer will not fully bring them up again. 2. Work For Frsruary.—Get out rails, both for present use, and for the fence which you expect to lay in March and April. Cut, haul and stack up near your house a good sup- ply of jire-wood ; no matter if the forest is within ten rods of your door, your wife ought to have her wood chopped and dried ready for use. Look at every fence upon the place; see if the corners of your rail fences are rotting down; if some rails have not broken; if pig-holes have not been made ; if boys and cattle have not thrown down top- rails; and in short, put your fences into proper repair. Of course your tools will now be overhauled; those with steel blades should be thoroughly cleansed when laid aside in the fall, and if you rub a little oil over them and hang them up, all the better. Repair all that are out of order. These things and all your ordinary work, may be done, and still leave you leisure for reading. You should have good books and good papers, and read them carefully for your own sake and for your children’s. A man who brings up a family of ignorant children, cheats his children of their rights, and cheats his country of its rights; it is therefore a crime. GarpEN Worxk.—If there be no snow on the ground, the gardens may be cleared of all rubbish, manure hauled and stacked carefully ; and if you have a clay soil, and can catch the ground without frost for a few days, it will mel- low and ameliorate it to spade it up, leaving it in lumps and heaps, through which the frost may thoroughly penetrate. It is time to prepare your hot-bed, if you design having early plants in your garden. 3. Work ror Marcu.—Begin the year by thorough, deep plowing, where your fields are in good order for it. De- pend upon it, that deep plowing is the qnly good plowing. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. OL Your first crop, generally, will tell you so. But if the sub- soil is such that the first crop is rather poor, a year’s expo- sure of the land will ameliorate it so that your second crop will remunerate all expenses of time and labor laid out in deep plowing. No farmer should be without a sub- soil plow who has got his lands clear of stumps and roots. Take especial care of cows now just coming in with calf. See that those which are heavy are carefully handled, well fed, and warmly sheltered. Mares with foal should be ten- derly used, exercised a little, but not put to hard or strain- ing work. Zhe condition of the mother will toa great extent determine the condition of the offspring. Cows, mares, sows, ewes, etc. etc., should be kept in a hearty con- dition, without being fat. Orcuarp.—Do not trouble your trees with premature pruning. Let the axe, and knife, and saw alone. Loosen the dirt or sod around and beneath your trees. The best manure for your trees is fresh mold, or forest soil and lime in the proportion of about one part toten. Take soft soap, dilute it with urine, scrub your trees with it plentifully, having first scraped off all rough bark. If you would work easily always, never let your work drive you. 4, Work For Aprit.—Gather from your barn the loose hay seed, and sow it upon your wheat fields; it will give good pasturage after harvest, and make fine stuff for plow- ing under. Push forward your plowing, but look well to the teams; as cattle and horses are like men, unable in early spring to endure severe labor all at once. Your spring wheat should be got in; barley is a better crop, usu- ally, than rye. The middle and last of the month will keep you in the corn-field. Plow deep—plow thoroughly; and after planting, give the plow no rest, if you wish good corn, Youne Animats.—You will now begin to have plenty of calves, colts, pigs, and lambs. If you mean to have pro: 9» PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK fitable pork, you ought to push your pigs from the birth. Look carefully after your lambs; see that the mothers are well cared for; have dry and warm pens for any that are feeble. A little tenderness to the lambs will be well repaid by and by. GARDEN.—Your lettuce may be transplanted from the hot-bed the middle and last of this month. A foot apart is none too much, if you wish head-lettuce. Sow your main supplies of radishes, cabbage, tomatoes, ete. Get your pie-plant seed in early as possible; also carrots, pars- nips, and salsify or oyster-plant. Prune your gooseberries, currants, and raspberry bushes. Grapes, which were not laid in last fall should be pruned and laid in early in March ; but if neglected then, let them be till the leaves are large as the palm of your hand. Look out or worms?’ nests, and destroy them promptly. 5. Work ror May.—Your whole force will be required in this month. If the season has been late or wet, you still have your corn to plant. Pastures will be ready for your stock; remember to salt your stock every week. Weeds will now do their best to take your crops. Your potato crop should be put in, as there will be little danger of frost. After the 15th, you may put out sweet potato slips. If you have not grass-land for pasturage, try for one season the system of sodling, 7. e. keeping up your cattle in the yard or home-lot, and cutting green-fodder for them every day. An acre or two of corn, sown broad-cast, or oats and millet, should be tried. Above all other things, if you have warm, deep sandy loam, put in an acre of lucerne. During the last of this month, and at the beginning of the next, pruning may be done. If the limbs be large, cover the stump with a coat of paint, wax, grafting clay, or anything that will exclude air and wet. The garden will require extra labor in all this month, After the 15th, tender bulbs and tubers may be planted, dahlias, amaryllises, tuberoses, etc. Peas will require brush; ABOUT FRUIIS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 93 all your plants from the hot-bed should by this time be well a growing in open air. Roses will be showing their buds, If large roses of a favorite sort are required, more than half the buds should be taken off, and the whole strength of the plant be given to the remainder. The soil for this best of all flowers, cannot be too rich, nor too deep. 6. Work ror JuNE.—May, June, and September are the dairy months, The best butter and the best cheese are usually made in these months. If you are not neat, you do not know how to make cheese or butter. Uncleanliness affects not only the looks, but the quality of butter. Broad, shallow glass pans are the best, but the most expensive. In these milk seldom turns sour in summer thunder-storms. Tin pans are good, but unless the dairy-woman is scrupu- lously neat, the seams will be filled with residuum of milk and become very foul, giving a flavor to each successive panful. The principal requisites for prime butter are, good cows, good pasture for them, clean pans, cool, airy cellars, clean churns. Let the cream be churned before it is sour or bitter; and when the butter comes, at least three thorough workings will be necessary to drive out all the butter-milk. GaRpDEN.—Transplant flowers; destroy all weeds; get out cabbages; more lettuce; get ready celery trenches; layer favorite roses, vines, etc.; examine and remove from the peach-tree root, the grub which is destroying them. Sow salt under plum-trees—put on a coat two inches thick. Transplant flowers; bud roses with fine kinds; see that large plants are tied neatly to frames or stakes. Every morning examine your beds of cabbage, ete., for cut-worms, and destroy them if found; plant succession crops of peas, corn, radishes, lettuce, etc. 7. Work For Juty.—Great difference of practice and opinion exists as to the methods and time of harvesting. Some cut their grass while the dew is on it; others cut it 94 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK when perfectly dry, and say that if so cut it need not be spread, but will dry in the swath in one or two days. As to the time of cutting grass, we should avoid both ex- tremes of very early or very late. Just before the seed of timothy is ripe, is, upon the whole, the best time for this best of grasses for the scythe. Clover should be cut when in full blossom; instead of spreading, the best farmers make it into small cocks and leave it there to cure, which it will do without shrivelling or losing its color. GarpEN Work.—As soon as your roses are done bloom- ing, if you wish to increase them, take the young shoots, and about eight inches from the ground, cut, below an eye, half through, and then slit upward an inch or two through the pith; put a bit of chip in to keep the slit open; bend down the branch and cover the portion thus operated on with an inch or two of earth and put a brick upon it. It will soon send out roots, and by October may be separated from the parent plant. Quinces, gooseberries, and almost all shrubs which branch near the ground, may be propagated in this way. Still keep down weeds. Sow suc- cessive crops of corn, peas and salads, for fall use. Begin to gather such seeds as ripen early. Take up tulips, hya- cinths, etc., as soon as the tops wither. 8. Work ror Aveust.—If during this hot month you will clear out fence corners, and cut off vexatious intruders, the sun will do all it can to help you killthem. If your wheat is troubled with the weevil, thrash it out and leave it in the chaff. It will raise a heat fatal to its enemy without injur- ing itself. Every farmer should have a little nursery row of apple, pear, peach and plums of his own raising. Plant the seed; when a year old, transplant into rows eight inches apart in the row and two feet between the rows. During July, August, and September, you may bud them with choice sorts, remembering that a first-rate fruit will live just as easily as a worthless sort. This is a good month to sow down fallow fields to grass. Plough thoroughly—harrow ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS aND FARMING. 95 till the earth is fine; be liberal of seed, and cover in with a harrow and not with a bush, which drags the seeds into heaps, ot carries them in hollows. The early part of the month should be improved by all who wish to put in a crop of buck-wheat or turnips. If your pastures are getting short, let your milch cows have something every night in the yard. Corn, sown broadcast, would now render adxairable service. If you have neglected to raise your bulbs, lose no time now. Take cuttings from roses and put in small pots, invert a glass over them; in two or three weeks they will take root, and by the next spring make good plants. Gather flower seeds as soon as they ripen. 9. Work For SrpremMBEeR.—You should finish seeding your wheat grounds in this month. If sown too early, it is liable to suffer from the fly ; if too late, from rust. Those who sow acres by the hundred, must sow early and late both. But moderate fields should be seeded by the mid- dle of this month. In preparing the land, if the surface does not naturally drain itself, it should be so plowed as to turn the water into furrows between each land. Standing water, and, yet more, ice upon it, being fatal to it. See that your cattle are brought into good condition for winter- ing. Fall transplanting may be performed from the middle of this month ; take off every leaf—re-set, and stake. By the latter part of the month, or early in October, according to the season, it will be necessary to raise and pot such plants as you intend to keep in the house; to raise and place in a dry and frost-proof room your dahlias, tube- roses, amaryllis, tigridia, gladioli, and such other tender bulbs as you mayhave. Let your seed be gathered, carefully put away where it will contract no moisture. Go over your grounds and examine all your /abels, lest the storms which are approaching should destroy them. Sow in some warm and sheltered part of your garden, early in this month, for spring use, spinage, corn salad, lettuce, etc. 96 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK As soon as the leaves fall, take cuttings from currant bushes and grapes, and plant them out in rows. They will start off and grow earlier by some six weeks, the next season. Fill in your celery trenches every ten days. 10. Work For OcroserR.—Push forward your hogs as fast as possible. If they have had a good clover range in the summer, they will be ready to start off vigorously from the moment that you begin to put them upon corn. See that good paths are made in every direction from your house; and be sure to have walks through your barn-yards raised so high as never to be muddy. Your cattle-yards should slope toward the centre in such a way that horses and cat- tle need not wade knee deep in going in and out. Frosts will now begin to strip your trees and stop the growth of garden shrubs, and all your preparations should be made for protecting tender trees and shrubs. For cherry and pear-trees, especially, you should provide good covering for their trunk, until they have grown quite large. A good bundle of corn-stalks set round the body so as to keep out the sun, but not the air, will answer every purpose. For beds of China and tea, and dwarf roses, we advise a covering of three inches of halfrotted manure. Cover this with leaves about six inches. Moss is better, if you will take the trouble to collect it; and straw will do if you have neither moss nor leaves. Half cover the part that remains exposed, with fine brush, or pine branches. For single plants, drive a stake by their side, and tie the plant to it; wind loosely about it a wisp of straw or roll of bass matting, or cloth, so as to exclude the sun and not the air. The swn, and not the cold, usually destroys plants. Li. Work ror Novremsrer.—During this month, if the ground is not locked by frost, you may plow stiff, tenacious clay soils to great advantage. By being broken up and subjected to the keen frosts, your soil will become mellow and tender. See that every provision is made for shelter. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 97 ing your cattle and horses; be sure that your sheep are not obliged to lie out in drenching rains. In THE GARDEN see that your asparagus bed is dressed if neglected last month. House all your brush, poles, stakes, frames, etc., which will be fit for use another season. If your tulips, hyacinths, etc. have not been planted, you had better reserve them for spring, as they will be liable to rot in the ground if planted so late in the year. Cover with brush, or leaves, or straw, your lettuce, spinage, and other salad plants designed for spring use. If tender plants, roses, vines, etc., have been left unprotected, cover as directed last month. If you have no cold frame for half- hardy plants, they may be laid in by the heels, i. e., taken up, and the roots laid into a trench, the tops sloping at an angle of about twenty degrees, and then covered with earth. The soil should cover about half the stem. It is now a good season for cutting grafts. Take them from the outside of the middle of the tree ; let them be done up in small packages, and set up endwise in the cellar, and covered with about halfdry sand. Roots may be taken from pear and apple-trees, and packed in the same way for root-grafting. } 12. Drcemper.—The year is about to close. Look back upon your toil. In what respect will your year’s labor bear an approval when calmly examined? Can you henestly acquit yourself of indolence and carelessness? and as honestly take credit for enterprise, activity, and a desire for improve- ment? Your barns are full—your granary is heavy with grain—the year’s bounty has followed a year’s labor, and if you have the heart of a man you will not forget the source whence your blessings have come. You have perhaps done well by your stock, and in so far as the body is concerned, for your children ; but what have you done for their educa- tion? What have you done to promote popular education ? Are you doing anything to make your neighborhood bet- ter? What good newspapers do you provide for your fam- 98 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK ily? Do you lay out as much money for books as you do for tobacco? In looking forward to the next year, you ought to mark out your personal course by good resolu- tions, and your business course by a definite plan of opera- tions. It would be well if a farmer should know before- hand everything he means to do; and afterwards, if he has kept such an account that you can tell anything that you have done. Sleighing for the young and gay, and warm fire-sides for the aged, are what are now most thought of. Those who are best provided with the comforts of life should remem- ber their less favored brethren. EDUCATED FARMERS. Ir is time for those who do not believe ignorance to be a blessing, to move in behalf of common schools. Many teachers are not practised even in the rudiments of the spelling-book; and as for reading, they stumble along the sentences, like a drunken man on a rough road. Their “ hand-write,” as they felicitously style the hieroglyphics, would be a match for Champollion, even if he did decipher the Egyptian inscriptions. Buta more detestable fact is, that sometimes their morals are bad; they are intemperate, coarse, and ill-tempered; and wholly unfit to inspire the minds of the pupils with one generous or pure sentiment. We do not mean to characterize the body of the com: mon schoolmasters by these remarks; but that any con- siderable portion of them should be such, is a disgraceful evidence of the low state of education. Farmers and mechanics! this is a subject which comes home to you. Crafty politicians are constantly calling you the bone and sinew of the land; and you may depend upon it that you will never be anything else but bone and sinew ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 99 without education. There is a law of God in this matter. That class of men who make the most and best use of their heads, will, in fact, be the most influential, will stand high- est, whatever the theories and speeches may say. This is a “nature of things” which cannot be dodged, nor got over. Whatever class bestow great pains upon the cultivation of their minds will stand high. If farmers and mechanics feel themselves to be as good as other people, it all may be true ; for goodness is one thing and intelligence is another. If they think that they have just as much mind as other classes, that may be true; but can you wse it as well? Lawyers, and physicians, and clergymen, and literary men, make the discipline of their intellect a constant study. They read more, think more, write more than the laboring classes. The difference between the educated and unedu- cated portions of society is a real difference. Now a proud and lazy fellow, may rail and swear at this, and have his labor for his pains. There is only one way really to get over it, and that is to rear up a generation of well educated, thinking, reading farmers and mechanics. Your skill and industry are felt ; and they put you, in these respects, ahead of any other class. Just as soon as your heads are felt, as much as your hands are, that will bring you to the top. Many of our best farmers are men of great natural shrewdness; but when they were young they “had no chance for learning.” They feel the loss, and they are giv- ing their children the best education they can. Farmers’ sons constitute three-fifths of the educated class. But the thing is, that they are not educated as farmers. When they begin to study they leave the farm. They do not ex- pect to return to it. The idea of sending a boy to the school, the academy, and the college, and then let him go back to farming, is regarded as a mere waste of time and money. You see how it is even among yourselves. Ifa boy has an education, you expect him to be a lawyer, or a doctor, or a preacher. You tacitly admit that a farmer 100 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK does not need such an education; and if you think so, you cannot blame others if they follow your example. There is no reason why men of the very highest educa- tion should not go to a farm for their living. If a son of mine were brought up on purpose to be a farmer, if that was the calling which he preferred, I still would educate him, if he had common sense to begin with. He would be as much better for it as a farmer, as he would as a lawyer. There is no reason why a thoroughly scientific education should not be given to every farmer and to every mechanic. A beginning must be made at the common school. Every neighborhood ought to have one. But they do not grow of themselves, like toad-stools. And no decent man will teach school on wages which a canal boy, or a hostler would turn up his nose at. You may as well put your money into the fire as to send it to a “‘ make-believe ” teacher—a great noodle-head, who teaches school because he is fit for nothing else! Lay out to get a good teacher. Be willing to pay enough to make it worth while for “‘ smart? men to become your teachers. And when your boys show an awakening taste for books, see that they have good histories, travels, and scientific tracts and treatises. Above all, do not let a boy get a notion that if he is educated, he must, of course, quit the farm. Let him get an education that he may make a better farmer. Ido not despair of yet seeing a genera- tion of honest politicians. Educated farmers and educated mechanics, who are in good circumstances, and do not need office for a support, nor make politics a trade, will stand the best chance for honesty. But the Lord deliver us from the political honesty of tenth-rate lawyers, vagabond doc- tors, bawling preachers, and bankrupt clerks, turned into patriotic politicians! ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 101 AN ACRE OF WORDS ABOUT AKER. Ovr spelling acre according to Webster’s former method* —aker, has attracted no little attention, in a small way, both far and near. It is very difficult to fix on any rule for any- thing in our language. Etymology is chiefly useful in settling the primitive signification, and is, or ought to be, scarcely at all authoritative in orthography. Where two languages are very different, it is absurd to attempt the forms of the one in the other. In respect to idiom, no one dreams of transferring it from one to another. Oftentimes it is equally absurd to transfer mere literation, as in the Greek-blooded word PAthisic for Tisic, or as Walker would have spelled it, Phthisick / Who rebels because demesne, as it is written in our best authors until within a little time, is now spelled domain? We see no reason why Anglicized words should, against all our notions of sound, retain a cumbrous foreign spelling. Words adopted into a lan- guage by the car, which are spoken before they are written, generally conform, on being written, to our modes of spelling. But words introduced first by the eye, as they are written, for a long time wear the original spelling. Thus some foreign words are spelled by one method, and some by another. Custom is usually regarded as determinate, in the matter of spelling, pronunciation, idiom, purity, etc. But, in respect to spelling, custom is not long the same. If one will examine our literature from the time of Henry VIIL., he will find a constant succession of changes in spelling, both for good and for bad. JZ has been generally substituted for Y, as in Lykwyse, accordynge, beyng, certayne. Sir Thomas More wrote hym, thynges, desyer, myndes. Skel- ton, the Poet Laureat, has centencyously, dyd, advysynge Ayll, etc., ete. * Two-volume edition, imperial octavo. TOR. PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK There has, too, and wisely, been a constant tendency to drop all wnsovnded letters. What earthly use is there of lugging along letters which are entirely mute? In old but classic authors we have Godde dydde, nowe, whiche, pulle, beste, suche, couerte (court) beetwene, begunve, ete. Within our own memory the final & is lopped off from words where it had a perfect sinecure, as in musick, ete. “ Kanvt kum it,” does not look any more odd to our eyes than our spelling would have looked to those who wrote one hundred years ago. If it be asked why we do not spell every word by the same rule that we do some; we reply, that violent, and sudden changes in languages are impracticable ; and as in everything else, are not desirable. We are glad to see spelling simplified, and shall move along just as fast as we can do it with a reasonable prospect of carrying the public. It is not a matter of conscience; we have no necessity laid upon us to reform the language; no call to be literal martyrs ; it is a matter of convenience and taste, to be done or omitted as one pleases. It would be more inconvenient to stand alone with all writers against us, for the sake of spelling consistently, than to spell foolishly and super- fluously in conformity to inveterate practice. Therefore, for the sake of company, we still spell quite absurdly. It is called inconsistent ; and by men, too, who spell trough, cough, enough, though, through, bought, six dis- similar sounds (ow, ow, 00, 0, uf, off), by the same com- bination of letters! If consistency be the question, every English writer that ever lived, is a mere bundle-of incon- sistencies. Every continental living language, and the dead classic languages, have thrown in their contributions, and our tongue comprises the scraps, odds and ends, of all lands, with all the diverse peculiarities of each language more or less retained. Under such circumstances, when no man writes a sentence without spelling inconsistently, it is quite ridiculous to oppose a simplification of spelling, be ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 103 cause we cannot do, at once, what it is only practicable to do gradually. As fast as the public is able to bear it, we shall be glad to reduce all cumbrous spelling to a consistent simplicity. An acquaintance declares, that the derivation of AKER from the Latin and Greek, is “ without the least foundation in the words as used in the Greek and Latin and in the Eng- lish, and built entirely on the resemblance of sounds,” ete. The facts are the other way. In the Greek, and in the Latin, it meant simply a field, an open, cultivated spot. Now, this was the meaning of the word in English, until it was by statutes limited to a particular quantity (31 Ed. IIL. ; 5 Ed. I., 24; Henry VIII., as quoted by Webster) and this is the meaning yet, of the word in German (acker) Swedish (acker) Dutch (akker). There is, therefore, ample founda- tion in the wse of the word; and the sownd our friend gives up. In almost all the languages of the Teutonic family, of which ours is one, the word is still spelled with & ,; and so it is in the Asiatic languages, from which, probably, both the Teutonic and the Greek, alike borrowed it. The spelling acre, as also centre, theatre we, probably, derived from the French; to which language we owe the emasculation of many a noble Saxon word. In the New England Farmer our orthographical sins are thus set in order before us: “The Western Farmer and Gardener, is an excellent journal—very. It has only one feature that we dislike, viz.—it spells acrE a-k-e-r/ We are somewhat surprised at Bro. Beecher, who usually evinces such good taste, as well as such good sense, should adopt such an ugly-looking substitute for an old word of so much better appearance. although supported in it by the prince of lexicogra- phers. “ Aker! Wheugh! Bro. editors, hoot at it till it 104 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK shall become obselete. In Todd’s, Johnsun’s, and Walke1’s, and Worcester’s dictionaries, fwel is spelled fewel, as the most correct way. This is odd enough and bad enough— but it is hardly so unsightly as aker.” Nothing becomes obsolete until it has been in vogue. But pass that: what a sight will the hooting confraternity present! I imagine Maine Farmer Holmes—a plump, short, dapper gentleman, giving a long howl, that sounds so ludicrous, that he draws back from the open window to laugh. Our more sober Breck performs the euphonious duty with such conscientious heartiness, that up starts the man of Buckwheat from his (mis-spelled) Plowghman’s chair, as also does the Cultivator Cole—a trio not practiced to sing together. The uproar reaches Albany, and sur- prises him of the Cultivator, who hoots supplementary, with such voice as he happens, in his surprise, to have on hand. Next, toward the west, Dr. Lee shall give a scien- tific roar or hoot such as will make his laboratory jar again. Down across the lake the hooting (not hunting) chorus goes (what will the sailors think is to pay !) to Elliot of the yard-long-named Magazine, who, hoarse with lake fogs and winds, shall put in so bass a hoot, that Wight and Wright of the Prairie Kurmer will howl of mere fright, if for no- thing else. Audacious men! we utterly defy you! We shall pass by the whole crowing brood of Polands, Dorkings and what-not; and raise a breed of genuine owls, to be our champions in this dire necessity. We say, peremptorily, that we will not bet on any match between hooting birds and hooting editors. But our serious opinion is, that, in grave solemnity of looks, and in professional hooting, a half dozen well-trained owls will beat. the whole of you, However, we are open to conviction. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 105 FARMERS’ LIBRARY. Iris of the highest importance that farmers should pos- sess reading habits; and that they should bring up their children to a love of books. Every farmer should have a library ; it may, at first, be small; but it should be select. As soon as a farmer is beforehand enough to own an acre, he is prosperous enough to begin a library. It is said by many, books wont make money. Yes they will. To-be- sure, their best effect is the production of intelligence in the reader; but a man well informed in his own business is just the man to make money. Who ever thought of making money by buying grindstones and whetstones? But they sharpen the scythe, and sickle, and the axe, and they pro- duce money. Books are grindstones and whetstones for a man’s mind, Many are unwilling to buy a treatise upon the disease of the horse, although there are several which will prevent most of the evils which affect this noble animal. In the West, the horse is used, in town and country, by almost every man. But very few profess to know how he should be treated! And, of those who think they are wise, how many have any knowledge except of a few nostrums for sickness? The horse, in man’s service, is living in an entirely artificial state. He takes care of himself ifleft wild. But living in stables, laboring every month of the year in harness, and under the saddle, not selecting his own food, but fed at the will of his master, his own instincts become of little use, and he is dependent entirely on the mercy and knowledge of those whose slave he is. It ought not to be thought unreasonable to say that every man who is willing to own a horse, ought to be willing to know how to manage him, in the stable and out of it. There is no work in the English language containing more, or better instructions than* Stew- * A Treatise on the management of horses in relation to stabling, groom- ing, feeding, watering, and working: published by A.O.Moore &Co., N. Y. 106 PLAIN AND PLEASAN] TALK art’s Stable Economy. It should be read by the farmer ; and just as much by every man, of whatever calling, who uses a horse, or owns one. It is of standard authority in England. Mr. Stewart has long been a professor in veterinary institutes. Every man ought to know how to treat a sick horse. Sup- pose a horse to be taken sick on a journey ; most frequently the driver is the only one at hand'to prescribe. If you are at a tavern, of what use, generally speaking, are the brag- ging pretensions of those that crowd around you? Stop- ping for a night at a wretched hole of a tavern, one of my horses, at night fell sick. I knew no more than a child what to do; the landlord (ah me! I shall never forget him!) was equally ignorant and much more indifferent. aia Cock’s fo0t,....5..cccccevccne Saqpo0ddasdec0a6 «A aes VON ey GOS OHO D000 alctatelelctotetcvereloteleyelsusie siciets 5: ae Sweet-scented vernal. als cleiclenre|aissiclateseleloiseisiel=et= 2 Wilt, OtiGeHisnen dncooboodndocod9adsooGcdcacc 6 Ibs. Cow-grass, ....... : . aS and annual meadow-grass. These seeds may, for the most part, be had of eastern dealers, though not probably in the West. With blue grass we should join orchard grass, say a bushel to the acre—white clover five pounds, red clover ten pounds, and sweet-scented vernal (anthoxanthum odo- ratum) say three pounds. This last grass is remarkably early in the spring, and peculiarly fragrant; indeed, it is supposed that the famous spring butter of Philadelphia derives its peculiar flavor from this grass, and we should include it in every mixture to be ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AN’) FARMING. 147 sown for pasturage. The orchard grass is one of our most valuable; for hay it may be inferior to timothy; but it is decidedly superior to it for pasturage. Colonel Powell, of Pennsylvania, after growing it ten years, declares that it produces more pasturage than any cultivated grass he has even seen in America. It should be spread on a floor and sprinkled with water a day or two before sowing, it being very light, not weighing more than twelve or fourteen pounds to the bushel. The following table exhibits the quantity of seed, by weight, and also on the three kinds of soil : FOR PERMANENT PASTURE, PER IMPERIAL ACRE. Licut Soin. MepIvm SoIL, Heavy Soin. With a |Without a} With a [Without al Witha |Without a crop. crop. crop. crop. crop. crop. Ibs Ibs Ibs. Ibs. Ibs Ibs. Perennial rye-grass. . 12 24 12 24 12 24 Meadow fox-tail...... 1} 24 2 4 8+ 63 Timothy-grass. ....) — _ 14 8 8L 54 Meadow fescue...... 24 4 23 4 24 4 Cock’s-foot. ........2. 5 8 3+ 64 24 4 Rough-stalked poa... _ _ 1: 84 84 6} Smooth-stalked poa.. 34 63 13 bt _ — White clover........ 5 8 5 8 5 8 Red clover......<- 0 14 24 14 24 14 2} Hop-clover, or trefoil 14 24 1} 24 14 24 Cow-grass.......s.0.- 1} 24 13 24 1} 24 834 603 84 63} 864 66 There is a very great difference of opinion respecting the quantity of seed to be sown to an acre. There can be no doubt that the question is to be settled by the character of the soil and climate. In soils and under circumstances where every seed will vegetate and grow off with unob- structed vigor, less seed is needed than where a part will be taken by frosts, a part by drenching rains which are not well drained off, and a part by severe drought. Every farmer must employ his best judgment in this matter ; but, 148 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK it is better to err on the side of too much than of too little seed, Ture or Srepinc.—We cannot pretend to decide be- tween the conflicting opinions on this subject. The positive- ness of those who prefer spring-sowing is only to be equalled by that of those who prefer fall-planting. Young says of the month of August, “this is the best season of the whole year for laying down land to grass, and no other is admissible for it on strong, wet, or heavy soils.” This, however, is said of humid England. But if the character of the season toward the close of summer favors, there can be no doubt that fall-sowing will advance the crop very early the next year, in all soils where it is not liable to be thrown out by the frosts. If the winter proves severe, it will be prudent to add an additional quantity of seed in the spring. It is objected to spring sowings, that the grass is grown in the shade during the early part of the summer, and is, of course, tender, so that when the grain is cut, it is enfeebled by the powerful heat, to which, then, it be- comes exposed. On the whole, we are inclined to prefer - the month of September, if the season favors, to any other for sowing grassseed. Since writing these lines, one of our best farmers informs us that he prefers August to any other month. Meruop oF Sowine.—The ground should be very tho. roughly prepared by deep and fine plowing, and the want of labor in this respect is want of economy. If the soil is naturally we.l drained, no further provision against wet will be required. But if it be flat, it may be well to lay it off into lands, strike a furrow through the centre, and then turn the furrows toward the outer on each side. This will give a slight elevation at the middle and a drain between each land sufficient to answer the pur- pose of moderate surface draining. The seed should be sown with the greatest evenness possible. The English farmer pre- fers to sow some of the kinds separately on this account ; for ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 149 although he has to sow the whole ground several times over, experience has taught him, as it will us, that that is the cheapest which is.done the best. Let it be covered in well with a harrow, and not with a bush, which last leaves the soil dead, and tends to drag the seed into patches and hollows. As a general rule, grass seed may be planted as deeply as grain. Farmers lose much more seed from shal- low than from deep planting. For although shallow-planted seed vegetates sooner, they are more liable to be winter- killed, or to perish by drought than those which are deeply covered, THEORY OF MANURE. Ir is very well known that a young orchard will not, usu- ally, flourish on the site of an old one; for the older trees are supposed to have withdrawn from the soil certain ele- ments necessary to their growth; and as necessary to the growth of the young tree, should it be planted there. There is no “like” or “ dislike” of the soil to the tree; it is a plain case of starvation. The tree needs, and the soil cannot supply certain elements of its wood. But if, after a plant has abstracted from the soil certain ingredients, the whole plant is decomposed and returned to the earth, the soil repossesses itself of the lost elements, and is ready to yield them up again to a plant of the same kind. If the straw of wheat be burned upon the field, annually, the soil would yield fine crops for a thousand successive years, that is so far as the straw is concerned. But if the grain is removed, and nothing resupplies the drain of phosphates which it makes from the soil, the soil will in due time, according to the original quantities in the soil, cease to yield grain, although the straw may be admirable. But if both straw and kernel were every year burned upon the 150 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK field, as grass and its seed is upon the prairies, wheat would grow for a thousand years in succession. The same is true of corn, of potatoes, and of any annual crop. When the annual growth is restored to the soil, it is repossessed of all its treasure which had been loaned for a season. If a part of the crop is removed, the soil is poorer by just so much as the portion removed contained within it of the elements necessary to that crop, and it must be restored artificially, i.e. by manuring ; or by allowing the earth to prepare (by disintegration or decomposition of its minerals) a new supply; z. e. by fallowing. A forest will grow for ages on the same spot, for it returns annually its leaves, and, grad- ually, by force of accidents and the elements, its twigs, branches, trunks, ete., to the soil again. But let the whole product be gradually removed, and the soil would soon be > unable to supply the trees their nourishment, except in cases where the soil was very rich in the materials of growth. The forests of Germany, like our mines, are under the man- agement of the government. It was customary, for a time, to allow the peasants the use of the twigs and smaller branches ; but analysis has shown that in these, especially, resides the large proportion of potash entering into the composition of trees; the annual removal of it debilitated the trees to an extent that obliged the Conservators to change their mode of proceeding. On the other hand, in one of Mr. Horsford’s letters from Germany, we have the question of growing plants upon their own ashes, brought, by the ablest chemist of the age, directly to the test of experiment. ‘In the spring preceding my arrival in Giessen, Professor Liebig planted some grape scions under the windows of the laboratory. He fed them, if I may use such an expression, upon the ashes of the grape vine—or upon the proper inor- ganic food of the grape, as shown by analyses of its ashes. The growth has been enormous, and several of the vines bore large clusters of grapes in the course of the season. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. Lot Indeed, I know not but all, as my attention was drawn to them particularly only since the fruit has been gathered. The soil otherwise is little better than a pavement—a kind of fine gravel, in which scarcely anything takes root. ““T was shown pots of wheat, in different stages of their growth, that had been fed variously—some upon the inor- ganic matters they needed, according to the analyses of their ashes—others had* merely shared the tribute of the general soil. The results in numbers I don’t yet know. In appearance, no one could be at a loss to judge of what might be expected.” The fact that depopulated forest-grounds change the character of their growth, is quite familiar to all; and the reasons of it have been variously debated. FODDER FOR CATTLE. AurHoucH the practice of soiling cattle, 7. ¢. of cutting their food daily and feeding it to them in a green state, would be profitable to many small farmers, it is especially to be recommended to those living in towns, where pastur- age is distant and expensive. Where an immediate supply is required, corn may be sown broadcast, and cut as wanted, until it begins to tassel, when all should be cut and cured, and the ground sown again, and a third time in the same summer. But if half that is said of lucerne is true, and we see no reason to doubt it, it is valuable far above all other kinds of green fodder. It starts very early in spring; may be cut four times in a summer, yielding from four to nine tons to the acre, acccording to the condition of the land. It is much relished by cattle, imparts no bad flavor to milk, is a very fattening food, and one sowing will last ten years. 152 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK One acre is sufficient for four or five cows. It may be sown in drills, if the land is foul, and kept clean by hoeing, the first year; but on clean ground it may be sown broadcast. It is hardy under the infliction of severe frosts; and sur- passes all grasses in endurance of drought, its enormously land roots affording it moisture from a great depth. An English writer says, its roots have been found from ten to fourteen feet below the surface ; and an American writer says, that it made, on his land, roots three feet long the first summer, j Where it is sown broadcast, it is difficult to get it through the first year. But if sown in drills ten inches apart, and hoed once or twice, it may be cut twice or thrice the first season, and be entirely established before winter. A light, sandy soil is the best; it should not be put upon heavy and non-friable soils, though it will flourish on even these, when fully established. Ten pounds of seed to the acre is enough, if drilled; fifteen pounds, if sown broad- cast. The only reason, that we can imagine, why this plant should not be extensively cultivated, is, the disrelish which our farmers too often have to any crop requiring much care. To slash along with a plow is all well enough; but to hoe and weed is rather tedious. But these operations are required only during the first part of the first year. CamPHor FoR FLowErs.—Two or three drops of a satu- rated solution of camphor in alcohol, put into half an ounce of soft water, forms a mixture which will revive flowers that have begun to droop and wilt, and give them freshness for a long time. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 153 THE SCIENCE OF BAD BUTTER. We once took occasion to give our opinion of the but- ter which was largely brought to our market. The article was deemed severe ; but if they who think so had eaten of the butter they would have regarded that as the more pun- gent of the two. We have waited a year; and are now prepared more fully to testify against that utter abomina- tion, slanderously called butter, so unrighteously exchanged in our market for good money. Far the most part, the cream is totally depraved at the start, and churning, work- ing, and packing are only the successive steps of an evil education by which bad inclinations are developed into overt wickedness. We determined to keep an eye upon the matter; and now give, from life, the natural history of the butter sold. Before doing this, we will express an opinion of what is good butter. Good butter is made of sweet cream, with perfect neat- ness; is of a high color, perfectly sweet, free from butter- milk, and possesses a fine grass flavor. Tolerable butter, differs from this only in not having a fine flavor. It is devoid of all unpleasant taste, but has not a high relish. Whatever is less than this is bad butter; the catalogue is long and the descending scale is marked with more varie- ties than one may imagine. Variety 1. BUTTER-MILK Burrer.—This has not been well worked, and has the taste of fresh buttermilk. It is not very disagreeable to such as love fresh buttermilk ; but as it is a flavor not expected in good butter, it is usually disagreeable. Variety 2. Srrone Butrer.—This is one step farther along, and the buttermilk is changing and beginning to as- sert its right to predominate over the butteraceous flavor ; 154 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK yet it may be eaten with some pleasure if done rapidly, accompanied with very good bread. Variety 3. Frowy or rrowsy Butrer.—This is a second degree of strength attained by the buttermilk. It has become pungent, and too disagreeable for any but absent- minded eaters. Variety 4. Rancrp Butrer.—This is the putrescent stage. No description will convey, to those who have not tasted it, an idea of its unearthly flavor; while those who have, will hardly thank us for stirring up such awful remembrances by any description. Variety 5. Brrrer Burrer.—Bitterness is, for the most part, incident to winter-butter. When one has but little cream and is long in collecting enough for the churn, he will be very apt to have bitter butter. Variety 6. Musry Burrer.—In summer, especially in damp, unventilated cellars, cream will gather mold ; When- ever this appears, the pigs should be set to churn it. But instead, if but just touched, it is quickly churned; or, if much molded, it is slightly skimmed, as if the flavor of mold, which has struck through the whole mass, could be removed by taking off the colored portion! The peculiar taste arising from this affection of the milk, blessed be the man who needs to be told it! Variety 7. Sour-mmK Burrer.—This is made from milk which has been allowed to sour, the milk and cream being churned up together. The flavor is that of greasy, sour milk. Variety 8. Vinegar Burrer.—There are some who imagine that all milk should be sowred before it is fit to churn. When, in cool weather, it delays to change, they expedite the matter by some acid—usually vinegar. The butter strongly retains the flavor thereof. Variety 9. Curesy Butrer.—Cream comes quicker by being heated. If sour cream be heated, it is very apt to ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 155 separate and deposit a whey: if this is strained into the churn with the cream, the butter will have a strong cheesy flavor. Variety 10. GranuLatep Butrer.—When, in winter, sweet cream is over-heated, preparatory to churning, it pro- duces butter full of grains, as if there were meal in it. Variety 11.—In this we will comprise the two opposite kinds—too salt and unsalted butter. We have seen butter exposed for sale with such masses of salt in it that one is tempted to believe that it was put in as a make-weight. When the salt is coarse, the operation of eating this butter affords those who have good teeth, a pleasing variety of grinding. Variety 12. Larp Butrer.—When lard is cheap and abundant, and butter rather dear, it is thought profitable to combine the two. Variety 18. Mixep Butrer.—When the shrewd house- wife has several separate churnings of butter on hand, some of which would hardly be able to go alone, she puts them together, and those who buy, find out that ‘ Union is strength! Such butter is pleasingly marbled; dumps of white, of yellow, and of dingy butter melting into each other, until the whole is ring-streaked and speckled. Variety 14, Compounp Burrer.—By compound butter we mean that which has received contributions from things animate and inanimate; feathers, hairs, rags of cloth, threads, specks, chips, straws, seeds ; in short, everything is at one time or another to be found in it, going to pro- duce the three successive degrees of dirty, filthy, nasty. Variety 15. Toueu Burrer.—When butter is worked too long after the expulsion of buttermilk, it assumes a gluey, putty-like consistence, and is tough when eaten. But, oh blessed fault! we would go ten miles to pay our admiring respects to that much-to-be-praised dairy-maid whose zeal leads her to work her butter too much! We doubt, how: ever, if a pound of such butter was ever seen in this place, 156 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK Besides all these, whose history we have correctly traced ; besides butter tasting of turpentine from being made in pine churns; butter bent on travelling, in hot weather ; butter dotted, like cloves on a boiled ham, with flies, which Solomon assures. us causeth the ointment to stink; besides butter in rusty tin pans, and in dirty swaddling clothes; besides butter made of milk drawn from a dirty cow, by a dirtier hand, into a yet dirtier pail, and churned in a churn the dirtiest of all; besides all these sub-varieties, there are several others with which we have formed an acquaintance, but found ourselves baffled at analysis. We could not even guess the cause of their peculiarities. Oh Dr. Liebig! how we have longed for your skill in analytic chemistry! What consternation would we speedily send among the slatternly butter-makers, revealing the mysteries of their dirty doings with more than mesmeric facility ! And now, what on earth is the reason that good butter is so great a rarity? Is it a hereditary curse in some families? or is it a punishment sent upon us for our ill- deserts? A few good butter-makers in every neighborhood av a standing proof that it is nothing but bad housewifery; mere sheer carelessness which turns the luxury of the churn into an utterly nauseating abomination. Select cows for quality and not for quantity of milk; give them sweet and sufficient pasturage; keep clean your- self; milk into a clean pail; strain into clean pans—(pans scalded, scoured, and sunned, and if tin, with every particle of milk rubbed out of the seams.) While it is yet sweet, churn it; if it delays to come, add a little saleratus ; work it thoroughly, three times, salting it at the second working ; put it into a cool place, and then, when, with a conscience as clean and sweet as your butter, you have dispatched your tempting rolls to market, you may sit down and thank God that you are an honest woman! ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 157 CINCINNATI, THE QUEEN CITY. WHatEvEerR may have been the squealing celebrity of - Porkopolis, Cincinnati seems destined to merge the glory of that name in the more agreeable title, City of Vineyards. That she is the Queen City none denies. But on account of what single excellence, it might be difficult, for some, to say. A queen of slaughter-pens might be a hearty buxom lass, but, withal, not exactly the personage for which knights (Sancho always excepted) love to break lances. A queen of foundries and stithies, she might be, and not neces- sarily, on that account, a ruddy brunette; inasmuch as Sir Vulcan was, once before, the husband of Venus—queen of beauty. A blushing queen of strawberry beds would be quite romantic; but yet more appropriate if her jurisdic- tion were extended over vines and purple clusters and vine- yards and orchards. But whether it be pork, or iron, or gardens, or vineyards, or observatories, Cincinnati is acknow- ledged on all hands to be the Queen City. Leaving her commercial glories out of view, we think Cincinnati has done more for horticulture than any Ameri- can city, taking into the account her recent origin and her means. In all other cities horticulture has been the child of wealth and leisure. It has followed commercial or manu- facturing prosperity. But in this city, it began with them and kept pace with them; so that one wonders which most to admire, the thrift of industry and skill, or the elegant taste which is so generally evinced in the cultivation of fruit, and shrub and flower. The first volume of the Transactions of the Cincinnati Horticultural Society, is eminently worthy of that enter- prising corporation. The thoughts of several principal friends of horticulture seem much directed to the subject of vine culture, and the manufacture of wine. There are more than eighty-three vine- yards in the vicinity of the city containing not far from 400 158 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK acres of land! From 114 acres during the season of 1845s more than 23,000 gallons of wine were manufactured, and there was not more than half a crop obtained in that sea- son. The average yield of wine per acre, for five years in succession, is stated to be from 450 to 500 gallons per annum, Many think the culture of the grape will be the finishing stroke to the temperance enterprise; affording a whole- some beverage from our hills in place of “corn juice” from our bottoms, and beer from our hop and barley fields. The arguments urged by some with great sincerity, are the often-quoted facts, that the inhabitants of wine- making countries are favorably distinguished for temper- ance; and that a palatable and wholesome beverage—pure wine—would supersede the use of violent liquors. If we thought that our people would become temperate upon such conditions, we should be glad to see a vineyard on every hillside, and a wine-vat to every farmhouse. But there is no reason to expect any such result. Vineyards in Europe exist among a quiet, comparatively unenterprising peasantry. They have been trained to moderation; neces- sity has made them temperate in all things—in food, in dress, in expense, and in drink. The popular habits are not so excitable as with us; business runs in quiet streams, and politics are unknown. With us, business is boisterous, pleasure obstreperous, and politics outrageous. Our peo- ple are anything but quiet; they are hot, hot in tongue and blood. It is wide enough of the mark to suppose that the same cause existing among two entirely dissimilar people, would, of course, produce the same results. We might as well say that vineyards would make our people eat less meat, less corn and pork, because the residents of wine districts were known to be addicted to a vegetable diet. The pro- bable consequences of abundant cheap wine must be judged, not by what would happen in France, among abstemious peasants, nor on the Rhine, among economical ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 159 and sober Germans ; but by the tastes, habits, and tenden- cies of our own people. In this land everything tends to excitement. Men live upon a higher key, and live faster and live much more full of exhilaration than the same ciasses do in foreign lands. Our people drink not for the taste but for the excitement of liquor; and, so that wine, beer, or whisky will bring them up to the right key, the question of wholesomeness is quite unimportant. Our peo- ple are free and therefore have a right to live in the viols- tion of natural laws; and a right, constantly exercised, of having fevers on account of surfeitings, and of dying early and by thousands by reasons of gross excesses. Pleasures and business are esteemed by the volume of blood which they can drive, the pulse they can raise, the heat of excitement which they can produce. So long as affairs are fresh and piquant they are stimulants enough, But in the inequalities and intervals and fatigues of life, something else is required to hold the spirits up to the high level upon which everything proceeds. As soon as a man resorts to alcoholic stimulants to do this, he has embarked upon a course where all experience shows that he will drink deeper and deeper to final downright intem- perance. Some people think that cheap and wholesome beverage for the “masses,” for laboring people, is desirable. While it may be well enough for every gentleman of leisure, it is to be the poor man’s special blessing, saving him from the swill of the brewery and the fire of the still. Facts will stand on the side of the reverse reasoning. If wine is to be harmless at all, it will be with men who are not prone to enterprising heats; but given to the relishful pleasure of sipping just for the delicate flavors, for the aroma, for the fine bouquet of wime—men who need to have their blood up, and kept up, and resort to wine to supply the. flagging stimulus of affairs; such men will not drink for the flavor, but for the feeling. 160 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK It is for the sake of being roused ; it is to be stimulated ; it is, in plain language, to have the first exhilarations of drunkenness that laboring men drink, will drink, and have always drank cider, beer, wine, and brandy. The result of affording wine in abundance to such people as ours, will be to prepare them for a stronger drink just as soon as wine, by frequent use, is no longer stimulating enough. Wine will play jackal to brandy for the rich, and to whisky for the poor. We have some facts on hand touching this popular wine-drinking, which, if necessary, we shall employ at another time. Meanwhile, we are glad to see grape-cul- ture spreading for the production of table-grapes; for the manufacture of wine, in so far as a supply of pure wine is needed for medicinal purposes. Further than that, we are opposed to wine-making. And as to cheating whisky out of its authority over “the dear people” by the blandish- ments of hock and champagne, or redeeming our barley and cornfields from the abominable persecutions of the brew-tub and the still, by the conservative energy or evan- gelizations of grape juice, we shall believe it when we see it; and we shall just as soon expect to see fire putting out fire and frost melting ice, as one degree of alcoholic stimu- lus curing a higher one. To PRESERVE GARDEN Sricks.—It is desirable when one has prepared good sticks for supporting carnations, roses, dahlias, etc., to preserve them from year to year. The following preparation will make them last a man’s lifetime : When they are freshly made, allow them to become tho- roughly dry; then soak themin linseed oil for some time, say two or three days. When taken out let them stand to dry till the oil is perfectly soaked in; then paint with two coats of verdigris paint. No wet can then penetrate. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 161 CARE OF ANIMALS IN WINTER. Tue wisest man has said that “the righteous man regard- eth the life of his beast; but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” If any one is at a loss to know the meaning of the latter part, he cannot have made good use of his eyes. Lean cattle, leaner horses, anatomical speci- mens of cows, half fed, dirty, drenched by every rain, and pierced by every winter wind, these are an excellent com- ment on the passage. It is time for every merciful man to make provision for every dumb animal which is dependent upon him. Cows should be provided with a comfortable stable at night. No feeding will be a substitute for good shelter. Both the quantity and quality of the milk will depend upon bodily comfort in respect to warmth and nutritious food. Such as are becoming heavy with calf should be specially cared for. Many farmers let their cows shift for themselves as soon as their milk dries away. But the health of the coming calf and the ability of the cow to supply it, and her owner, copiously with milk depend on the condition in ‘which she is kept during the period of gestation. Cattle should have a good shed provided for them, under which they may be dry and sheltered from winds. It is the curse of western farming that cattle and fodder are so plenty that it is hardly a loss to waste both. Where the amount of stock is too great for comfortable home-quarters, and they are wintered in a stock field, there should be places of resort for them, so high as to remain dry, well turfed with blue-grass, and sheltered with cheap sheds, or by belts of forest. Sheep should receive special attention. ‘They abhor wet. They should be permitted to keep their fleece dry, and to eat their food in a dry stable. The flock should be sorted. The bucks and wethers by themselves, the ewes by them- selves; lambs and weak sheep in another division; and a 162 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK fourth compartment should never be wanting for the sick, where they may be nursed and medically treated. Horses are more apt to be taken care of than cattle. But even they are often more mdebted for existence to a stubborn tenacity of life, than to the care of their keepers. The horse is a more dainty feeder than ruminating animals. He should be supplied with a better article af hay; his grain should never be dirty or musty. Hardy farm-horses may even rough out the winter with- out blanketing or any other care than is necessary to sup- ply good food and enough of it. But carriage horses, and those highly prized for the saddle—aristocratic horses— should be more carefully groomed. It is not wise to blan- ket a horse at all, unless it can be always done. If he is liable to change hands; to be off on journeys under cir- cumstances in which he cannot be blanketed at night, it will be better not to begin it. Winter is a good time to kill off spirited horses. They are easily run down by a smashing sleigh-ride pace. Boys and girls, buzzing in a double sleigh like a hive of bees, think that the horses enjoy themselves, at the exhilarating pace of six or eight miles an hour, as much as they do. But this is not ordinarily the worst of it. The horse stands out, after a trip of ten or fifteen miles, at a post for an hour or two until thoroughly chilled; then home he races, and goes into the stable, steaming with sweat, to stand without blankets all night. Horses catch cold as much as men do. And a horse-cold is just as bad as a human cold. As there has been some difficulty, in the construction of fanning mills, to gain a strong enough current of wind, we would advise the builders of them to study the construction of a good stable. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 163 WINTER NIGHTS FOR READING. As the winter isa season of comparative leisure, 1t is the time for farmers to study. It is a good time for them to make themselves acquainted with the nature of soils, of manures, of vegetable organization—or structural botany, Farmers are liable to rely wholly upon their own experi- ence, and to despise science. Book-men are apt to rely on scientific theories, and nothing upon practice. If these two tendencies would only court and marry each other, what a hopeful family would they rear! How nice it would look to see in the papers: Marriep.—By Philosophical Wisdom, Esq., Mr. Prac- tical Experience, to Miss Sober Science. [We will stand godfather to all the children. ] FEATHERS. Tue quality of feathers depends on their strength, elasti- city and cleanness; and these, again, depend upon the condi- tion of the bird, its health, food, and the time of plucking its feathers. Down is the term applied to under-feathers— most abundant in water fowl, and in those especially which live in cold latitudes, being designed to protect them from wet and cold. The eider-down, from the eider-duck, is of the most repute. It is brought from extreme northern latitudes, and is used for coverings to beds, rather than for beds themselves, as, by being slept upon, it loses its elasti- city. Poultry feathers, as those of turkeys, ducks, and chick- ens, if assorted and the coarse ones rejected, afford very good beds; but they are not so elastic as-geese-feathers. 164 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK Everybody knows that live geese-feathers are the best. Every one does not think of the reason; which, as it is the key to the art of having good feathers, we shall propound. So long as a bird is alive, the feathers are as much an object of nutrition as the flesh, the bones, or any other part of the body. When dead, put them into hot water to make the feathers come easy. In pulling, take out large handfuls at a time, so as to have scraps of meat and shreds of skin adhere to the quill; let them lie for several days in wet heaps to ferment a little. Then dry them suddenly by violent heat, cram them into the bed-tick, and jump on, and if you have not an odorous bed, and, in a month or two, a bedful of visitors seeking food, then there is no truth in the laws of nature. The care of beds is not understood, often, by even good housewives. When a bed is freshly made it often smells strong. Constant airing, will, if the feathers are good, and only new, remove the scent. A bed in constant use should be invariably beaten and shaken up daily, to enable the feathers to retain their elasti- city. It should lie after it is shaken up, for two or three hours a day, in a well ventilated room. The human body is con- stantly giving off a perspiration; and at night more than usual, from the relaxed condition of the skin. The bed will become foul from this cause if not well aired. If the bed is in a room which cannot be spared for such a length of time, it should be put out to air two full days in the week, In airing beds, the sun should never shine directly upon them. It is air, not heat, that they need. We have seen beds lying on a roof where the direct and reflected rays of the sun had full power, and the feathers, without doubt, were stewing, and the oil in the quill becoming raneid; so ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 165 that the bed smells worse after its roasting than before. Always air beds in the shade, and, if possible, in cool and windy days. And now, if any of our attentive housewife- readers, and we have not a few, are disposed to reward us for all this advice, let them give us a bed to sleep on, when we next visit them, made of growing feathers, from live and healthy geese, carefully picked, well cured, daily shaken up and thoroughly aired ; and if we do not dream that the owner is an angel, it will be because we are too much occu- pied in sound sleeping. NAIL UP YOUR BUGS. “The words of the wise are as goads and as nails fastened by masters of assemblies.” —Sotomon. AFTER a great pother about canker worms, peach-tree worms, and other audacious robber-worms; after smoke, salt, tar, and tansy, bands of wool, cups of oil, lime, ashes, and surgery have been set forth as remedies, to the confu- sion of those who have tried them bootlessly, it now appears that we are about to nail the rascals. The Boston Cultiva- tor, contains an article “‘On Destroying Insects on Trees,” from which we quote: “T did not intend to give it publicity until I had fully tested it, but as the ravages are very extensive in the West, I cannot delay giving you the experiment, hoping that some of your western readers may now give it a fair trial and report the result. Iwill give one case which may ir.duce the experiment wherever the evil is felt. In conver- sation with a friend in Newburyport, Dr. Watson, last fall, I mentioned the experiment; he invited me to his garden, where last year a fruit-tree was infested with the 166 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK nests of caterpillar or canker-worms, as were his neighbors? trees; he showed me a board nailed for convenience of a clothes-line upon one of the large limbs of the tree; he said he noticed a little while afterward that the nests on that limb dried up, and the worms disappeared, though the cause did not then occur to him though apparent as it will be to any scientific mind. ‘**Drive carefully well home, so that the bark will heal over a, few headless cast iron nails, say some six or eight, size and number according to the size of the tree, in a ring around its body, a foot or two above the ground. The oxidation of the iron by the sap, will evolve ammonia, which will, of course, with the rising sap, impregnate every part of the foliage, and prove to the delicate palate of the patient, a nostrum, which will soon become, as in many cases of larger animals, the real panacea for the ills of life, via Tomb. I think if the ladies should drive some small iron brads into some limbs of any plant infested with any insect, they would find it a good and safe remedy, and I imagine in any case, instead of injury, the ammonia will be found particularly invigorating. Let it be tried upon a limb of any tree, where there is a vigorous nest of cater- pillars, and watch it for a week or ten days, and I think the result will pay for the nails.” Let our farmers take their hammers and nails and start for the orchard; if they see a bug on the tree, drive a nail, and he is a bug no more! If they see a worm, in with a nail, and the “ammonia evolved” will finish his functions ! The Southern Planter is out with a backer to the Boston Cultivator : “ A singular fact, and one worthy of being recorded, was mentioned to us a few days since by Mr. Alexander Duke, of Albemarle. He stated that whilst on a visit to a neigh- bor, his attention was called to a large peach orchard, every tree in which had been totally destroyed by the ravages of ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 167 the worm, with the exception cf three, and these three were probably the most thrifty and flourishing peach-trees he ever saw. The only cause of their superiority known to his host, was an experiment made in consequence of observing that those parts of worm-eaten timber into which nails had been driven, were generally sound; when his trees were about a year old he had selected three of them and driven a tenpenny nail through the body, as near the ground as pos- sible ; whilst the balance of his orchard has gradually failed, and finally yielded entirely to the ravages of the worms, these three trees, selected at random, treated precisely in the same manner, with the exception of the nailing, had always been vigorous and healthy, furnishing him at that very period with the greatest profusion of the most luscious fruit. It is supposed that the salts of iron afforded by the nail are offensive to the worm, whilst they are harm- less, or perhaps even beneficial to the tree.” We do not wish to interrupt any experiments which the enterprising may choose to make. To be sure we regard the facts with some incredulity, and the chemical explana- tions with something of the mirthful superadded to unbelief. But if nails are an antidote to worms—a real vermifuge— let them be administered, whatever may be the explana- tions; whether they are an electric battery, givig the insects a little domestic, vegetable lightning, or whether they afford “salts of iron” to physic them, or “evolve ammonia” in such potent, pungent strength that vermicular nostrils are unable to endure it! While one is fairly engaged in a campaign of experi- ments, we heartily hope that war will be carried to the very territory of ignorance, and we will propound several other important questions of fact and theory, which, if settled, will crown somebody’s brow with laurels. It is said that hanging a scythe in a plum-tree, or an iron hoop, or horse shoes, will insure a crop of plums. This ought to be investigated. 168 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK It is said that pear-trees that are unfruitful, may be made to bear, by digging under them, cutting the tap root, and burying a black cat there. We do not know as it makes any difference as to the sex of the cat, though we should, if trying it, rather prefer the male cat. Lastly, that we may contribute our mite to the advance- ment of science, we will state that, in our youth, we were informed, that, if we would go into the wood-house once a day and rub our hands with a chip, without thinking of red Jux’s tail, the warts would al! go off. We have no doubt that it would have been successful, but every time we tried the experiment, whisk came the red fox’s tail into our head and spoilt the whole affair. But might this not cure warts on trees ? ASHES AND THEIR USE. Some soils contain already the chemical ingredients which wood ashes supply. If lime be applied to‘a calcareous soil, it will do no good; there was no want of lime there before; if potash be added to a soil already abounding in it, no effect will be seen in the crops. Ashes contain lime and potash (phosphate of lime and silicate of potash). If a soil is naturally rich in these, the addition of ashes would be useless, Such cases show the true benefits of a really scientific knowledge of soils and manures. Every plant that grows takes out of the soil certain qualities. Wheat, among other things, extracts largely of its potash; Indian corn abstracts but little; potatoes extract phosphate of mag- nesia, etc. A chemist would say, at once, apply that kind of manure which is rich in the peculiar property extracted by your wheat, corn, or potatoes! What manure is that Here again science must help. It analyzes manures—gives the farmer the choice among them. The soil being known, ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 169 the properties required by different crops being known— the farmer applies that manure which contains what the soil lacks. Experiments have seemed to show, that, for purposes of tillage, leached ashes are just as good as the unleached. So that housewives may have all the use of their ashes for soap, and then employ them in the garden. Leached ashes become better by being exposed for some time in the air absorbing from the atmosphere fertilizing qualities (car- bonic acid ?) So valuable are ashes regarded in Europe, that they are frequently hauled by farmers from twenty miles’ distance— and on Long Island they bring eight cents a bushel. The ashes of different kinds of wood are of very unequal value—that of the oak the least, and that of beech the most valuable. The latter wood constitutes two-thirds of the fire-wood of this region, and the ashes are therefore the very best. A coat of ashes may be laid, in the spring, over the whole garden and spaded in with the barnyard manure. They may be dug in about gooseberry and currant bushes. They are excellent about the trunks of fruit-trees, spread- ing the old each year, and renewing the deposit. They may be thinly spread over the grass-plat in the dooryard, as they will give vigor and deeper color and strength to the grass. We have usually added about one shovelful of ashes to every twenty in making a compost for flowers, roses, shrubs, etc. Ashes are peculiarly good for all kinds of melon, squash, and cucumber vines. This is well known to those who raise watermelons on burnt fields, on old charcoal pits, ete. We have seen statements of cucumbers being planted upon a peck of pure, leached ashes, in a hole in the ground, and thriving with great vigor. The ashes of vines show a great amount of potash; and as wood ashes afford this sub- 170 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK stance abundantly, its use would seem to be indicated by theory as well as confirmed by experiment. Lastly, whenever ground is liable to suffer severely from drought, we would advise a liberal use of ashes and salt. HARD TIMES. Waar are called hard times produce very different effects on different individuals. Some are made more industrious, and some more indolent ; some grow frugal and careful, others careless and desperate; some never appear so honest as when brought to the pinch, but many men seem honest wntil they are brought to the trial, and then give way. Hard times are gradually passing away. As a community, are we better or worse off than before ? A few particulars may help us to form some judgment. Fewer goods are bought at the store, and more are man- ufactured at home; spinning-wheels and looms have renewed their youth—and so have our mothers, who, after along disuse, may now be seen working as merrily at them, as they used to do when they spun and wove their wedding furnishings—although they have not now any such rosy hope to quicken their aged fingers. Men have been obliged to rely more upon their own ingenuity—for want of money to pay the carpenter, the blacksmith, the shoe- maker, etc. Old clothes, old tools have been made to serve an additional campaign. The leisure of dull times has been improved exteisively in setting out orchards, and we hope this practice will be continued in busy times. No one has, during the pressure, suffered for food, raiment, or shelter. Indeed, it is supposed that not a pound less of sugar, tea and coffee, has been used by tne farmers than hitherto. Probably the quantity has increased. ABOUT FRUITS,- FLOWERS AND FARMING. 171 Debts have been gradually contracted or discharged. Men have seen the end of speculations to be sudden disaster —and (of all things on earth) speculation-farming has received its reward. Men contented with small gains—in- dustrious, frugal, and prudeut men—have suffered almost nothing. Gypsum.—‘ Time and practice” have ascertained the circumstances under which gypsum should be applied. As a reason why, after repeated applications, it no longer benefits, Prof. Liebig says, “‘ when we increase the crop of hay in a meadow by means of gypsum, we remove a greater quantity of potash with the hay, than can, under ordinary circumstances, be restored. Hence it happens that, after the lapse of several years, the crops of grass on lands manured with gypsum, diminish, owing to the deficiency of potash.” In such a case, if spent ashes were employed either in connection or alternately with gypsum—potash would be resupplied from the ashes. x ee en ae ead ACCLIMATING A PLOW. Tuer other day we were riding past a large farm, and were much gratified at a device of the owner for the preser- vation of his tools. A good plow, apparently new in the spring, had been left in one corner of the field, standing in the furrow, just where, four months before, the boy had finished his stint. Probably the timber needed seasoning— it was certainly getting it. Perhaps it was left out for acclimation. May-be the farmer left it there to save time in the hurry of the spring-work, in dragging it from the 172 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK shed. Perhaps he covered the share to keep it from the eiements, and save it from rusting. Or, again, perhaps he is troubled with neighbors that borrow, and had left it where it would be convenient for them. He might, at least, have built a little shed over it. Can any one tell what a farmer leaves a plow out a whole season for? It is barely possible that he was an Jrishman, and had planted for a spring crop of plows. After we got to sleep that night, we dreamed a dream. We went into that man’s barn; boards were kicked off, partitions were half broken down, racks broken, floor a foot deep with manure, hay trampled under foot and wasted, grain squandered. The wagon had not been hauled under the shed, though it was raining. The harness was scattered about—hames in one place, the breeching in another—the lines were used for halters. We went to the house. A shed stood hard by, in which a family wagon was kept for wife and daughters to go to town in. The hens had appro- priated it as a roost, and however plain it was once, it was ornamented ow, inside and out. (Here, by the way, let it be remembered that hen-dung is the dest manure for melons, squashes, cucumbers, etc.) We peeped into the smoke- house, but of all the “ fixings” that‘we ever saw! A Chinese Museum is nothing to it. Onions, soap-grease, squashes, hogs’ bristles, soap, old iron, kettles, a broken spinning- wheel, a churn, a grindstone, bacon, hams, washing tubs, a barrel of salt, bones with the meat half cut off, scraps of leather, dirty bags, a chest of Indian meal, old boots, smoked sausages, the ashes and brands that remained since the last “smoke,” stumps of brooms, half a barrel of rotten apples, together with rats, bacon bugs, earwigs, sowbugs, and other vermin which collect in damp dirt. We started for the house ; the window near the door had twelve lights, two of wood, two of hats, four of paper, one of a bunch of rags, one of a pillow, and the rest of glass. Under it stood several cooking pots, and several that were not for ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 173 cooking. As we were meditating whether to enter, such a squall arose from a quarrelling man and woman, that we awoke—and lo! it was a dream. So that the man who left his plow out all the season, may live in the neatest house in the county, for all that we know ; only, was it not strange that we should have dreamed. all this from just seeing a plow left out in the furrow. SCOUR YOUR PLOWS BRIGHT! FarMERS may be surprised to know that their crops will depend a good deal on the color of the plows! yet so it is. Bright plows are found to produce much better crops than any other. It may be electricity, or magic for aught we know; we merely state the fact, leaving others to account for it. But very much depends upon the manner of doing it, for merely scrubbing it by hand with emery or sand is not the thing—it must be scoured by the soil. It is found that the subsoil scours it better for wheat, than the top soil —for a plow kept bright by very deep plowing affords bet- ter wheat than a plow brightened by the surface of the soil, It isthe same with corn. In respect to this last crop, if you will keep your plow bright as a mirror until the corn is in the milk, you will find that it will have a wonderful effect. We appeal to every good farmer if he ever knew arusty plow to be accompanied with good crops? Iron rust on a plow- share is poisonous to corn. A young farmer of about twenty years of age said to us the other day: “If anybody wants me, he must come to my corn-field ; I live there—I am at it all the time—I have harrowed my corn once, plowed five times, and gone over it with the hoe once.” ‘ Yes,” said his old father, whe seemed, justly, quite proud of his son—‘‘keep your plows 174 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK agoing if you want to fetch corn. I never let the ground settle on the top; if it is beaten down by rain, or begins to look a kind of rusty on the surface, I pitch into it, and keep it as mealy as flour. The fact is our farmers raise more corn than they can tend, they can’t go over the corn more than once or twice, and that’ll never do, and I guess Pll show old Billy R that it’s so.” Some ambitious farmers are pleased to “lay by” the corn very early; but it is not wise; for the grass is always more forward to grow about this season than any other; and the ground will become very foul where corn is too early laid by, and, what is more to the purpose, a great deal of the nourishment of a crop is derived from the air and dew con- veyed to the roots. ‘This can be done only when the surface is kept thoroughly open. PLOW TILL IT IS DRY, AND PLOW TILL IT IS WET. SPEAKING of corn, a very intelligent gentleman remarked : “ Well, by a five minutes’ talk, I made Mr. produce the best crop he ever had on a certain field.” He was look- ing over the fence where his corn was, at a flat field, upon furrows full of water; as I came by he said: ‘ Well, I shall never get a crop off this piece of land; it’s going just as it always does when I plant here.” I told him of an old man in Indiana, who was a good farmer, to whom I once said when at his house one morning : “ Deafenbaugh, how is it that you always have good corn when no one else gets a half crop ?” “ Why,” said he, ‘when it is wet I plow it till it is dry, aad when it is dry I plow tt till it is wet? The man to whom I told this anecdote, says our inform- ant, tried the practice, and gained a fine crop. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 175 Now the principle is good. Our Dutch friend would not, we suppose, plow a stif clay in a wet condition, unless, pos- sibly, to strike a channel through the middle between rows. But the gist of the story lies in this—constant cultivation. Stir, séir, str the ground. STIRRING THE SOIL. Next to deep plowing we should urge the advantage of continually stirring the surface of the soil. Ir propuces CLEANLINESS.—Weeds in a growing crop are witnesses which no good farmer can afford to have testi- fying against him. When seed is sown broad-cast, weeding cannot be performed. In Europe, where labor is cheap and children plenty, acres of wheat and such-like crops are weeded by hand. Our only chance is to clear out every field, to be sown broad-cast, by a thorough previous culture. In all crops which are drilled, or planted in rows, the hoe, or plow, or cultivator, should be kept in lively use through the season. This practice should begin early, that weeds and grass may not get a start, for often, if they do, it is nearly impossible to keep them down, especially if the season is a wet one. But there are yet some important reasons for constantly stirring the soil among growing crops. No matter how thoroughly the earth was pulverized when the seed was put in, one or two rains will, except in very sandy loam, beat it down compactly. This crust is injurious in prevent- ing the ingress of moisture. But that which is the most material of all is, that dé excludes the air. It is well known that the air affords much nourishment to vegetation; but, perhaps, it is not as well known, that it supplies it by the root as well as by the leaf. If any one wishes to try the 176 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK experiment, and we have done it time and again, let two patches in a garden be treated in all respects alike, except in this—let one be hoed or raked every two or three days and the other not at all, or but once in the season. The result will satisfy any man better than a paper argu- ment. Indeed, we have found it impossible (in a garden) to perfect some vegetables without constantly stirring the soil. While these advantages are gained, it is not to be for- gotten that, in dry seasons, a thorough pulverization of the surface, will prevent the evaporation of the moisture zm the carth and prevent deleterious effects of the drought. SUBSOIL PLOWING. One of the great improvements of the age is the adoption in husbandry of the subsoil plow; or, as it is called in Eng- land, Deanstonizing system, from Mr. Smith, of Dean- stone, who first brought the implement into general notice. They are designed to follow in the furrow of a common plow, and pulverize without bringing up the soil for eight or ten inches deeper. In ordinary soils two yoke of oxen will work it with ease, plowing from an acre to an acre and a quarter a day. The use of this plow will renovate old bottom-lands, the surface of which has been exhausted by shallow plowing and continual cropping. It brings up from below fresh material, which the atmosphere speedily prepares for crops. Old fields, a long time in grass, are very much benefited. Constant plowing at about the same depth will often form a hard under-floor by the action of the plow, through which neither roots nor rain can well penetrate ; subsoiling will relieve a field thus conditioned. Soils lying upon clay or hard compact gravel are opened ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWEBS AND FARMING. 177 and remarkably improved by the process. The wet, level, beech-lands would be greatly benefited by deep plowing in the fall of the year, subjecting the earth, to a consider- able depth, to the action of the frosts, rains, etc., and giving a downward drain for superfluous moisture. Although we have incidentally alluded to the benefits of subsoiling, they deserve a separate and individual enume- ration. 1. In very deep molds or loams it brings up a supply of soil which has not been exhausted by the roots. 2. In soils whose fertility is dependent upon the constant decomposition of mineral substances, subsoil plowing is advantageous by bringing up the disintegrated particles of rock, and exposing them to a more rapid change by con- tact with atmospheric agents. 3. Subsoiling guards both against too much and too little moisture in the soil. If there is more water than the soil can absorb, it sinks through the pulverized under-soil. If summer droughts exhaust we moisture of the surface they cannot reach aie subsoil, which affords abundant pasture to the roots. FIRE-BLIGHT AND WINTER KILLING. THESE are two entirely different processes. The Fire Blight (of the middle and western States), is a disease of the circulatory system, induced by a freezing of the sap while the tree is in a growing and excitable state. It always must occur before the leaves are shed in the autumn- Winter-killing is of two kinds—resulting from severe cold, and from untimely heat. The loss of tender shrubs, roses, etc., at least, before they are fully established, and of half hardy fruit-trees, is occasioned by the winter sun shining warmly upon them while frozen, and suddenly thawing 178 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK them. The point of death is usually near the surface of the ground, where the under-ground bark and upper bark come together. Whole orchards are destroyed in this way ; and, if examined, the bark may be found sprung off from the wood. This may occur at any time during the winter. We are in doubt whether the winter-stored sap exists in a state to be affected by the expansion of the freezing fluids of the tree. If the expansion of congelation did produce the effect, it should have been more general, for there are fluids in every part of the trunk—all congeal or expand— and the bursting of the trunk in one place would not relieve the contiguous portions. We should expect, if this were the cause, that the tree would explode, rather than split. Capt. Bach, when wintering near Great Slave Lake, about 63° north latitude, experienced a cold of 70° below zero. Nor could any fire raise it iz the house more than 12° above zero. Mathematical instrument cases, and boxes of seasoned fir, split in pieces by the cold. Could it have been the sap in seasoned fir wood which split them by its expansion in congealing ? We quote a paragraph from Loudon—“ The history of frosts furnishes very extraordinary facts. The trees are often scorched and burnt up, as with the most excessive heat, in consequence of the separation of the water from the air, which is therefore very drying. In the great frost in 1683, the trunks of oak, ash, walnut, and other trees, were miserably split and cleft, so that they might be seen through, and the cracks often attended with dreadful noises like the explosion of fire-arms.” We don’t exactly know whether to take the first part as Loudon’s explanation of the facts in the second. There can be no doubt that the nature of the summer’s growth, very much determines the power of a tree to resist the severity of winter. When there is but an imperfect ripening in a cold and backward season, the tissues formed ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 179 will be feeble, and the juices stored in them thin. Now the power to resist cold, among other things, is in propor- tion to the viscidity of the fluids in a plant. It is highly desirable that the chemical researches which have revolutionized the art of cultivation, should be pushed into the morbid anatomy of vegetation. A close, exact analysis of all the substances in an injured condition, will- save a vast deal of bootless ingenuity and fanciful specu- lation. WINTER TALK. Do not be tempted by fine weather to haul out manure —it will be half wasted by lying in small heaps over the field; to spread it will be worse yet; manure should lie in a stack, as little exposed to the weather as possible. Look to your fences; see that they are in complete order and leave nothing of this to consume your time in the spring when you will need all your force for other work, It is well to haul all the rails you will need for the year. The timber will last longer cut now. Do not leave rails or sticks of timber lying where you cleave them, on the damp ground, they will decay more in six months there, than in eighteen when properly cared for. Put two rails down and lay the rest across them so as to have a circulation of air beneath. If you have five or ten acres of deadening which you mean to clear up and put to corn, you may as well roll the logs now. Every good farmer should study through the winter to make his spring work as light as possible. Whatever can be done now do not fail to do it; you will have enough to do when spring opens; and perhaps the season may be one which will crowd your work into a week or two. If you have young fruit-trees, or a lit- 180 "PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK tle home-nursery, look out for rabbits. They usually depre- date just after a light fall of snow. Overhaul all your plows, carts, shovels, hoes, etc., and put everything in complete readiness. While you are moving about and repairing holes in the fence, putting on a rail here, a stake yonder, a rider in another place, you may inquire of yourself whether your character is not in some need of repairs? Perhaps you are very careless and extravagant—the fence needs rails there ; perhaps you are lazy—in that case the fence corners may be said to be full of brambles and weeds, and must be cleared out; perhaps you are a violent, passionate man— you need a stake and rider on that spot. And lastly, per- haps you are not temperate, if so, your fence is all going down and will soon have gaps enough to let in all the hogs of indolence, vice, and crime: and they make a large drove and fatten fast. Now is a good time to plan how to get out of debt. Don’t be ashamed to save in little things, nor to earn small gains: “* Many a mickle makes a muckle.” But set it down, to begin with, that no saving is made by cheating yourself ont of a good newspaper. No man reads a good paper a year, without saving by it. Suppose you put in your wheat a little better for something you see written by a good farmer and get five bushels more to the acre. One acre pays for a year’s paper. One recipe, a hint which betters any crop, pays for the paper fourfold. Intelligent boys work better, plan better, earn and save better; and reading a good paper makes them intelligent. Besides, suppose you took a good paper a year, and found nothing new during all that time (an incredible supposi- tion!), yet every two weeks it comes to jog your memory about things which you may forget, but ought not to forget. It steps in and asks whether that little store bill is paid ? Whether that loan drawing a fatal six, seven or ten per cent (poison! poison! deadly poison!) is being melted down? whether the children are going to school? whether the ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 181 tools are all right ? the fences snug? whether economy, and industry, and sound morals (the best crop one can put in), are flourishing? It will look at your orchard—peep over into your garden, pry into the dairy—nay, into the cup- board and bureau, and even into your pocket. Now, if you are a man willing to learn, it will give you hints enough in a year to pay ten times over for your paper. (SHUT. YOUR MOUTEY We heard a lad, in anger, use this expression to another. It was not very bad advice, though given somewhat roughly. When we hear some of our mincing misses singing, now away up, and now away down, tossing their heads and roll- ing their eyes, we think, Well, miss, if you knew what folks thought of you, yow’d shut your mouth. We have seen many men ruined because they did not know how to shut their mouth when tempted to say “ Yes,” to a bad business. When we see a man standing before the bar just ready to drink, we think, Ah! you fine fellow, if you will not keep your mouth shut before that bar, you will, by and by, find yourself before a Bar where it will be shut tight enough. When we hear a fine lady scolding till every room rings ; or tattling from house to house—or scandal-mongering, we think, Ah, you lady, with all your schooling, you never learned to shut your mouth. PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK SPRING WORK ON THE FARM. THoRouGHLY overhaul your tools; let plows be sharp ened ; repair their stocks if anywhere started or weakened ; look after the chains, the swingletrees, the yokes for yow oxen, or the harness for your horses. Don’t have any straps to replace, or harness to tie up with tow strings after you get into the fields, and when time is precious. Now 1s THE TIME TO SAVE TIME, BY GETTING READY. Old rusty buckles will give way the moment the plow strikes a root; stitches which have been longing for some time to fall out and part, will be likely to do it when you have the least time to mend them. Then we shall hear talk; you'll be cursing the old horse or the old rickety harness, and declar- ing that your “luck is always on the wrong side ;” and you may depend upon it, that it always will be, so long as you are not more careful. Good luck is a wary old fish which nibbles at everybody’s hook, but the shrewd and skillful angler only catches it. The opening of spring is usually debilitating both to man and beast. Your horses cannot stand hard usage at once; some of them will need physic—all of them should be put to work carefully; increase their task gradually; favor them, and you will get abundantly paid for it before their summer’s work is done. A good farmer may be known by the way he manages his spring work. Consider how much there is of it. Cows are calving; mares foaling; young heifers for the first time to be broken to milking; all the tools to be got ready; the ground to be broken up and seeded; the orchards to be set; or old ones to be attended to; a garden to be made; and a hundred other things to do. Now here is a chance for good management, and a yet bet- ter chance for bad management. There is as much skill in “laying out” a season’s work for the farmer, as there is in “laying out ” a frame for a house or barn. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 183 Bethink you of all the mistakes you made last season ; if you made any good hits, improve upon them this year. Every farmer should resolve to do all things as well as he did the last year, and some things a great deal better. While everything is merry, birds singing, bees at work, cattle frisky, and the whole animated world is joyous, do but search and see if, among all beasts, birds, or bugs, you can find one that needs whisky to do its sprmg or summer work on? Look again; seeds are sprouting; trees budding; flowers peeping out from warm nooks. Everything grows in spring-time. Youth is spring-time, habits are sprouting, dispositions are putting out their leaves, opinions are form- ing, prejudices are getting root. Now take at least as good care of your children as you do of your farm. If you don’t want to use the land you let it alone, and weeds grow; but when you wish to improve a piece, you turn the natural weeds under, and sow the right seed, and tend the crop. I have heard good kind of folks object to much “ bringing up” of their boys. They guessed the lads would come out about right. You break a colt, and break a steer, and break a heifer, and break a soil, and if you won’t break your children, they will be very likely to break you—heart and pocket. Fermenting manures should not be hauled or spread until you are ready to plow them under. [If you spread manure on meadows it should be fine, and well rotted, and let ashes be liberally mixed with it.] If you let manure lie a week or ten days exposed in the fields to the air, it will waste one half of “its sweetness on the desert air.” Let the plow follow the cart as fast as possible, and the gases generated by your manure will then be taken up by the soil. and held in store for your grain. Drrer Piow1ne.—There may be some rare cases where, for special reasons, shallow plowing is advisable. But the standing rule upon the farm should be deep plowing. A 184 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK good farmer remarked the* other day to us, “One of my neighbors who is always talking of deep plowing was at it last summer, and I followed in the furrow, and his depth did not average more than four inches; he did not measure on the dand side but on the mold-board side.” The rea- sons are very strong for deep plowing. 1, When crop after crop is taken off the first four or five inches df top earth, it tends speedily to rob it of all ma- terials required by grass or grain. Every blade taken from the soil, takes off some portion of that soil with it. 2. Deep plowing brings up from beneath a greater amount of earth, which, when subjected to the frosts, the atmosphere, and the action of the plow, becomes fit for vegetation. 3. Summer droughts seldom injure deeply-plowed soils; certainly not to that degree that they do shallow soils. The roots penetrate the mellow mould to a greater depth, and draw thence moisture when the top is as dry as ashes. Will not some one who is curious in such matters try two acres side by side plowed shallow and deep, respectively, and give us the history of their crop? QuANTITY OF SEED.—It has been often said that Ameri- can husbandry was unfavorably peculiar in stinginess of seed-sowing. It is certai that very much greater quan- tities are employed in Great Britain and on the Continent than with us, and that much greater crops are obtained per acre. In part the crop is owing to a superior cultivation ; but those who have carefully studied the subject affirm that, in part, it is attributable to the use of much greater quan- tities of seed. We give a table showing the average quan- tity of seed per acre for different grains, in England, Ger- many, and the United States. The table was formed im that manufactory of so many valuable articles, the Albany Cultivator. It must be remembered that the average crop is not the average of the best farming States, but of the whole United States. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 185 GERMANY, ENGLAND. UNITED STATES, Seed per acre—Product. Seed per acre—Product. || Seed per acre—Product. | Wheat, 24 bushels. | 25 bushels. || 24 to 34 bu.| 28 bushels, ||1 to 14bush 1S bushels. | Rye, 2 us 25 “ 2to2i | 25 ce itogy SSeS ee Barky, 24 Oe | 35 Kk Qto4 “| 86 ee La tow, ©) 2b as | Oats, 2to4 49 « dctouie apis Boe arch Bigg iyo: | Millet, T quarts. | 85 “ Peas, 2: bushels. 26 o: 8to3t “ 380to 40bu.||/2to2s “ 25 fe | Corn, |20 quarts. (86 | 20 to80qts. 30 = Turnips, | 80 to 85 tons || 1 to 2 pints. 80to 35tons||1to 2lbs. | 20 tons. Buckwheat, 1 bushel. 27 bushels. ||/1to14 bush 26 bushels, 16 to 20 qts 15 to 30 bu. Clover, | 14 pounds, 14 to 18 lbs. 5 to 10 lbs. | Flax, 2 to 3 bush. 10 bu. seed. ||2 to 3 bush. 10 bu. seed. |/1to 14 bush 8 to 12 bush Hemp, 24to38 “ | 650 pounds. || 8 “550 pounds. || 14 to 24 ‘* | 500 pounds. Potatoes, (5 ‘* | 800 bushels. |}8 to 12 ‘ 250 bushels. ||8 to 20 ‘* | 175 bushels. 5 _ SPRING WORK IN THE GARDEN. WHEN spring comes, everybody begins to think of the garden. A little of the experience of one who has learned some by making many mistakes will do you no harm. Too much Work tarp our.—When the winter lets us out, and we are exhilarated with fresh air, singing birds, bland weather, and newly-springing vegetation, our ambi- tion is apt to lay out too much work. We began with an acre, in garden; we could not afford to hire help except for a few days; and we were ambitious to do things as they ought to be done. By reference to a Garden Journal (every man should keep one), we find that we planted in 1840, séateen kinds of peas; seventeen kinds of beans; seven kinds of corn ; siz kinds of squash ; eight kinds of cabbage ; seven kinds of lettuce; eight sorts of cucumber, and seven of turnips—seventy-six varieties of only eight vegetables ! Besides, we had fruit-trees to transplant in spring—flowers to nurture, and all the etceteras of a large garden, Al- though we worked faithfully, early and late, through the whole season, the weeds beat us fairly; and every day or two some lazy loon, who had not turned two spadefuls of earth during the season, would lounge along and look over, and seeing the condition of things, would very quietly say: 186 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK “Why, I heard so munch about your garden—whew! what regiments of weeds you keep. I say, neighbor, do you boil that parsley for greens?” It nettled us, and we sweat at the hoe and spade all the harder, but in vain; for we had laid out more than could be well done. Nobody asked how much we had done—they looked only at what we had noé done. To be sure so many sorts were planted only to test their qualities; but the laying out of so large a work in spring is not wise. A HALF well done is better than @ WHOLE half done. Remember there is a July as well as an April; and day out in April as you can hold out in July and Au- gust. We have profited by our own mistakes and have no objections that others should do it. V nGETaBLE GARDEN.—Before you meddle with the garden, do two things: first inspect your seeds, assort them, reject- ing the shrunk, the mildewed, the sprouted, and, generally, the discolored. Buy early, such as you need to purchase, Do not wait till the minute of planting before you get your seeds. Second, make up your mind beforehand just what you mean to do in your garden for the season. Preparation—Haul your manure and stack it in a corner; do not spread it till the day that you are ready to turn it under; cut your pea-brush and put it under shelter; inspect your bean-poles and procure such as are necessary to replace the rotten or broken ones; inspect every panel of the garden fence; one rail lost, may ruin, in a night, two months’ labor, and more temper and grace than you can afford to spare in a whole year. Clean up all the stubble, haulm, straw, leaves, refuse brush, sticks and rubbish of every sort, and cast it out, or burn it and distribute the ashes. If you intend to do your work in the best manner, see that you have the sorts of manure that you may need through the season: ashes, fine old barn-yard manure, green long manure, leafmold from the wood, top-soil from pastures, etc., etc. Every florist understands the use of these. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 187 Coarse manure may be put upon your pie-plant bed, as a strong and succulent leaf-stalk is desirable. Let it be thoroughly forked, gently near the stools and deeply between the rows. With an iron-toothed rake go over your old strawberry beds that are matted together, and rake them severely. Strawberries that have een kept in hills and cleanly tended should be manured between the rows and gently spaded or forked. Early Sowings——Tomatoes, egg-plant, early cucumbers, cabbage, cauliflowers, broccoli, lettuce, melons, celery for an early crop, should have been, before this, well advanced in a hot-bed. If not, no time is to be lost; and if a first sowing is well along, a second sowing should be made. You cannot get too early into the ground after the frost is out and the weta little dried, onions for seed or a crop, lettuce, radishes, peas, spinage, parsnip, early cabbage, and small salads. Asparacus.—The beds should be attended to; remove all weeds and old stalks; give a liberal quantity of salt to the bed—if you have old brine, or can get fish brine at the stores, that is better than dry salt. Asparagus is a marine plant, growing upon sandy beaches along the sea coast, and is therefore benefited by sait, to which, in its habitat, it was accustomed, Put about three or four inches of old, thor- oughly rotted manure upon the bed; fork it in gently, so as not to wound the crowns of the plant. Directions for form- ing beds belong to a later period in the season. Ontons.—Should be sown or set early. If you prefer seed, sow, across beds four feet wide, in drills eight inches apart; young gardeners are apt to be- grudge room—give it freely to everything, and it will repay you; when they come up, thin out to one for every inch; as you wish young and tender onions for your table, draw these, leaving, at least, one every five inches in the row. If your soil is deep and very rich, onions can be grown in one 188 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK season from the seed as well as from the set—we try it almost every year and never fail, although told a hundred times: “You could do that in the old States, but it won’t do out here.” It had to do, and did do, and always will do, where there is no lazy men about; but nothing ever does well in a slack and lazy man’s garden; plants have an invet- erate prejudice against such, and won’t grow; but he isa darling favorite among weeds, The white or silver skin, and the yellow Portugal have been favorite kinds with us to raise from seed: They are tender, mild flavored, but do not keep as well as the ed. Strong onions always keep better than mild ones. If you prefer top-onion sets, or sets of any other kind, plant them out at the same distances, viz. eight inches be- tween the row and five or six between the sets. Inexpe- rienced gardeners are afraid that /itt/e sets no bigger than a pea, will not do well. It is a mistake—they will make large onions; put them @J in, if they are sound. Plant the sets so that the top shall just appear above the surface. If you plant out old onions for seed, let them be at least a foot apart and stake them when they begin to blossom. If you plant the top-onion for sets you need not stake them, for they cannot shed out their seed if they fall over. It is not generally known that the same onions may be kept for seed for many years. TRANSPLANTING.—AII fruit-trees, most kinds of shade trees, shrubs, hardy roses, honeysuckles, pinks, lilacs, peonies, etc., may be raised, divided, and transplanted in April un- less your soil is very wet. All hardy plants may be safely transplanted just as soon as the ground is dry enough to crumble freely—and not till then. In planting out shrubs, remember that they will grow ; if you put them near to- gether, for the sake of present effect, in a year or two they will be crowded. We set at ample distances and fill up the spaces with lilies, peonies, phlox, gladiolus, and herbaceous plants which are easily removed. ABOU] FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 189 FLower GArDEN.—Remove the covering from your bulb- beds; as soon as the earth is dry enough to crumble, with a small hoe carefully mellow the earth between the rows of bulbs, and work it loose with your hands, in the row itself. Leave the surface convex, that superfluous rain may flow off. Transplant roses that are to be moved, Divide the roots of such lilies, peonies, irises, etc., as are propagated by divi- sion, and replant. As fast as the soil allows, spade up your borders, and flower compartments, giving first a good coating of very fine, old, pulverized manure. If you have hot-beds you may bring forward most of your annuals, so as to turn them out into the open beds as soon as frosts cease. But defer sowing in the open air until the first of April ; and then, sparingly; sow again the middle of April, and on the first of May. Only thus, will you be sure of a supply. If you gain more than you need by three sowings, should all succeed, you have friends and neighbors enough, if you are a reasonably decent man, who will be glad to receive the surplus, Manvure.—Corn and potatoes will bear green and unfer- mented manure. But all ordinary garden vegetables require thoroughly rotted manure. If the soil is sandy, leached ashes may be applied with great profit at the rate of seventy or eighty bushels the acre. The soil is made more reten- tive of moisture, and valuable ingredients are secured to it. Salt may be used with great advantage on all garden soils, but especially upon light and sandy ones. Thus treated, soils will resist summer droughts and be moist when other- wise they would suffer. Salt has also a good effect in destroying vermin, and it adds very valuable chemical in- gredients to the soil. Soapsuds should be carefully saved and poured about currants, gooseberries and fruit-trees, Charcoal, pulverized, is excellent, as it absorbs ammonia from the atmosphere, or from any body containing it, and 190 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK yields it to the plants. Let a barrel be set near the house filled with powdered charcoal. Empty into it all the cham- ber-ley. 'The ammonia will be taken up by the charcoal, and the barrel will be without any offensive smell. But as soon as the charcoal is saturated, it will begin to give out the peculiar odor of urine. Let the charcoal then be mixed with about five times its bulk of fresh earth and well worked together, and it will afford a very powerful manure for vege- tables and flowers. In Europe, where manure is precious, it is estimated that the excrementitious matter, slops, suds, scraps, etc., of a family, will supply one acre, for each mem- ber, with manure.* There are few families whose offal would not afford abundant material for enriching the gar- den, and with substances peculiarly fitted for flowers, fruits, and esculent roots. FALL WORK IN THE GARDEN. PLANTING seeds may be performed for very early spring use. Lettuce, spinage, and radishes, may be sown in a shel- tered spot, and they will come forward ten days or a fortnight earlier than those which shall have been sown in spring. Clearing wp the garden should be thoroughly performed. Let pea-brush be removed, bean poles and flower stakes be collected and put under shelter. Collect all refuse vines, haulm, stems and stalks and wheel them to a corner to rot, or to be ready for use in covering flower-beds. Let the alleys be hoed out for the last time, and it will be as good as one hoeing in the spring, when they will probably be too wet to hoe, Gravel may now be laid in the walks ; if ashes are to be spread, it may be done in autumn, and save time ir the spring. * See note, p. 98, Colman’s Tour, 2d part, where is given an estimate by a distinguished agricultural chemist, Mr. Haywood. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 191 All tender plants are to be removed or secured by covering. The best covering to secure the earth from frost, that we know of, is a layer of leaves, say three inches thick when well packed down, and upon them two or three inches of chip dirt, with the coarsest part on top. We have had the soil unfrozen in severe winters when so covered. In tis manner, tuberoses, gladiolus, dahlias, tiger flowers, etc., may be kept out through the winter. The gladiolus thus treated makes splendid tufts of blossoms. It may be prudent to try only a few at first, and adventure more as experience gives confidence. Crtery which is to be left in the trenches should first be well covered with straw, and then boards should be placed upon the top in such a manner as to shed the rain. Great quantities of wet rot it when it is not growing; and freez- ing and thawing in the light destroys it. If portions of the garden have been infested with cut- worms, etc., let it be spaded and thrown up loosely just be- fore freezing weather. A clay soil will be ameliorated by frosts, if treated in the same way. A light, loose soil, should not be worked in the fall. GUARDING CHERRY-TREES FROM COLD. Tus tree is peculiarly liable while young, but more espe- cially when coming into bearing, to be roughly handled by our winters. The bark at the surface of the ground splits, and often the trunk, enfeebling the tree and sometimes destroy- ing it. The evil does not result from the cold, but from the action of bright suns upon the frozen trunk. Let those hav- ing valuable young trees, prepare them for winter by giv- ing a cheap covering to the trunks, so that the sun shall not strike them. This may be done by tying about them bass matting, long straw, corn-stalks, or any similar protection. 192 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK SHADE-TREES. WE believe that no man ever walked under the magnifi- cent elms upon the Boston Common, or beneath the Lin- dens in Philadelphia, or through Elm street in New Haven, without conviction of the beauty and utility of shade- trees. Trees not only are objects of beauty—the architecture of Nature—but they promote both health and comfort. Our ardent summers, from June to October, make open, un- shaded streets, almost impassable, and reflect heat upon our dwellings from the side-walks and beaten road. In this country the growth of trees is so rapid, and the supply from our own forests so abundant and convenient that every village and city, and every well-conducted farm should be lined with shade-trees. We will offer a few sug- gestions upon the kinds to be selected and the manner of setting. Tue Locust (Robinia pseudacacia).—This tree is very popular, and is almost the only one at the West set for shade-trees. It has a beautiful form, grows very rapidly, bears a profusion of beautiful and very fragrant blossoms (pendulous racemes of pea-shaped flowers), its foliage is sin- gularly pleasing—the young leaves being of a light pea- green, and growing darker with age, so that in the same tree three or four distinct shades of green may be seen; it grows freely in all soils, and is not infested by any worms; its timber is almost as durable as cedar, and in the West, is not subject to the attacks of the dorer, as it is in the East. On the other hand, the tree becomes unsymmetrical with age, it is brittle, breaking easily at slight wounds, even when they have healed over. It is not a long-lived tree, and requires careful protection from cattle. We would advise a more sparing use of it. Let every other tree be a Locust, and the alternate maple or elm, oak, tulip, ete. By this method the Locust will afford immediate shade, and when they become unsightly the intervening ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 193 trees will have grown to a goodly size. The Locust should be transplanted just as the buds are ready to burst ; they should be protected by frames as soon as set. Good cases may be made at a trifling expense, by taking strips of inch and a half stuff, three inches wide, and nine or ten feet long, sharpen the lower end, and drive it into the ground four or five inches, and in a box formed about the tree let cross- pieces be nailed at the top. Be careful that the tree does not rub upon the case, although the wound will heal over, yet in the first high wind, it will be apt to break off at that point. This tree is rather peculiar in that respect. The Locust was introduced to Europe by a Frenchman named Robin. From him the genus (fobinia) took its name. There are but four species belonging to it, and they are all indigenous to North America, viz. : Robinia pseudacacia (common Locust). R. viscosa, confined to the southwestern parts of the Alleghany Moun- tains, bearing rose-colored blossoms and being even more ornamental than the former; it is equally hardy, and if it could be introduced among us would form a valuable addi- tion. Locusts nowhere appear to a better advantage than when planted in clumps of six or eight on a lawn, and if the KR. pseudacacia and Rf. viscosa were contiguous, blending the pure white and the rose-colored blossoms, the world might be challenged for a finer effect. The &. hispida (rose-acacia of our gardens) is a highly ornamental shrub, its branches are, like the moss-rose, cov- ered with minute spines, which give it a fine appearance. A fourth species is said to exist in the basin of Red River. The favorable opinion here expressed of the Locust, will remove any impression of prejudice when we say, that they are altogether too much cultivated. Our forests are full of magnificent shade-trees whose claims can never, all things considered, be equalled by the Locust. Exim (Ulmus Americana), commonly called White Elm, Of the four species of elms indigenous to the United 194 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK States, but two are particularly worth notice, the White Elm, and Slippery Elm (UV. pulva). But the former of these is so incomparably the superior, that it should be selected wherever it canbe had. It attains a height of one hundred feet, is very long-lived, grows more and more beautiful with age, its long branches droop over, forming graceful pendu- lous extremities ; and no one who has seen the Boston Mall, or the New Haven elms, or those scattered along the vil- lages of Connecticut, will think that Michaux exaggerated in pronouncing this tree to be the most magnificent vegeta- ble production of the Temperate Zone. It is unquestionably the monarch among shade-trees, as superior to the oak for avenues and streets, as the oak is to it for parks and forests. The great main-street of every village should be lined with White Elms, set at distances of fifty feet, and Locusts between to supply an immediate shade, and to be removed so soon as the slower-growing elm has spread enough to dispense with them. Tue Marrte.—The following varieties are in our forests, and are beautiful shade-trees for the borders of farms, door- yards, public squares, avenues, streets, etc. The Sugar Maple (Acer saccharinum), White Maple (A. eriocarpum,) Red Maple (A. rubrum). This last variety shows beautiful red flowers before its leaves put out in spring, and, like the sugar-maple, brilliant scarlet leaves in autumn. "The maple is a beautiful tree of fine form, the leaves of the different varieties, are variously shaped and all beautiful, it is free from disease and noxious insects. Besides these, the ash, oak, tulip, beech and walnut, are all worthy of being transferred to our streets. Shade-trees for door-yards, and public squares, and pleasure-grounds, require a separate notice, as in some material respects they should be differently treated. We warmly recommend in lining streets, that each alter. nate tree only be locust. It is better for effect that each street, or at least con- ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 195 tinuous portions of each, have one kind of forest tree, so that an avenue of similar trees be formed. In planting grounds, it is well to group trees of different kinds, but in streets an avenue should be of elms, or of oaks, or of syca- mores, or of maples, and not all of them mingled together. A PLEA FOR HEALTH AND FLORICULTURE. Every one knows to what an extent women are afilicted with nervous disorders, neuralgic affections as they are more softly termed. Is it equally well known that formerly when women partook from childhood, of out-of-door labors, were confined less to heated rooms and exciting studies, they had, comparatively, few disorders of this nature. With the progress of society, fevers increase first, because luxurious eating vitiates the blood; dyspepsia follows next, because the stomach, instead of being a laboratory, is turned into a mere warehouse, into which everything is packed, from the foundation to the roof, by gustatory stevedores. Last of all come newralgic complaints, springing from the muscular enfeeblement and the nervous excitability of the system. _ Late hours at night, and later morning hours, early appli- cation to books, a steady training for accomplishments, viz. embroidery, lace-work, painting rice paper, casting wax-flow- ers so ingeniously that no mortal can tell what is meant lilies looking like huge goblets, dahlias resembling a battered cab- bage; these, together with practisings on the piano, or if something extra is meant, a little tum, tum, tuming, on the harp, and a little ting-tong on the guitar; reading “ladies? books,” erying over novels, writing in albums, and original correspondence with my ever-adored Matilda Euphrosyne, are the materials, too often, of a fashionable education. While all this refinement is being put on, girls are tauglit 196 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK from eight years old, that the chief end of women is to get a beau, and convert him into a husband. Therefore, every action must be on purpose, must have a discreet object in view. Girls must not walk fast, that is not lady-like; nor run, that would be shockingly vulgar; nor scamper over fields, merry and free as the bees or the birds, laughing till the cheeks are rosy, and romping till the blood marches merrily in every vein; for, says prudent mamma, “my dear, do you think Mr. Lack-a-daisy would marry a girl whom he saw acting so unfashionably ?” Thus, in every part of edu- cation those things are pursued, whose tendency is to excite the brain and nervous system, and for the most part those things are not “refined, which would develop the muscular system, give a natural fullness to the form, and health and vigor to every organ of it. The evil does not end upon the victim of fashionable education. Her feebleness, and morbid tastes, and preter- natural excitability are transmitted to her children, and to their children. If it were not for the rural habits and health of the vast proportion of our population, trained to hearty labor on the soil, the degeneracy of the race in cities would soon make civilization a curse to the health of mankind, Now we have not one word to say against “accomplish- ments”? when they are vea/, and are not purchased at the expense of a girl’s constitution. She may dance like Miriam, paint like Raphael, make wax fruit till the birds come and peck at the cunning imitation; she may play like Orpheus harping after Eurydice (or what will be more to the purpose, like a Eurydice after an Orpheus), she may sing and write poetry to the moon, and to every star in the the heavens, and every flower on earth, to zephyrs, to memory, to friendship, and to whatever is imaginable in the spheres, or on the world—if she will, in the midst of these ineffable things, remember the most important facts, that health is a blessing ; that God made health to depend upon ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 197 exercise, and temperate living in all respects; and that the great objects of our existence, in respect to ourselves, is a virtuous and pious character, and in respect to others, the raising and traiming of a family after such a sort that neither we, nor men, nor God, shall be ashamed of them. Now we are not quite so enthusiastic as to suppose that floriculture has in it a balm for all these mentioned ills. We are very moderate in our expectations, believing, only, that it may become a very important auxiliary in main- taining health of body and purity of mind, When once a mind has been touched with zeal in floricul- ture it seldom forgets its love. If our children were early made little enthusiasts for the garden, when they were old they would not depart from it. A woman’s perception of the beauty of form, of colors, of arrangement, is naturally quicker and truer than man’s. Why should they admire these only in painting, in dress, and in furniture? Can human art equal what God has made, in variety, hue, grace, symmetry, order and delicacy? s ao o 3 a o o Oo Set yee tn Ue Rest |e sd Mendrathn cd. Sikes cc. Sos: 2115/2] 5\ 9]10| 7/15] 8 Brockett) t..dbi 95.2! 9|/10| 6| 8 | 22] 18 | 20 | 24 | 19 LTC ae a 17/25! 8! 9130149 | 47 | 61 | 56 Mr. Monro names nineteen kinds of peas only, instead of forty-seven: twenty-two kinds of beans instead of siaty- one ; seven varieties of turnip instead of twenty-two, or, worse yet, thirty; fourteen sorts of lettuce, instead of fifty- two. To the uninitiated a catalogue may look meagre with only eight kinds of lettuce instead of fifty ; fifteen beans instead of sixty-one, etc., but these corpulent catalogues make meagre pockets, except in the case of the seedsman. A much greater latitude of varieties is allowable in a nursery catalogue than in a seedsman’s list. But in even these there is a disposition to extravagance which needs to be cor- rected. Where the disproportion of knowledge between the buyers and seller is so great as it is, and for some time, must be, in horticultural matters, it becomes nurserymen and seedsmen who are honest (and we have many such, and they are increasing)—those who regard their business as an honorable branch of science, as well asa proper means of livelihood, and who hope to gain a high reputation, even 274 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK more than they do wealth, it becomes such to render the lists sELEcT; and while the monstrously bloated catalogues of boasting and avaricious men continue to perplex and de- ceive the unwary, let all intelligent cultivators sustain those who rely on the quality rather than quantity of their articles. GARDEN SEEDS. Goop seeds are the very first requisite for a good garden; soil and culture cannot make good crops out of bad seed. 1. Asa general rule, buy your seeds. The reasons for it are so many and so good, that you will certainly do it, unless economy prevent; but it is better to economize else- where. In the first place, seed-raising is a delicate business; and, for many reasons, will be better done by those who make it their business, than by those who do not. A reputable seedsman never dreams of raising, himself, all the seeds which he sells. For example, one sort of seed is let out to a farmer who contracts to raise it in a given soil and man- ner, and at a distance from all other seeds. One man raises the beet seed—another man, very often hundreds of miles distant, another sort. Peas are sent to Vermont and to Canada, where the pea-bug does not infest them. Some seeds, for which this climate is not favorable, are imported from Italy, from Guernsey—just as flowering bulbs are from Holland. We suppose this to be true of Landreth, Thorn- burn, Prince, Bliss, Risley, ete. In cases where seeds are raised upon the premises of the seedsman, they are put on different parts of the farm, as far apart as possible. These precautions are indispensable to the procuration of the dest seeds of esculent vegetables. Species of the same genus, with open flowers, are so easily crossed, that, if ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 975 grown contiguously, they cannot be kept pure. All exeurbdi- taceous plants, such as squashes, pumpkins, melons, cucumbers, gourds, etc., will mix and degenerate if planted even in the same garden. Let any one who wishes to see how it is done, watch the bee covering itself with golden pollen as it searches for honey in the cells of the flower, and darting off to another, mingling the fertilizing powder of the two. In a single morning, cucumbers, will be mixed with each other, and with canteloupes; squashes will be crossed, and in the next generation will show it. Where - the organs of flowers are protected, as in the pea, bean, etc., by a floral envelope, insects do not mix their pollen. I I have never known pure beet seed raised in a private gar- den which had more than the single kind in it—or when another garden was near which had other sorts. We prefer, generally, northern seeds to those raised elsewhere. A mere change of soil and climate is often advantageous to seeds. But besides this, greater care and skill are usually employed at the north in producing sound and safe seeds. We can recommend, from repeated trials, the seeds of Risley, Chatauque county, N. Y., and of Mr. Breck of Boston. Landreth of Philadelphia has a high reputation ; so have the veteran Thorburn of John Street, and the enter- prising house of B. K. Bliss & Sons of Park Place, New York. 2. Some seeds retain their power of germination to an astonishing length of time, as will appear from facts stated by Prof. Lindley : “ Not to speak of the doubtful instances of seeds taken from the Pyramids having germinated, melons have been known to grow at the age of 40 years, kidney beans at 100, sensitive-plant at 60, rye at 40; and there are now grow- ing, in the garden of the Horticultural Society, raspberry 276 plants raised from seeds 1600 or 1700 years old.” PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK (See “Introduction to Botany,” ed. 3, p. 358.) But in selecting seeds, fresh ones should be had if pos- sible. Where, however, the vegetable is cultivated for the sake of its flower, or its fruit, it is sometimes better tc select old seed. Thus balsamines (the touch-me-not) and the cucumber, squash and melon tribe do better on seeds three or four years old; for fresh seeds produce plants whose growth will be too luxuriant for producing fruit; whereas from old seed, the plants have less vigor of growth but a greater tendency to fruit well We insert a table, exhibiting the years which different seeds will retain their vitality. TIME THAT SEEDS WILL KEEP. YEARS. Asparagus........-...... 40r 18 Balm.. subooddsegounocde 2 NS ASTI W ys cesicieve Baltes Sales lor3 BG ANS Scteverc ie 6 cists sistcvencrste lor 2 SE CtS a) ane Gis eer o Sastre CHOL LO ISOUNES . sq gnapodoDOGI0uS 2 Wabbaxe ar «i-/cmis« fers se 6 or 8 (CANTO Ur rete ers ie scinielewin els ale lor7 Celery ARORE 6 or 8 COLI reread ove leis cote te teyionsvtnes ts 2or3 Cress.) Wiwiercje Weters eisielehee Cucumber. <0. cs Seicles OT OLELD (CEU EMG goonooooD JG0000 © Mennelec sonic, sss,0 cteue avatene Garlic’... 'sre ftener our attention is called to this subject, the more we feel confirmed in the opinon that the theory of Mr. Longworth is entirely un- founded ; that there is no such thing as male and female plants, though certain causes may produce, as we know they have, ade and sterile ones.” Nevertheless, in the next issue but one this poccung eae language is again softened down, and a doubt even appears, 356 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK when he says, “Ir Mr. Longworth’s theory should prove true,” etc. We, among others, waited anxiously for the promised experiments ; but if published we never saw them. The subject rather died out of his magazine until August, 1845, when, in speaking of the Boston Pine, a second fine seedling of his own raising, he is seen bearing away on the other tack, if not with ad/ sails set, yet with enough to give the ship headway in the right direction: “ Let the causes be what they may, it is sufficient for all practical purposes, to know, that the most abundant crops (italics ours) can be produced by planting some sort abounding in staminate flowers, in the near vicinity of those which do not possess them.” P.293. And on p. 444 he reiterates the advice to plant near the staminate varieties. In the August number for 1846, p. 309, Mr. Hovey shows himself a thorough con- vert to Mr. Longworth’s views, by indorsing, in the main, the report of the committee of the Cincinnati Horticultural Society. We hope after so various a voyage, touching at so many points, that he will now abide steadfast in the truth. We look upon this as a very grave matter, not because the strawberry question is of such paramount, although it is of no inconsiderable importance; but it is of importance whether accredited scientific magazines should be trust- worthy; whether writers or popular editors should be responsible for mistakes entirely unnecessary. We blame no man for vacillation, while yet in the process of investi- gation, nor for coming at the truth gradually, since this is the necessity of our condition to learn only by degrees, and by painful siftings. The very first requisite for a writer is, that he be worthy of trust in his statements. No man can be trusted who ventures opinions upon uninvestigated mat- ters; who states facts with assurance which he has not really ascertained; who evinces rashness, haste, careless- ness, credulity, or fickleness in his judgments. The ques- tion of perfect or imperfect blossoms depends upon the sim- plest exercise of eyesight. It requires no measurements, ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 357 no process of the laboratory, no minute dissections or nice calculations ; it requires only that a man should see what he looks at. When a boy, playing “how many fingers do I hold up,” by dint of peeping from under the bandage, we managed to make very clever guesses of how many lily-fingers some roguish lassie was helding in tempting show before our ban- daged eyes; but some folks are not half so lucky with both eyes wide open, and the stamens and pistils standing before them. If such a latitude is permitted to those who conduct the investigations peculiar to herticulture, who can confide in the publication of facts, observations or experiments? Of what use will be journals and magazines? They become like chronometers that will not keep time; like a compass that has lost its magnetic sensibility ; like a guide who has lost his own way, and leads his followers through brake, and morass, and thicket, into interminable wanderings, Sometimes, the consciousness of faults in ourselves, which should make us lenient toward others, only serves to pro- duce irritable fault-finding. After a comparison of opinions and facts, through a space of five years, with the most dis- tinguished cultivators, East and West, Mr. Longworth is now universally admitted to have sustained himself in all the essential points which he first promulgated—not discov- ered, for he made no claims of that sort. The gardeners and the magazines of the East have, at length, adopted his practical views, after having stoutly, many of them, con- tested them. It was, therefore, with unfeigned surprise, that we read Mr. Hovey’s latest remarks in the September number of his magazine, in which, with some asperity, he roundly charges Mr. Longworth with manifold errors, and treats him with a contempt which would lead one, ignorant of the con- troversy, to suppose that Mr. Hovey had never made a mistake, and that Mr. Longworth had been particularly 358 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK fertile of them. Thus: “ Mr. Longworth’s renarks abound in so many errors and inconsistencies, that we shall expect scarcely to notice all.” ‘“ Another gross assertion,” etc. Re- ferring to another topic, he says, ‘“‘ This question we, there- fore, consider as satisfactorily settled, without discussing Mr. Longworth’s conflicting views about male and female, Keen’s,” etc. This somewhat tragical comedy is now nearly played out, and we have spoken a word just before the fall of the cur- tain, because, as chroniclers of events, and critics of horti- cultural literature and learning, it seemed no less than our duty. We have highly appreciated Mr. Hovey’s various exertions for the promotion of the art and science of horti- culture, nor will his manifest errors and short-comings in this particular instance, disincline us to receive from his pen whatsoever is good. We hope that our remarks will not be construed as a defence of western men or western theories, but as the defence of the truth, and of one who has truly expounded it, though, in this case, theory and its defender happen to be of western origin. Whatever errors have crept into Mr. Longworth’s remarks should be faithfully expurgated; and perhaps it may be Mr. Hovey’s duty to perform the lustration. If so, courtesy would seem to require that it should be done with some consciousness, that through this whole controversy Mr. Longworth is new admitted to have been right in all essential matters; and if, in error at all, only in minor particulars, while Mr. Hovey, in all the con- troversy, in respect to the plainest facts, has been changing from wrong to right, from right to wrong, and from wrong back to right ‘again. We do not think that the admirable benefits which Mr. Longworth has conferred upon the whole community by urging the improved method of culti- vating the strawberry, has been adequately appreciated. We still less like to see gratitude expressed in the shape of snarling gibes and petty cavils. Eee ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 399 We will close these remarks by the correction of a matter which Mr. Downing states. While he assents to all the practical aspects of Mr. Longworth’s views, he dissents as to some matters of fact and philosophy, and among others, to the fact that Hovey’s seedling is always and only a pis- tillate plant. He thinks that originally it had perfect flow- ers, but that after bearing twice or thrice on the same roots the plants degenerate and become either pistillate or stami- nate. He says, “ Hovey’s seedling strawberry, at first, was a perfect sort in its flower, but at this moment more than half the plants in this country have become pistillate.” Mr. Hovey himself states the contrary on p. 112 of his magazine for 1844. He denies that there are two kinds of blossoms to his seedling, and says, ‘“‘the flowers are all of one kind, with both pistils and stamens, but the latter quite short and hidden under the receptacle.” This is the common form of all pistillate blossoms, and shows, in so far as Mr: Hovey’s observations are to be trusted, that, at its starting-point and home, Hovey’s seedling was, as with us it now invariably is, so far as we have ever seen it, a pistillate plant. STRAWBERRIES. Directions for the culture of the strawberry will vary with circumstances; as, whether it is raised for private use, or for market. But, for whatever purpose cultivated, respect must be invariably had to the fact of staminate and pistillate flowers, or male and female. Each flower contains the rudiments of both the male and female organs. But the male organs are more or less defective in one set of plants and the female in another “and, in the Hudson and some others, it amounts to a complete separation of the sexes. In some of the male (staminate) varieties mare or less ot 360 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK the blossoms are also partially perfect in the female organs and will produce some fruit. “‘ Every flower contains both the male and female organs ; and, in the white and monthly, both organs are always perfect in the same blossom, as far as my experience goes. In other kinds, the male organs are more or less defective in one set of plants, and the female in the other; and, in the Hudson and some other varieties, it amounts to a com- plete separation of the sexes. The male organs are so " defective in one set of plants, and the female in the other, that an acre of either would not produce a single fruit. In some of the male (staminate) varieties, more or less of the blossoms are also more or less perfect in the female organs, and will produce more or less fruit ; but I have never seen a female plant with the male organs sufficiently developed to produce a single perfect fruit. Tovey’s seedling, and some others, may produce deformed berries.” —- Longworth. Mr. Longworth, in consequence of this fact, always has a compartment allotted to male and one to female plants, and out of these he forms his beds, being able thus to insure a proper proportion of males to females. Mr. 8. S. Jackson, a very skillful nurseryman of Cincinnati, usually, in selling plants, puts up ninety females to ten males in the hundred. We shall now give the time and manner of planting of some of the best cultivators in the West, at the East, and in England. Mr. Jackson says: ‘I plant any time from the first of April, till they are in bloom. I, one year, planted twenty- five square roods of ground ; the plants were all in bloom when set out; and the next year I picked thirty-eight bushels, and there were fully ten bushels left on the vines. “T plant them in this way: first plow or spade the ground ; harrow it smooth; then strain a line on one side nine inches from the edge, and a row from twelve to fifteen ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 361 inches apart ; then move the line eighteen inches, and plant another row; then move it three feet, and again eighteen inches—and so on till the ground is planted. I then go over and put one male plant every six feet, between the two rows. Keep them clear of weeds through the summer, and let them spread as much as they will. “In the fall dress the out-walks eighteen inches wide, which will leave the beds three feet wide; and when it sets in cold, give them a light covering of straw; rake it off in the spring. You may then expect a fullcrop. It is best to make a new bed once in two or three years.” But plantations may be made through the summer, and as late as September; of course, the earlier in the season the better established the plants will become before winter, and the larger the next summer’s crop. Thus, a bed formed in September would bear very scantily ; while Mr. Jackson’s beds, formed in the spring, produced a large crop the next season. Mr. Kenrick gives the following methods as practised by market gardeners near Boston; the first one strikes us as being the most economical way of working strawberries, on a large scale, that we have seen: “Tn the vicinity of Boston, the following mode is often adopted. The vines are usually transplanted in August. The rows are formed from eighteen inches to two feet asunder. The runners, during the first year, are destroyed. In the second year, they are suffered to grow and fill the interval, and in the autumn of that year, the whole old rows are turned under with the spade, and the rows are thus shifted to the middle of the space. The same process is repeated every second year. “« Another mode, which may be recommended generally, is to plant the strawberries in rows thirty inches asunder, and nine inches distant in the row, and suffer the vines to extend to the width of eighteen inches, leaving twelve inches’ space for an alley; or allow eighteen inches’ width 362 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK to the alleys, and three feet asunder to the rows; and to form new beds every three years, or never to suffer the bed to exist over four years; and to plant out in August in preference to spring.” Dr. Bayne of Alexandria, D. C., gives his method of producing very large fruit. The peculiarity of his treatment is the use of undecomposed or green manure. Almost every other cultivator recommends well rotted manure; and, we are inclined to think, with the better reason. We have found some English cultivators who agree with him; but the most dissuade from the practice, as making plants productive of leaves rather than fruit. “To produce strawberries of extraordinary size for exhi- bition, I would recommend the following preparation: select the best soil and trench it at least two feet deep; incorporate well with the first twelve inches an abundance of strong undecomposed manure; pulverize and rake the ground well, then mark off the rows twelve or fifteen inches asunder, and set the plants in the rows from twelve to fifteen inches, according to the luxuriance and vigor of the variety. During the first year, the runners must be care- fully and frequently destroyed before they become rooted. By this means the stools become very vigorous and bear the most abundant crops. In the spring after the fruit is set, place around each plant a small quantity of straw, or what is much better, cover the whole surface of the ground one inch thick with wheat chaff. This prevents evaporation, protects the fruit from the earth, improves the flavor, and will greatly increase the size.” Loudon gives Garnier’s method of treating the straw- berry as an annual. It is peculiarly applicable to small gardens. The observations on the depth of soil required, are worthy of especial attention : “Early in August, or as soon as the gathering is over, I destroy all my beds, and proceed immediately to trench, form, and manure them in the manner before directed, to ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 363 receive the plants for the crop of the ensuing year, taking care to select for that purpose the strongest and best-rooted tunners from the old rejected plants. If at this season the weather should be particularly hot, and the surface of the ground much parched, I defer the operation of preparing my beds and planting them till the ground is moistened by rain. Such is the simple mcde of treatment which I have adopted for three successive years, and I have invariably obtained upon the same spot, a great produce of beautiful fruit, superior to that of every other garden in the neighbor- hood. Depth of soil I have found absolutely necessary for the growth and production of fine strawberries, and when this is not to be obtained, it is useless, in my opinion, to plant many of the best varieties. It is not generally known, but I have ascertained the fact, that most strawberries generate roots, and strike them into the ground, nearly two feet deep in the course of one season. The practice of renewing strawberry plantations every year, and even of using runners of the current year for forcing, is now become very general among gardeners. Mr. Knight generally adopts this mode, and, notwithstanding the increased labor attending it, it is even adopted by some market-gardeners about London for their earliest crops. . It is invariably found that by this mode the fruit not only comes larger, but somewhat earlier. It must always be recollected, how- ever, by those who intend practising it, that almost the whole of the success depends on bringing forward the earliest runners, by encouraging them to root. This is done by stirring the soil beneath them, hooking them down, or retaining them in their proper places by smali stones ; or, when the object is to procure plants for forcing rooting them into small pots.” 364 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK RASPBERRIES, STRAWBERRIES, GOOSEBERRIES AND CURRANTS. Currants, Gooseberries, Raspberries, Strawberries, etc.. are termed “Small Fruit.’ We will give some directions for spring-work which these ra juire. RaspBeRRiESs.—The sorts usually found in our gardens are rejected from all good collections as worthless. The Ant- werp, red and white, have, until lately, been regarded as the best. Two new kinds are very highly thought of— the Franconia and the Fustolf. This last is an Eng- lish variety; was found growing ona gentleman’s ground among some lime and brick rubbish—evidently a seedling —and removed to his garden. It was a number of years before it attracted attention; but, lately, it has been much in demand and bids fair to claim a rank among the first, if it is not the first. A deep, rich, loamy soil which is moist, proves best for this fruit. It prefers a half shady position. When first planted, put them four feet apart in the row, and the rows three feet from each other. In old beds cut out the last year’s bearing wood, now worthless, and also all the new shoots but four or five to a root; grub up all that have come up between the rows. Cut those which are reserved for bearing to about five feet in length, and tie them gently to a stake. Thus treated from year to year, and well manured, raspberries will return a rich reward. STRAWBERRIES.—Thenumber of kindsisimmense. Knight, late president of the London Horticultural Society, had four hundred kinds in his garden, and most of them seedlings of his own raising. The early Virginia is regarded as the best early kind. Hovey’s, Warren’s and Keen’s seedlings are admirable sorts. Wiley’s and Motter’s seedlings ori- ginated in Cincinnati and are esteemed. There are many other fine sorts which an amateur cultivator would wish, ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 365 not necessary to common gardens, where two or three choice sorts will suffice. Almost every cultivator has a way of his own in raising strawberries. In private gardens, in a soil well enriched and deeply spaded, let beds be formed avout four feet wide; upon these set three rows of hills and the plants about fifteen inches apart in the row. Pinch off all runners through the season, unless they are wanted for new plants. Old beds, grown over and matted, had better ke des- troyed; but if, for any reason, it is desirable to save them, mark out lines every eighteen inches and dig alleys through the bed, by turning the plants under. In this way the patch will be thrown into beds of eighteen inches width. Before this is done take an iron-toothed rake and rake the bed severely. Do not be afraid of tearing the plants; go over the whole bed thoroughly. It will seem as if scarcely a dozen plants were left, but in a few weeks your bed will be entirely covered with a strong growth. GoosEBERRIES.—This fruit is very much neglected because its merits are only little known. There are two sorts found in our gardens, the common gooseberry and Hnglish, by which name is meant a large, coarse, thick-skinned green variety. It is not generally known that there are any other cultivated sorts; and as these are inferior they are little cared for. The Lancashire (England) Nurserymen publish 300 varieties! The select list of Mr. Thompson of the Lon- don Horticultural Society’s garden comprises fifty-six varieties; the still more condensed select list of Robert Manning (Mass.) includes twenty-eight sorts. Some of these bear fruit as large asa medium-sized plum. There are four colors, red, yellow, green and white; to each color are two sizes, large and small fruits. Those who have not seen and tasted the Scotch and Lancashire varieties of the gooseberry do not know what the fruit is. In sending for them, select a trustworthy nurseryman, and request him to 366 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK send, of each color, such kinds as have proved, with him, the best; and in such numbers as you may wish. The yooseberry delights in three things, a very rich soil, a shady positien, and a free circulation of air. If accommodated in these respects, it will be free from mildew and give a sure and ample crop of delicious fruit. Tiili-tops are the best sites. In gardens the open and airy parts shouid be selected; in low and confined situations they mildew. Hog manure is esteemed the best for this fruit. When the fruit begins to set, if threatened with blight, take a moderately strong lime-water (sulphur added will be all the better) or, if lime is not convenient, lye from wood ashes, and drench the bushes freely with it. A large watering-pot should be employed. Gooseberries may be in- creased from cuttings like the currant, and with the same ease. Currants.—There are very few varieties of this fruit, Our common red and white, if well cultivated, are very good. The Large Dutch Red, and White, are much larger varieties and generally preferred in the best Eastern gar- dens. Every farmer, if he has nothing else, has a long row of currant bushes, and gets, usually, five times as many cur- rants as he can consume. Very few fruits have so few diseases incident to them as the currant. It is not infested with worms, its fruit is subject to no blight, it bears every year, is rarely affected either by severe winters or late frosts, and we do not remember a season in our lives when there was not, at least, a partial currant crop. We advise those who are careful in such matters to train their currants to a éree form ; let a cutting be set, rub out all the buds but two or three at the top; at about twelve or fifteen inches from the earth let the branches put out, and never permit suckers to grow, or branches to stand lower tnan this. The difficulty which some have found in tree currants, that they are top-heavy and require staking to prevent their being bent by winds and their own weight, arises from having the stem too long. We have seen two ————— ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 367 feet and even more allowed. If twelve or fifteen inches be allowed, the stem, in a few years, will become strong enough to withstand winds and sustain its own top. Thus formed they are beautiful to the eye, convenient for borders, allow a free circulation of air under and through them, are easy to work in spring or for manuring, and easy to prune, when, as should be done every year, you take out the old wood, Gooseberries will do better to be trained in this way, than in the bush form. The top once formed, there is no difficulty in keeping it so. If you are faithful to grub up every sucker for one season you will have few to plague you after that. Gooseberries, Raspberries, Strawberries and Currants ought to be found in every farmer’s garden. The trouble of cultivation is slight and the return of wholesome fruit very great. One woman can, for the most part, bestow all the attention which they need. SPRING WORK IN THE ORCHARD. 1, Tuere is a great deal more pruning done than is need- ful or healthful. Our hot summers and strong growth of wood make every leaf on the tree precious. Dead limbs should be taken out. Where the tree is really tangled with wood, thin out. Where branches are rubbing across each other severely, take off one of them. Grub up every water- sprout from the roots. If you can avoid it, do not use them for trees, for the tree thus obtained will inherit the same propensity of sending up water-shoots. Sometimes, in scarcity of stock, they are used rather than to have none, but it is then only a lesser of two evils. 2. .Tore or Prustne.—There is a bad practice abroad of pruning before the leaves are out. English books direct to 368 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK prune in February, and we suspect that the custom sprang up at the East from the old country enent le. It is not safe for us to follow the specific processes of Great Britain or the Continent. Our own well settled experience is to be our rule of practice. There is no better month in the year to prune, than that month in which the tree is making the most wood. It is plain that the sooner a wound heals the better; and equally plain, that a tree which is growing will heal a wound quicker than an inactive tree. All the matter which goes to form wood, or to form the granulations by which a cut heals, comes from the downward current of sap, or sap which has been elaborated in the leaf. Of course when the tree has the most leaves, and the leaves are preparing the greatest quantity of proper juice or elaborated sap, that is ae time for pruning, because the time for healing. In this climate we have preferred the last of May for spring prun- ing, and the last of August for summer pruning—the exact week varying as the season is forward or backward. 3. INSTEAD OF PRUNING AT THIS EARLY PERIOD, LET TREES BE THOROUGHLY SCRAPED AND ScourED.—A three-sided scraper, such as butchers use to clean their blocks with, or any convenient implement, may be applied to the trunk and large branches with force sufficient to take off the dry’, dead bark. Only this is to be removed. Take soft soap and reduce it by wrine to the consistence of paint. With a stiff shoe-brush rub the whole trunk and the limbs as far up as is practicable. The bark will grow smooth and glossy ; insect eggs will be entirely destroyed ; all moss and fungoug vegetation removed, and the bark stimulated and made healthier. Tis 18 BETTER THAN ANY WHITEWASH, and just as convenient. 4. Lime is better used as follows: remove the earth from the trunk, and put about half a peck to each tree. suvery spring, spread and dig in the old lime, and put new mm its place. Unleached ashes are good to be dug in around a ~ ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 569 tree. If your soil is calcareous, full of lime, these applica- tions are not needful. Thoroughly rotted manure, or better yet, black vegetable mold may be dug in liberally, and will supply the soil with nutriment, and the roots will find their way in with great facility. 5. When a tree is manured, remember that the ends only of the roots take up nourishment, and that the ends of the roots are not found close by the trunk. We often see heaps of manure piled about the trunk, and the ends of the roots are three yards or more distant from it. You might as well put your fodder down at your cattle’s hind legs, and wonder that they did not get fat on it. Treat your trees as you do your stock—put their food where their mouths are. Youne orcHaRDS are better without stimu- lating manure. Let the soil be mellowed, and then give the trees their own time, and if they do not bear quite as soon, they will live longer and be less subject to disease. MIRACLES IN FRUITS. Wuen a traveller was relating, in Cowper’s presence, some prodigious marvels, the poet smiled somewhat incredu- lously. ‘ Well, sir, don’t you believe me? I saw it with my own eyes.” ‘Qh, certainly, I believe it if you saw it, but I would not if I had seen it myself? Even so we feel about the thousand and one physiological fooleries which run the monthly rounds of the papers. How on earth do men suppose a fruit to receive its char- acteristic quality? Is it from the root, trunk, pith, bark, branch, or leaf? One would think that it made no differ- ence which. We have long supposed that the leaf digested the sap, returned it to the passages of distribution to be employed in the formation of fruit, wood, tissue, ete. Is this the function of the leaf? or have recent investigations 370 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK exploded this doctrine? If not, it will be apparent that all grafting of scions together, cannot change the quality of fruit, unless the leaves are also amalgamated. Is a red, green, yellow, and white fruit, sweet, sour, or bitter, be put upon the same tree, each will maintain its characteristics ; because, each bud or scion has its own peculiar leaves, from whose laboratory the fruit is sweetened or acidulated and colored with all its hues. To be sure, fruits are affected by the stock on which they are put; but their characteristic elements are not altered, but only pushed along in the same line and made more perfect. There is no doubt that trees indulge, occasionally, in rare antics. A sober apple-tree will sometimes let down its dig- nity, in what gardeners call a “sport,” e. g. a sweet apple may grow ona sour tree, and vice versd. An apple may vu one side be sweet and on the other sour. But, in such cases, the same general law is seen governing yet. We all know that great changes of temperament occur in men. A nervous temperament often becomes abdominal, and a little, wiry, fussy, peevish, minikin, becomes a round, plump, rosy, corpulent spot of good nature. Similar changes may occur, through disease, or the peculiarity of the season, or from unknown causes, in the structure of the leaves of a branch, and then the fruit will follow the change of the leaf. But the fruit itself digests still further the elaborated sap sent to it from the leaf. If, then, from any hidden causes, the fruit should in part change its structure, the juices elaborated would be altered. If stamens and pistils may change to petals, if petals may change to leaves, if leaves may extend to branches, we know of no reason why the whole or the half of a fruit may not, also, alter its structure; and with its peculiarity of function, also, of course, the charac- ter of the fruit. While then we are not skeptical of “ mon- sters,” “marvels,” ‘“ sports,” “singularities,” we think we cin trace the origimal law through all the transmuta- tions, ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 871 PROTECTING THE ROOTS OF FRUIT-TREES. CuttivaTors are frequently urged in Horticultural papers to cover the roots of the peach-trees with heaps of snow, etc., that they may be retarded in the spring, and escape injury from late frosts upon their blossoms. This direction takes it for granted that the warmth of the ground starts the root, and the root starts the sap, and the sap wakes up the dormant branch. By covering the soil and keeping it back, the whole tree is supposed to be secured. But, unfortunately for this process, the motion of the sap is first in the BRANCHES, and last in the roots. Light and heat, exerted upon the branches for any considerable length of time, produce a high state of excitability ; the sap begins to move toward the bud, its place is supplied by a portion lower down, and so on until the whole column of sap through the trunk is in motion, and last of all in the root. But suppose warm, spring days, with a temperature of from sixty degrees to sixty-five degrees, have produced a vigor- ous motion of the sap in the branches and trunk, while the root, (thanks to snow and ice piled over it to keep it frozen), is dormant, what will result? The sap already within the tree will be exhausted, the root will supply none, the light and heat still push on the development of bud and leaf and the tree will exhaust itself and die. We not long since observed a remarkable confirmation ot these reasonings. A gentleman of our acquaintance, in reading these unskilfull directions to cover the peach-tree root, opened trenches about his trees, and filled them with snow, heaping bountifully also all about the trees. The next spring, long after his trees should have been at work, the snow held the root fast; the buds swelled and burst, lingered, shrivelled and died—and the trees too. This might lave been prognosticated. There are partial methods of protecting the peach from too early develop. ment, but they all have respect to the protection of the 372 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK limbs. If the branches can be covered during the random and prematurely hot days of spring, the tree will not suffer, High, and cool-aired aspects, north hill-sides, northern sides of houses, barns, ete., will answer this purpose. When it can be afforded, long boards may be set up upon the east and south sides of choice trees, upon a frame slightly made and easily removed. The reason why more damage has not been done by covering peach-tree roots, than has occurred, is, that the ground has been superficially frozen, and many of the roots extending deeper and laterally beyond the congealed por- tions, have afforded a supply of sap after a motion had been imparted to it in the branches. PRUNING GRAPE VINES. Au know that after the sap begins to flow in the spring, a vine, if cut, will bleed. It seems that at this early period of its development the sap vessels have no power of con- traction. Many suppose that the same state of things con- tinues throughout the growing season, and are afraid to cut their vines. But after the vine has begun to grow freely (when the leaves, for example, are as large as the palm of one’s hand), a wound very soon contracts, bleeds little or none, and heals over as in a tree. Any pruning which is necessary upon the old wound may, therefore, be fearlessly performed. Some inexpert cultivators, in order to let the sun fall upon the grapes, pluck off the leaves; hoping thus to pro- cure sweeter grapes. This is the very way to have acid fruit. Where is the sugar prepared for the cluster but in these very leaves which are taken off? Without leaves, the sap which flows into the cluster has undergone but ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 375 imperfectly those chemical changes on which the fruit depends. Every leaf in the neighborhood of the fruit is precious. MILDEW ON GRAPES. Many permit the fruit of the vines to perish before their eyes from the ravages of mildew, ignorant that an effectual remedy is within their reach. It is simply to dust the branches with flowers of sulphur. It is best done while the dew is on. . When vines are trained upon the sides of a house or fence, it is well to whitewash the surfaces on which they are fastened with a wash in which flowers of sulphur has been largely mixed. It is recommended by some cultivators to employ such a whitewash for the wood of the vine, covering all the main stems with it; but all these methods result in the one thing —the application of sulphur as a remedy for mildew. HOW TO OBTAIN GRAPE VINES. GRAFTING is only practised on the vine for special rea- sons, and we have never had occasion to try it. We shall speak of a better mode of obtaining vines. The best method of “ getting a start’ of grape vines is, by the employment of cuttings. These may be planted immediately after the spring pruning of established vines. But cuttings of native grapes are as well planted in the fall. The granulation, from which the roots spring, will form during the winter, and the cuttings, starting early in the spring, will make good growth the first year. Cuttings 374 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK are the best, because they can be procured easily, abun- dantly, and cheaply ; they will bear carriage to any dis- tance, are exceedingly tenacious of life, and they make | thriftier plants. Cuttings may be set, either where they are to remain, in which case several should be set, to allow for failures, and only the strongest finally retained ; or, they may be set in nursery rows, eight inches apart. Cuttings should be inserted about eight inches deep, and have two eyes or buds above the surface. The two buds are merely precautionary ; that if one fails the other may sprout; one only, and that the strongest, should finally be permitted to grow. An old and skillful cultivator of the vine says that cwt- tings are the best of all modes of securing a supply of vines. “For my part I am for scions without roots, after many experiments. All the advantage the one with roots has over the other, is that they are more sure to live; but they will not in general, make as thrifty plants.” —J. J. Dufour. This only objection to cuttings—that a part of them fail to root—is of little practical importance, as they are easily obtained in any quantity. AUTUMNAL MANAGEMENT OF FRUIT-TREES. Orcuarpists and cultivators of garden-fruit will have need of all their skill to prepare tender fruit-trees for win- ter. It is the misfortune, alike of the English summers, and of ours in the West, that trees do not properly ripen their wood. But inGreat Britain it is from the want of enough, and in America, from too much summer. Our long and hot summers give two or three separate growths to fruit-trees, and the last one is usually in progress at a period so late ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 370 that severe frosts and freezings overtake the tree while yet in an excitable state, pushing new wood, and with a top quite unripened for severe frosty handling. The year 1845 furnished a fine type of western summers. The spring came in very properly, and at so late a period that the usual frosts, after the expansion of leaves, were avoided. The summer opened warmly and continued with almost unvarying heat throughout. At the same time there were frequent and copious rains. By this statement theaverage temperature of June was 71°, and the rain 6! inches; of July, average noon heat 80°, rain 34 inches; of August, average noon heat 80°, rain 54 inches. Nights were exceedingly warm. The day repeatedly opened and closed at 80°. Our thermometer on the north of our house, in a shady yard, stood for eight and ten days together between 94° and 100°, twice attaining the latter height. Under such stimulus our pear, apple and plum-trees, made their first growth by the first of July. They soon started into a second growth, which wound up during the last of August and the first of September, plum-trees entirely shedding their leaves and standing as bare as in Jan- uary. Let orchards be examined when frosts begin to occur, and every side-shoot, sucker or water-sprout, cut cleanly out. These succulent, raw sprouts are the breeding-spots of disease. Cold-blight invariably manifests itself in them in the most positive form. Garden trees, choice pears, and stone-fruits, should, in addition to this operation, if still in growth at the last of September, receive a fall pruning. From the first to the mid- dle of October, according to the season, cut off two-thirds of the new growth, or back to strong, ripe wood. It is well known that the newest buds, near the extremity of young wood, are the most sensitive and apt to break and grow, whereas the buds near the base of a branch are dormant. 376 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK It is the repose of the older buds which makes fall pruning, if performed with judgment, so valuable. Because it forces the tree to expend its energies in ripening its wood instead of making more, and it also tends to induce fruitfulness by changing leaf-buds to fruit-buds. The great art of fall pruning is to relieve the tree of its crude wood without causing its dormant buds to break. If performed too early, or if but the tips of the fine wood are removed, the new buds may break and side-shoots issue, leaving the tree worse off than before. Young trees just coming into bearing should have their trunks protected. That there is a change in the economy of a tree when it begins to bear is plain; and experience seems to teach that trees are peculiarly tender at the time of this change, since they are far more apt to die when coming to fruit, than either before or afterward. Cherry- trees and pear-trees should have brush, or corn-stalks, or straw, or matting, as is most convenient, so placed from the ground to the branches, as to exclude the sun with- out excluding air. An hour’s attention may save much regret. PEARS GRAFTED UPON THE APPLE STOCK. WE do not think the pear does so well in any other way as on its own root. But it has been found extremely difii- cult to obtain the requisite stock. Pear-seeds are scarce. When obtained, the seedlings have proved intractable, and left the nurseryman oftentimes in the lurch. The first and best substitute for pear-stock, is the root of the pear—great quantities may be obtained when removing pear-trees in the autumn from the nursery, and also without any injury to the trees, roots may be taken from old bearing-trees. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 377 These are to be grafted in the manner already described in our pages. Next to this, the quince stock is to be chosen. The pear is dwarfed upon it. In other words, the two are ‘but imperfectly suited to each other, and the scion does not develop according to its original nature. But this very dwarfing adds something to the good qualities of the fruit, affords trees so small that, at eight feet apart, they make beautiful linings to a walk or border, and, morever, brings the pear to its fruit several years earlier than if it were on its own bottom. But on the other hand, the pear on quince is comparatively short-lived. The white-thorn has been tried as a stock and not without success, but it is hardly to be used except in extremities. Last, and worst of all, comes the apple. The scion grows as vigorously upon the apple as upon a stock of its own species, and we do not know that the fruit deteriorates. But the trees seem to have no constitution. After a few bearings they seem struck with irremediable weakness, and soon run down and die. Nurserymen ought not, therefore, to graft the pear upon the apple. To do so, if advised of the fore- going facts, cannot be honest. Our attention has been called to the subject by some painful experience of our own. Neswanoc Potato.—This potato (pronounced MMesha- noc), was raised from the seed about the year 1800, by John Gilkey, Mercer county, Pennsylvania. He called it Neshanoc, from a creek near to which he lived. It was called by some, Mercer, from the county in which it was raised, It is extensively cultivated, and deserves to be. Mr. Gilkey was an Irishman—of course a judge of good potatoes. 578 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK SEEDLINGS FROM BUDDED PEACHES. Mr. Nicnotas Loneworrs inquires: “ Will the pit of the budded peach produce the same fruit as the bud, or as ° the stock, or a mixture of the two?” And he also says, ‘I have never fairly tested the question, but my experience led me to believe that the budded pit produced the same fruit as the original stock.” So far as ie question can be determined (macpencenae of experiment) upon the known laws of the vegetable king- dom, we say that it will noé produce fruit like that of the original stock; nor will it, on the other hand, with any cer- tainty, reproduce the budded kind. If the pit of a budded variety takes after the stock, we must very much change our theory of the office of leaves, and perhaps of the bark. At present, the received and orthodox teaching is, that the sap from the root is crude and undigested until it has received in the leaf a chemical change. Until then, the sap does not materially influence the vegetable tissue, nor form new substance, or affect the fruit. But after its elaboration in the leaf, a returning cur- rent of prepared sap (similar in its functions to arterial blood), sets downward, distributing to every part of the vegetable economy the properties required by each. The sap arising from the root, does not touch the channel of fruit until it has been chemically changed; and the differ- ence exhibited in the fruit of one tree compared with another, arises, primarily from the nature of the sap which it receives; the sap receives its qualities by a digestion in the leaf.* In all cases, then, we suppose the deaf to deter- mine the nature of the fruit (and the root in no case, and the trunk in no case), since the stem is, so far as sap is con- cerned, but a bundle of canals for its passage—a mere high- * The fruit itself still further elaborates the sap, else a peach would be as acrid as the juice of the peach leaf. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 379 way for transmission—and not like the leaf, a laboratory for its preparation ! * We may be reminded that a stock, in point of fact, does ‘influence the fruit. It is indisputable that pears are changed on quince roots. The Wilkinson, grafted upon the quince, is smaller, more prolific, higher flavored, and of a brighter red cheek than if grafted on the pear. The Duchesse d’An- gouléme is larger and better on the quince than on its own roots. But what isthe influence in this case? When a free- grower is put upon a slow-grower, the point of junction becomes a point of comparative obstruction to the return- sap. It is only a wholesome process of ringing, or decor- tication. Lindley says: “When pears are worked upon the wild species, apples upon crabs, and peaches upon peaches, the scion is, in regard to fertility, exactly in the same state as if it had not been grafted at all: while, on the other hand, a great increase of fertility, is the result of grafting pears upon quinces, peaches upon plums, apples upon the thorn, and the like. In these cases, the food absorbed from the earth by the root of the stock is communicated slowly.” And * Loudon (Encyclopedia of Gardening, p. 448), has the following remarks : ‘““The bark is the medium in which the proper juices of the plant, in their descent from the leaves, are finally elaborated and brought to the state which is peculiar to the species. From the bark these juices are communicated to the medullary rays, to be by them deposited in the tissue of the wood. The character of timber, therefore, depends chiefly upon the influence of the bark: and hence it is that the wood formed above a graft never partakes, in the slightest degree, of the nature of the wood below it. The bark, when young and green, like the leaves, is supposed, like them, to elaborate the sap, and hence may be considered as the universal leaf of a plant. These views corroborate the reasoning above, although Loudon extends the functions of the leaf to the bark. We have not been able, in our limited range of books, to find any other authority for this state~ ment, respecting the ‘‘ young and green bark.” 380 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK Manning adds: “ No other influence have we ever noticed exercised by the scion upon the stock.” But if, after all, it can be shown by actual trial, that the pits of budded peaches po go back to the fruit of the stock, why we must receive it, in spite of all theory; for, (and some would do well to heed the maxim), facts must rule our theories, and not theories our fact. But we may properly put any facts seeming to contravene the received theory of the functions of plants in producing fruit, upon their oath, and refuse them, unless they are unquestionable and relevant. Suppose a budded peach not to yield a fruit at all like the bud, suppose it to resemble the fruit of the stock, it does not follow that the stock influenced the fruit to such a change. Mr. Longworth knows how freely some peaches “‘ sport,” and that all peaches may be made to doit. Ifa Melacatune be budded upon a Red Rareripe, and the Mela- eatune pit shows a fruit resembling the Red Rareripe, it must be shown that the blossom had not been crossed by the busy offices of flies, bees, ete., with the pollen of con- tiguous Red Rareripe-trees. When a tree is even solitary, it does not follow that a change in fruit which shall make it resemble the stock more than the graft, results from the force of the stock on the grafted fruit, for seedlings of grafted fruit are, notoriously often, base and degenerate; and the resemblance might be accidental, for seedlings of different origin are often strik- ingly alike. While we are aware of no facts which justify Mr. Long- worth’s suspicion, that the pits of budded varieties produce kinds like the stock on which the bud was put, we have facts enough showing that “budded pits” produce their - own kind. It may be added that thoroughly ripe peaches are less inclined to “sport” than those which are partially green. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 381 CARE OF PEACH-TREES. Take a light hoe and remove the earth from the trunk of your trees. If there are worms there you may detect them from the gum which has exuded, or by the channels which they have made in the bark, or if by neither of these, py the discoloration of the bark in spots. Scrape the bark gently with the back of a knife, and you can easily detect the traces of worms if any are there. Cut freely and boldly both ways along their track so as to lay bare the channel in its whole length—remove the worm, and the bark will very soon heal. Sometimes four, six, and even more will be found in one tree. The ashes of stone coal, blacksmiths’ cinders, wood ashes, lime, the refuse stems of tobacco, plant- ing tansy around the trunk, these, and dozens of other remedies are proposed. For our own part we rely solely on our jack-knife. In March or April, and then again in August or September, according to the season, we search the trunk thoroughly. We can attend to twenty trees in an hour or two ; and when eating freely of delicious peaches we never had a qualm of regret for having so spent the time. We have practised sowing salt under fruit-trees with decided advantage. If one pound of saltpetre be added to every six pounds of salt, it will be yet better. We sow enough to make the ground look moderately white, and prefer to do it in wet weather. Tue most salable butter, quality being equal, is that which is neatest done up. There isa great deal in the looks of athing. You'll always find it so. 382 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK RENOVATING PEACH-TREES. THE peach-tree inclines to thicken at the top, the small inside branches die, and are removed by every neat cultiva- tor. As the branches shoot up, this tree is disposed to abandon its lower branches, and, like the vine, to bear on the wood the farthest from the root, z. e. the young and new wood. Ina few years the tree has a long-necked trunk, sometimes several of them; while the weight of foliage and fruit is situated so as to act like a power applied to a lever; and as the fruit grows heavy, or a storm occurs, the tree is broken down. We have practised the following method with success. In the month of July we saw off the top of one half of the tree, leaving about ten or twelve feet of stem, measuring from the ground. New shoots will now put out along the whole trunk; a part of these should be rubbed off, according to the judgment of the cultivator, leaving such as will give symmetry to the tree, and form a. head low down. The second year, these branches will bear fruit, and the other side may then be treated in the same way. This new head will require little meddling with for about four years. At this time, or whenever the tree is outrun- ning itself, the same process is to be renewed. But this time the tree will be composed of a multitude of smaller branches, instead of two or three main ones as at first. Some of these should be wholly cut out, and the wound smeared with a residuum of paint, or a thick white paint, or grafting wax, or anything that will exclude the air while the cut is granulating. The others are to be cut within, say, five inches of the old, original wood—leaving, thus, a stem of mere stumps. If the branches are taken entirely off, leaving only the oldest wood, the buds which would break from it would not be as healthy or vigorous as those which will spring from the stumps of the later branches. Probably twenty or thirty whips will come to each stump; ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 383 these should from day to day be reduced in number, until, at last, all are removed but one, and that one should, if pos- sible, spring from the nearest point where the stump joins the old stem. When this new branch is obtained and fairly established, remove the stump with a fine saw, so as to leave the new branch, as nearly as possible, in the place of the old one. We remove the whips from a stump gradu- ally in order to give the tree the advantage of their leaves as long as it can be done without interfering with the branch or branches which we are training out. This method is to the peach what pruning is to the grape. The tree is kept in hand instead of sprawling abroad, a prey to its own weight and to storms; there is always a plenty of young wood for the fruit, which can be easily reached when one thins out, or gathers for use. One of our trees taught us this method of its own accord in the summer of 1843. The weight of fruit was so great that we applied a prop to the middle of the branch; in a few days the branch broke short off at the point of the prop. It so happened that the three main limbs on one side of the tree acted in this manner. That same fall a strong growth of new wood shot out, and the next season I had on that side as fine a top as ever I had on any peach-tree. Every farmer who expects his wife to make good butter, after furnishing her with some good, well-fed milk cows, should provide her with good milk-pans—large and shallow, so as to present a large surface for the cream to rise on, and enough of them to hold all her milk, and allow it to remain undisturbed long enough for all the cream to rise. These pans should be nicely washed every time the milk is emp- tied out of them, and always be clear and bright when filled. 384 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK AN APOLOGUE OR APPLE-LOGUE. Two men planted out each one hundred apple-trees. In six or seven years they began to bear. One had spared no pains to bring his orchard into the highest condition. He had constantly cultivated the soil about them, scraped off the rough bark, washed them with urinated soap, picked off every worm and nursed them as if they had been child- ren. The other, pursuing a cheaper plan, simply let his trees alone; but the moss, and canker-worms took his place and attended to them every year. When the orchards began to bear, the careful man had the best fruit, and the careless man covered his folly by cursing the nursery-man for selling him poor trees. Ina year or two the careful man had two bushels to the other’s one from each tree, Not to be outdone, the latter determined to have as many apples as the former, and set out another hundred trees. By and by, when they bore, the other orchard had so im- proved that it produced twice as many yet; another hun- dred trees were therefore planted. In process of time the first orchard of one hundred trees still sent more fruit to market than the three hundred trees of the careless man, who now gave up and declared that he never did have luck, and it was of no use to try on his soil to raise good fruit. 1. When a man is too shiftless to take good care of two horses, he buys two more, and gets from the four what he might get from two. 2. A farmer who picks up a cow simply because it is not an ox, and ¢s, nominally, lactiferous, and then lets the crea- ture work for a living, very soon buys a second, and a third, and a fourth, and gets from them all, what he should have had from one good one. 3. A farmer had one hundred acres. Instead of getting seventy-five bushels of corn to the acre, he gets forty and makes it up by cultivating twice as many acres; instead of thirty bushes of wheat he gets twelve, and puts in acres ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 885 enough to make up; instead of making one hundred acres do the work of three hundred, he buys more land, and allows three hundred to do only the work of one hundred. 4, A young woman, with a little pains, can have three times as many clothes as she needs, and then not look so well as a humble neighbor who has not half her wardrobe ; wherefore, we close with some proverbs made for the occa- sion : ° Active little is better than lazy much. Carefulness is richer than abundance. Large farming is not always good farming, and small farming is often the largest. SELECT LIST OF APPLES. Ir is impossible to frame a list of apples which will suit every cultivator. Men’s taste in fruits is widely different. The delicacy and mildness of flavor which some admire, is to others mere insipidity. The sharp acid, and coarse grain and strong flavor which disgust many palates, are with others the very marks of a first-rate apple. The object of the cultivator in planting an orchard, whether for his own use, for a home market, for exportation, for cider-making, or for stock-feeding, will very materially vary his selection. The soil on which an orchard is to be planted should also determine the use of many varieties, which are admirable only when well suited in their locality. Regard is to be had to climate, since some of the finest fruits in one latitude entirely betray our expectations in another. The hardiness and health of different varieties ought to be more an object of attention than hitherto. As in building, so in planting an orchard, a mistake lasts for a century, and a bad tree in a good orchard is like bad tim- ber in a good mansion. 386 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK However select, then, a list may be, every cultivator must exercise his own judgment in adapting it to his own circumstances. SUMMER APPLES. 1. Carotina June.—This is identical with the Red June of the principal nurseries; but many inferior varieties scat- tered through the country, called Red June, are to be dis- criminated from it. The tree is upright with slender wood, which, when loaded with fruit, droops like a willow. It is a healthy tree, ripens its wood early in the fall, and is not subject to frost-blight. It comes early into bearing, is productive and bears every year. The fruit is of medium size though specimens grow large; the flavor is sprightly, subacid, the flesh tender. It has flourished well on sand-loams, common clays, and on strong limestone clay. Ripens from the first tothe twentieth of July. A valuable market fruit. Four trees, in one county, sent eighty dollars’ worth to mar- ket in one season. Not mentioned by eastern writers, nor found in eastern catalogues, but described at the West by Hampton and Plummer, and found in Ohio and Indiana nurseries. 2. Sweer Junze.—Tree upright, wood moderately strong ; ripens its wood early in fall; not subject to frost-blight ; flourishes on all soils, even if quite wet; bears very young, often while in nursery rows; bears every year and abun- dantly. The fruit is of medium size; color a pale yellow; form globular ; flavor sweet and pleasant. Ripens at same time as the Carolina June. 3. Kirkprince Warre.—Not found in any catalogues but those of Western nurseries. Tree upright, wood strong and stubbed; grows slow while young, but vigor- ously when fully established; ripens its wood early in autumn; not subject to frost-blight; bears moderately ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 387 young, and is very productive. Jts fruit ripens in succes- sion for six weeks from first of July to middle of August, and is peculiarly valuable on that account; color nearly white; it is largest at base and tapers regularly to the eye, and is ribbed; flavor, mild, pleasant acid; flesh melting, and, if fully ripe breaks to pieces in falling to the ground. ; 4, Prince’s Harvest.—Manning pronounces this “ the earliest apple worthy of cultivation.” It may be in Massa- chusetts, but it is preceded by many at the West. Man- ning’s description 1 is good. “The form is flat, of medium size; the skin, when per- fectly ripe, is of a beavis bright ee eee the flesh tender and sprightly; if gathered before ey are fully ripe, it has too much acidity. The finest fruits are those which drop ripe from the tree; the branches make very acute angles, by which it is readily distinguished from most other trees in the orchard; it bears young. Ripe early in July.” Our nurserymen regard it as a shy bearer. 5. SuMMER QuEEN.—Extensively cultivated in the West under the name of Orange Apple. The tree is spreading ; a rapid grower ; not subject to frost-blight ; wood moder- ately strong; comes late into bearing; productive when the tree is fully grown, according to the books, but in this region with some exceptions has proved to be a poor bearer. Fruit large, yellow, striped with red; flesh, breaking; flavor strong, and not delicate. 6. Sweet Boucu.—Two varieties of this name are cul- tivated in the West—Coxe’s and Mount’s. Coxe’s sweet bough, is that of the books and catalogues. Ripens at the same time ; not quite so high in flavor. Coxe’s trees are large limbed and spreading ; bearing on the point of the limbs, and are shy bearers; Mount’s variety is of upright growth; bears on spurs along the branches; is a good bearer and ripens from middle of July to August. 888 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK “A variety under the name of Philadelphia Jennetting is known in Trumbull County, Ohio. It ripens two weeks later than the common kind, otherwise it is not essentially different.,—Dr. J. P. Kirtland. 7. SumMeR Prarmarin.—There seem to be two varieties of this name cultivated in Ohio and Indiana. (1.) That of Coxe, which is the one cacy cultivated, and deservedly popular. “The fruit-buds seem to be unusually hardy, and often resist the impression of late spring frosts, while others are killed. In 1834, when our fruits were universally cut off by that destructive agent, a tree of the summer pearmain and another of the Vandeveer, matured a dozen or two apples, while not another tree in an orchard containing over five hundred, bore a solitary fruit. It is worthy of more extensive cultivation.”—Dr. Kirtland. (2.) A variety evidently allied to Coxe’s, but all things con- sidered a more desirable variety. The fruit resembles Coxe’s, but is larger; the flavor is the same, but not quite as high ; Coxe’s is oblong ; this variety is Vandeveer pippin shape; color the same, and the period of ripening, viz., July and August. The trees are very distinct; Coxe’s is upright, this is spreading ; Coxe’s of a slender growth, and stinted habit, and is hard to bring forward in the nursery; this has a vigorous growth, and strong wood, and strikingly resem- bles the Vandeveer pippin-tree. It bears early and abun- dantly in all soils. This second variety was brought, by a man named Har- lan, Fayette County, Indiana, from South Carolina, where it is extensively cultivated. 8. DanteL.—The tree is upright, nearly pear-tree shape ; wood strong and healthy; leaves, above all varieties, dark green and glossy; bears young and abundantly. Fruit medium size; it has a yellow ground covered with blotches of dull red; flavor rich, sweetish, and high. Ripens in ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 389 succession from first to middle of August. A desirable variety. 9. Hoss, improperly pronounced Horse, and so written in Prince’s catalogue. Originated in North Carolina; largely cultivated in both Carolinas and southern Virginia ; named from the originator. It has been propagated by suckers, grafts, and even by seeds ; in this latter case, the product very nearly resembles the parent. Three varieties, however, may be discriminated. Tree upright, wood strong and healthy; bears yearly and abundantly; flesh melting: flavor rather too acid until thoroughly ripe, and then fine. Ripens in August and September. Desirable in the most select orchards. The time of ripening I have set down for the latitude of Indianapolis. Upon the Ohio River, near Cincinnati, it will be ten days earlier. AUTUMN APPLES. 10. Maipen’s Biusu.—Tree moderately spreading, open top, limbs slender ; grows late in fall, and somewhat liable to winter-killng; grows well on all good soils; bears young and very abundantly every year. The fruit large when the tree is not allowed to ripen too large a crop; white, and blush toward the sun; tender, melting, very juicy, decidedly acid. The fruit is, even in unfavorable seasons, very free from cracks, knots, and is always fair ; one of the best for drying and excellent for marketing ; should be plucked before it is dead ripe; ripens from | August to October. It is the same as the English Hor- thornden. It does not do well grafted on the root ; being apt to burst the first or second winter; buds well, and should be thus propagated in the nursery. It is a native of New Jersey. 11. Wine AppLte.—Tree spreading but not sprawling ; medium grower, healthy ; limbs rather slender ; does well 390 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK on all soils; bears very young, largely, and every year. Fruit large on young, and medium-sized on old trees; deep yellow ground covered with red, and russet about the stem; tender, melting, very juicy, high-flavored, sweet, with a spicy dash of subacid. One of the richest cooking apples; one of the most desirable for drying, resembling dried pears. Where known, it is worth, dried, a dollar and a half a bushel, when other apples command but seventy- five cents. Ripens first of September and has passed its prime by November. Eastern writers call it a winter apple, and Kenrick gives October to March as its season ; but, in the West, it seldom sees the first winter month. Takes by graft and bud pretty well; does well grafted upon the root; favorable for nursery purposes. 12. Hortanp Pippin.—Tree large and _ spreading; strong growth; wood short and stubbed, healthy; bears moderately young; they are averse to heavy clay and wet soils; on light, dry, rich, sandy soils bears largely, and of high color and flavor; bears every other year. Fruit large, very bright yellow, tender, juicy, subacid. The pulp in the mouth becomes rather viscid, as if the fruit were mucilaginous, which is agreeable or otherwise according to the taste of the eater. It is sometimes, but rarely, water- cored. Ripens in October and November ; will keep later, but apt to lose in flavor. Good for drying, but usually sold green, being a very marketable fruit. Not a good tree for nurserymen; not willing to come if grafted on the root; does well by crown-grafting ; moderately well by budding, the eye being apt to put out simply a spur, which can seldom be forced into a branch if permitted to harden. 13. Ramso.—This apple is known in New Jersey by the names of Romanite, Seek-no-further, and Bread and Cheese. The first two names belong to entirely different apples. The rambo is not to be confounded with the Ram- Jours, of which there are several varieties. Tree upright, ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 391 and the most vigorous growth of all trees cultivated in the West; the easiest of al] to bud with, a bud seldom misses, and makes extraordinary growth the first season; it may well be called the nurseryman’s favorite; bears very young, abundantly every year, good on all soils. Fruit medium size, yellow ground with red stripes and the whole over- laid with a bloom, like a plum; tender, juicy, melting, sub- acid, rich; it has a peculiarity of ripening ; it begins at the skin and ripens toward the core; often soft and seemingly ripe on the outside while the inside is yet hard. Ripens from October to December. One of the best of all fruits. 14. Gotpen Russer.—This admirable apple is put in the list of fall fruits, because, though it will keep through the winter, it ripens in November, and sometimes even in October. Tree, strong grower, upright, compact top- healthy, grows late in fall and therefore subject to winter- killing; will grow on all soils, but delights in rich sandy loams, on which it bears larger and finer fruit. Fruit small, rather oblong; -color yellow, slight red next to the sun; although called russet, there is but a trace of it on the fruit of healthy trees; tender, melting, spicy, very juicy; in flavor it resembles the St. Michael’s pear (Doyenné) more nearly than any other apple. This fruit is the most popular of all late, fall, or early winter apples, and deservedly, and should be put at the head of the list. A gentleman near Belfre, Ohio, being applied to for a list of apples to furnish an orchard of a thousand trees for marketing purposes, replied, “Take nine hundred and ninety-nine golden russets, and the res¢ you can choose to suit yourself.” For nursery purposes it is rather a backward apple; the buds apt to fail, which occasions much resetting. It will not do well grafted on the root, being tender and always largely winter-killed when so wrought. They graft kindly on well established stocks, 392 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK Tf a larger list of fall apples is desired, we recommend the Fall Harvey, Gravenstein, Lyscom, Porter, Red Ingestrie, Yellow do. The Ashmore is a desirable fruit—difficult to raise in the nursery, and therefore avoided, but the fruit is fine. The Ross Nonpareil is a very admirable fall fruit of Trish origin. The list of autumn apples is very large and continually augmenting. But fall apples are, ordinarily, less desirable than any others; not from inferior quality, but because they ripen at the season of the year when peaches and pears are in their glory. WINTER APPLES. 15. Gror1a Munvi or Monstrous Pippin. Tree, one of the most upright, top close, and resembling the pear. Wood medium sized, healthy, vigorous growth, wood ripens early, not subject to frost-blight ; bears on moderately young trees. It works well from the bud, and also extremely well grafted on roots, and grows straight and finely for nursery purposes. Fruit very large, green, changes when dead-ripe to a yellowish white. Flavor mild, subacid ; flesh melting and spicy. Ripens in November, at the same time with the Golden Russet, but will not keep as long. A native. 16. Brack Appite.—Tree low, spreading, and round topped ; wood of medium vigor, healthy, ripens early, and not subject to frost-blight. Grafts on the root kindly; not so favorable for budding as the No. 15; bears remarkably young, and abundantly to a fault. Fruit medium sized; color very dark red, almost black, with grey rusty spots about the stem; flesh tender, breaking; moderately juicy, flavor rather sweet, though not a real sweet apple. No apple would stand fairer as an early winter fruit, were it not for a peculiar, dry, raw taste, somewhat resembling the ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 393 taste of uncooked corn meal. Ripens from November to January. It is a native. 17. Newron Srirzensure.—Tree, not large, upright but not compact, top open; wood of medium size and vigor of growth; healthy, ripens early, and yet, now and then, it takes the frost-blight ; bears moderately young, every other year, very abundantly ; grafts well on the root, buds only moderately well, good for nursery handling. Fruit, vary- ing much in size, but often large, flesh melting, juicy ; flavor rich, spicy, subacid; ripens from November to January. 18. Ruope Istanp GreEentne.—Tree large, very spread- ing and drooping, grows vigorously, healthy, ripens early, not subject to frost-blight; bud takes well; but, whether grafted on the root, or budded, it will plague the nursery- man by its disposition to spread and twist about like a quince bush. It should be budded on strong stocks at the height at which the top is to be formed; but it always overgrows the stock. Fruit very large, color green‘ with cloudy spots dotted with pin-point black specks; flesh breaking, tender and juicy: flavor mild, rich, subacid; a very popular fruit. Ripens from November to January. 19. Hussparpston Nonesucu.—Admirable in nursery; works well on root or by bud. We give Downing’s des- cription, as it has not fruited in this region. “A fine, large, early winter fruit, which originated in the town of Hubbardston, Mass., and is of first rate quality. The tree is a vigorous grower, forming a handsome branch- ing head, and bears very large crops. It is worthy of extensive orchard culture. “Fruit large, roundish-oblong, much narrower near the eye. Skin smooth, striped with splashes, and irregular broken stripes of pale and bright red, which nearly cover a yellowish ground. The calyx open, and the stalk short, in a russeted hollow. Flesh yellow, juicy, and tender, with an agreeable mingling of sweetness and acidity in its flavor. October to January.” 394 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK 20. Mrntster.—We give Manning’s description: “This fine apple originated in Rowley, Mass. The size is large, the form oblong like the Bellflower, tapering to the eye, with broad ridges the whole length of the fruit; the skin a light greenish yellow, striped with bright red, but the red seldom extends to the eye; flesh yellow, light, high flavored and excellent. This is one of the very finest apples which New England has produced. It ripens from Novem- ber to February, and deserves a place in every collection of fruits, however small. This apple received its present name from the circumstance of the late Rev. Dr. Spring, of Newburyport, having purchased the first fruit brought to market.” 21. VANDERVEER Pirpin.—Tree large, one of the most vigorous, spreading, but not drooping; ripens its wood late, occasionally touched with frost-blight and liable to burst at the surface of the ground during the winter. Bears young, every year, and very abundantly. Buds well, grafts well on the root, grows off strongly, forms a top readily, and will please nurserymen. Fruit large, more uni- formly of one size all over the tree than any in the orchard ; shape of fruit flat; color, red stripes on a yellow, russety ground. Flesh coarse, gritty; flavor strong, penetrating, without aroma; December to March. This fruit is remark- able for having almost every good quality of tree and fruit and being pooh ania a third-rate apple. The tree is hardy, its bloom, from peculiar hardiness, escapes injury from frost, and even a second set of blossoms put out, though feeble ones, if the first are destroyed. The fruit is comely, cooks admirably, keeps well; but a certain sharp- ness and coarseness will always make it but a second or third-rate fruit. No tree is sought by farmers in this region, with more avidity. Its origin is doubtful. Brun- son, of Wayne County, brought it to Indiana, and all our nurseries trace their stock to his. It was carried for the first time to New Jersey, by Quakers visiting that region, ee ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 395 from his orchard. It should have been mentioned, that it holds its age remarkably well, very old trees producing as largely, and as fair, sound fruit as when young. 22. Yettow Bette FLevur, or BELLFLOWER.—Tree spreads and droops more than any tree of the orchard, the Newark pippin, perhaps, excepted; wood very slender and whip-like, healthy, ripens early, not subject to frost- blight, grafts well on the root, but is rather tender during the first winter when so worked; buds well, but from its drooping, sprawling habits, is hard to form intoatop. Bears moderately young (not so young as the white); abun- dantly. Flesh melting and tender and juicy; flavor fine and delicate rather than high; color deep yellow when ripe; ripens from December to March. One of the most deservedly popular of winter apples and always salable in all markets. 23. Wuirrt Bette Freur.—This apple is cultivated in Ohio under the names of Hollow-cored Pippin, Ohio favorite, and, by the Cincinnati pomologists, of Detroit. It is also the Cumberland Spice and Monstrous Bellflower of Coxe. It was taken to the West by Brunson of Wayne County, Indiana, and thence disseminated in every direc- tion; and it may be called the Bellflower of Indiana, since it and not the yellow, predominates in all orchards, The yellow, however, within five years, has been largely distributed. Tree, medium sized, spreading ; wood stronger than the yellow belle fleur, healthy, ripens its wood early, but liable to after-growth in warm falls, and therefore sub- ject to frost-blight. The tree, from its habit of growth, more liable to split and break under a full crop than any tree of the orchard. One of the youngest bearers in the nursery ; fruitful to a fault. Grafted on the root it kills off in winter; buds well and forms a top without difficulty. Fruit above medium and sometimes very large; color, greenish white, and, in some seasons with a blush on the sunny side; flesh breaking at first, but when fully ripe, 396 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK melting and juicy; flavor mild and delicate. It is not apt to cloy, and more can be eaten than of almost any variety. Ripe from December to March. 24. Batpwin.—Works well in nursery by root or bud, and is fine for nurserymen. Top forms easily. Not up- right, as Downing says, but a round, spreading top. We give Downing’s description : “The Baldwin stands at the head of New England apples, and is unquestionably a first-rate fruit im all respects. It isa native of Massachusetts, and is more largely culti- vated for the Boston market than any other sort. It bears most abundantly, and we have had the satisfaction of raising larger, more beautiful, and highly favored speci- mens here, than we ever saw in its native region. The Baldwin, in fiavor and general characteristics, evidently belongs to the same family as Esopus Spitzenburg, and deserves its extensive popularity. “Fruit large, roundish, and narrowing a little to the eye. Skin yellow in the shade, but nearly covered and striped with crimson, red, and orange, in the sun; dotted with a few large russet dots, and with radiating streaks of russet about the stalk. Calyx closed, set in a rather narrow plaited basin. Stalk half to three fourths of an inch long, rather slender for so large a fruit, planted in an even, moderately deep cavity. Flesh yellowish white, crisp, with that agreeable mingling of the saccharine and acid which constitutes a rich, high flavor. The tree is a vigorous, upright grower, and bears most abundantly. Ripe from November to March, but attains its greatest perfection in January.” 25. MicnarL Henry Pippry.—Tree upright, with a round-shaped top; wood strong, rather slow grower, ripens its main growth of wood early, but liable to fresh growth in warm, wet falls; bears very young, every other year abundantly and not a single apple in the next year. Should not be grafted on the root; and it is rather troublesome ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 397 when budded, from a disposition to make dwarf spur- like branches, rather than upright limbs. Fruit medium- sized, long, large about the base, sharpening toward the eye ; color green, clouded and black speckled; flesh tender, melting; flavor rich, inclined to sweet, and very fine. Ripens from December to March. 26. Rep Sweer Pieprn.—Tree handsome, round-topped, but rather spreading; wood strong, and vigorous growth, ripens early; tree very healthy, apt to grow with very smooth bark affording little shelter for insects; bears young, every year and abundantly. Works well in the nursery either by grafting on the root, or by budding. Fruit medium size inclining to large; color red with grey stripes on the shaded side; flesh breaking and firm; flavor sweet and rich. It bakes well, is good for pies, eats well, and its kitchen and table qualities combined make it a desirable fruit. Ripe from December to April. 27. Pryor’s Rep.—Tree upright; wood slow growing, slender, and the branches full of small wood, healthy, not subject to frost-blight; comes very late into bearing, requiring ten or twelve years for full bearing; bears only moderate crops; every year. Difficult to work in the nursery, but does better by grafting on the root than by budding. Fruit above medium size; color, red dotted with white specks; the whole surface covered with slight bloom; flesh melting; flavor very rich and high, and by some thought to be even richer than the golden russet. If this apple only grew on the Vanderveer pippin tree, it would require nothing more to render it perfect. Ripens from December to March. Its keeping properties are more in danger from the ¢eeth than from ordinary decay. A very salable and popular apple, which, when once had, none would consent to lose. It is unknown in New England and New York except by description ; and is not even described by Downing, and but little more than mentioned by Ken- rick. 398 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK 28. GreEN Nrwrown Piprrn.—Tree spreading, wood slender and slow growing; ripens early, making it often troublesome for nurserymen to procure buds fit for late work; not subject to frost-blight. The tree requires vigor- ous cultivation to redeem it from a feeble growth; the bark is inclined to crack on the branches and scale up, and when once roughened it is difficult ever again to make them smooth. Late coming into bearing, bears abundantly every other year. They should never be grafted on the root; they should be budded on strong healthy stocks and high up in order to do well. Fruit large, green, changing to yellow when dead-ripe; flesh firm, breaking; flavor very rich. Ripe from February to May. This apple is culti- vated in extraordinary abundance at the East both for home and foreign markets. They sell in London, at six- pence a piece. The farm of R. L. Pell contains 2,000 bear- ing trees of this variety; a note descriptive of which we give from Downing: “One of the finest orchards in America is that of Pell- ham farm, at Esopus, on the Hudson. It is no less remark- able for the beauty and high flavor of its fruit, than the constant productiveness oftrees. The proprietor, R. L. Pell, Esq., has kindly furnished us with some notes of his experi- ments “on fruit-trees, and we subjoin the following highly interesting one on the apple. ““¢ Hor several years past, I have been experiment- ing on the apple, having an orchard of 2,000 bearing Newtown Pippin-trees. I found it very unprofitable to wait for what is termed the ‘bearing year,’ and it has been my aim to assist nature, so as to enable the trees to bear every year. I have noticed that from the excessive productiveness of this tree, it requires the inter- mediate year to recover itself—to extract from the earth and the atmosphere the materials to enable it to produce again. This it is not able to do, unassisted by art, while it is loaded with fruit, and the intervening year is lost; if, —--- ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 399 however, the tree is supplied with proper food it will bear every year; at least such has been the result of my experi- ments. Three years ago, in April, I scraped all the rough bark from the stems of several thousand trees in my orchards, and washed all the trunks and limbs within reach with soft soap; trimmed out all the branches that crossed each other early in June, and painted the wounded part with white lead, to exclude moisture and prevent decay. I then, in the latter part of the same month, slit the bark by running a sharp-pointed knife from the ground to the first set of limbs, which prevents the tree from becoming bark- bound, and gives the young wood an opportunity of ex- panding. In July I placed one peck of oyster-shell lime under each tree, and left it piled about the trunk until November, during which time the drought was excessive. In November the lime was dug in thoroughly. The follow- ing year I collected from these trees 1,700 barrels of fruit, part of which was sold in New York for four, and others in London for nine dollars per barrel. The cider made from the refuse, delivered at the mill two days after its manufac- ture, I sold for three dollars and three-quarters per barrel ot thirty-two gallons, exclusive of the barrel. In October I manured these trees with stable manure in which the ammonia had been fixed, and covered this immediately with earth. The succeeding autumn they were literally bending to the ground with the finest fruit I ever saw, while the other trees in my orchard not so treated were quite barren, the last season having been their bearing year. I am now placing round each tree one peck of charcoal dust, and pro- pose in the spring to cover it from the compost heap. ““¢ My soil is a strong, deep, sandy loam on a gravelly subsoil. I cultivate my orchard grounds as if there were no trees on them, and raise grain of every kind except rye, which grain is so very injurious that I believe three suc- cessive crops of it would destroy any orchard younger than twenty years, I raised last year in an orchard containing 400 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK twenty «acres, trees eighteen years old, a crop of Indian corn which averaged 140 bushels of ears to the acre.’” 29. Raw y’s JANET, OR JENNETTING.— Tree round topped, a little spreading and handsome. Wood strong, slow gruwth, short jointed, and the healthiest, perhaps, of all orchard trees. Does not bear young; but when estab- lished, a great bearer every year, unless overloaded, when it rests a year. It is the finest of all apples to graft on the root, and should be always so propagated in the nursery; if budded, it being a late starter in spring, the stock will put out its branches before the bud, and make great trou- ble. Fruit medium sized; color green striped with red; roundish but inclined to sharpen toward the eye; flesh white, melting, very juicy; flavor mild and delicate. Ripens from February to May. This is, and deserves to be, an exceedingly popular apple in all the West. The tree is remarkably healthy; it blooms ten days later than other varieties, and therefore seldom loses a crop by spring frost ; but the bloom is very sensitive to frost if overtaken; the fruit is very relishful; keeps as well as the Newtown Pippin, and by many, and by this writer among the number, is much preferred to that noted variety. It has the peculiar excel- lence of enduring frost without material injury ; a property which has enabled cultivators to save thousands of bushels of fruit which by sudden and early cold had been severely frosted. Tue reason that the Cockle-bur, that great pest on farms, cannot be destroyed by being cut off once a year, is that nature has provided for its propagation by bestowing on it seed vessels which ripen at two different times of the year. This will be found to be the case on careful examination.— Western Farmer and Gardener. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. - 401 ORIGIN OF SOME VARIETIES OF FRUIT. Tue history of our fine fruits has many curious points of interest to the zealous pomologist. It is made up of skill, felicitous blunders, discoveries, and profitable acci- dents. The Flemish pears, with which so large a portion of the calendai of new pears is filled, were the products of scienti- fic efforts. In like manner, many of the finest fruits ori- ginated by Knight, were by a scientific, although a different, process. On the other hand it would be difficult to find fruits superior to those in the making of which only Nature had a hand. The Duchesse @& Angouléme, a pear without a rival, in its season, was found in 1815, growing wild in a hedge, near Angers, in the department of Maine et Loire, France. The Washington, one of our finest native pears, was likewise discovered in a thorn hedge, at Naaman’s creek, Delaware, by Gen. Robertson. He was removing a fence on his farm about forty-five years ago; he found the young tree nearly grown. The Zewis is a native of Massachusetts. Mr. Downer, of Dorchester, a critical judge of fruits, was acquainted with the original tree ten years before he thought it worth a place in his garden. He visited it three times, and was each time disinclined to cultivate it; it was not until he had seen a tree taken from it, growing in cultivated ground, that he adopted it. It now ranks among the finest native pears. Dearborn’s Seedling was-discovered by General Dearborn in a cluster of syringas and rose bushes, forming a part of a border to an avenue. Pears seem to have great fondness for hedges, borders, ete. The discoverer attempted to remove the tree, then, apparently, about five years old, to his nursery for a stock; but digging two feet deep, and finding no root but the tap root, he feared that deplanting 402 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK might kill it. It was left to grow, and has proved to be one of the first-class pears. Downer’s late cherry, was a stock in the nursery row, and several times budded with other kinds; the buds always failing, the tree was allowed to fruit, and proved one of the best, if not ¢he best, of late cherries. Knight's Black Eagle was raised from the seed of the Bigarreau fertilized by the May Duke. When it bore, the fruit was so inferior that the London Horticultural Society peremptorily rejected it. Mr. Knight determined to head the tree down and graft into it other sorts. But he had given the tree to a daughter, with whom it was a favorite, and she refused to have it sacrificed. Each year, subse- quently, showed an improvement in the fruit; and now it stands in the first class of cherries. This is one among many instances, which show that young seedlings do not exhibit the true qualities of the fruit for several years after they come to bearing. The Red-cheek Melocoton peach was accidentally obtained by the late Wm. Prince, Flushing, Long Island. He had budded the Kennedy’s Caroline upon a stock, and below the point of inoculation a branch of the original stock had shot up into bearing. Sending a servant to gather the budded fruit, he was surprised by his bringing, and, as he declared, from this tree, a free-stone peach. On examining, he found the cause as stated above, and was so much pleased with the new kind that he cultivated it. Tux best stock a man can invest in, is the stock of a farm; the best shares are plow-shares; and the best banks are the fertile banks of the rural stream: the more these are broken the better dividends they pay. { ee ee en ae et oe ax 4a ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 405 THE QUINCE. WE have nothing to say that has not been well said by Downing, in his most interesting chapter on the Quince. Mis Fruit and Fruit Trees of America, by the way, is beyond all question the best pomological manual, all things considered, which has appeared at home or abroad. To return to the quince; we marvel that so few trees have found a place in our collections of fruit. Quinces bear transportation, and will, upon an average, bring two dollars a bushel. They sell extravagantly high every year, and yet no one seems to take the hint. Our favorite mode of increasing the quince, is by layers. The tree being low and inclined to be bushy, there is always an abundance of suitable wood to lay down. Twenty or thirty or even more rooted plants may be obtained in a single season ; and the layers throw out such a profusion of roots that the only difficulty will be to separate each plant with its roots from the tough and matted abundance which will be found to have filled the soil. If laid down in the spring, they may be removed by midsummer, a cool and moist day being chosen, and the plants shaded until they start again to growing. If this is done, a second set of layers may be put down to remain over fall and winter and be removed the next spring. Trees intended for the fruit-compartment of the garden should be trained to a single stem, when they will make a low and not altogether unsymmetrical tree; at any rate, a tree much more convenient than the quince bush which we usually find in our garden corners. Where the seed is to be planted, they should be prepared ; they are covered with a thick mucilaginous matter which restrains their quick germination. Let them be put into water for twelve hours, and the water will become nearly as thick as paste. Pour it off and repeat the operation until they are nearly clean; mix them with sand and sow them immediately. 404 -LAIN AND PLEASANT TALK CUTTING AND KEEPING GRAFTS. Many experienced orchardists suppose the best time for cutting grafts to be immediately on the fall of the leaf in autumn. Grafts should be cut in mild weather, when the wood is entirely free from frost. Select the owtside limbs and the last year’s growth of wood, Too much care cannot be observed in keeping the varie- ties separate. 'Tie up in bundles and mark the names of each kind as soon as cut. A moment’s carefulness may save years of vexation. When the grafts are to be used at home, it is well to lay them in the cellar where frost will not reach them, and slightly cover them, so that they shall not evaporate the moisture which they contain. 'Too much wet injures them. Half-dry sand is as good as anything, and if packed in an old nail-keg and put ina cool place, they will require no further attention until it is time to use them. When grafts are to be sent to a considerable distance, they should be carefully wrapped in moist cloth, with folds enough to exclude the air entirely. For convenience of carrying they may be packed, in this condition, in a box, and the space filled in with cotton-wool, chaff, bran, or any similar substance. It is stated by some, that grafts taken from the lower limbs of trees will produce fruit the soonest ; while those from the middle and top and from the upright shoots will make trees of the finest form. We confess a slight preju- dice against the lower limbs of trees, as it was thence that “‘ switches” were cut in the mischievous days of our youth, wherewith to apply Solomon’s doctrine of discipline. Whether they will make upright trees, we cannot say ; but they are supposed to have a tendency to make upright men, — ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 405 FROST-BLIGHT. Ir is a matter of great importance that all cultivators of fruit unite in making observations on this subject, and that it, may be done with some unity of purpose. 1. Let the examiner select trees upon which are seen small water-shoots, that have evidently grown late in the fall. Usually, a tuft of withered leaves will indicate them. Examine also all the new wood which retains terminal leaves or is winter-killed at the tips. 2. The pith will be, in apples, an iron-rust color, and in pears greenish black or pepper color; the inner skin will be discolored, and the wood of a greenish, waxy appearance. On cutting down to the point where these shoots unite with the branch or trunk, the diseased sap will be found to have discolored the whole neighborhood. In many cases which we have examined, half the trunk is affected. We exam- ined a bearing pear-tree, which to the eye has not one sion of unhealthiness, but which, on cutting, is found to be affected throughout, and will, undoubtedly, die in spring. 3. Let a comparison be instituted between trees in differ- ent circumstances. | Is there any difference between slow-growing varieties and those which grow rapidly ? Is there any difference between trees in cold, northern aspects, Whose sap, in autumn, would not be likely to be excited, and those with southern aspects ? Is there a difference between trees upon a fat clay or rank loam of any kind, and those upon a warm, dry, sandy loam. It is supposed that any causes which produce a coarse, watery, flabby tissue in a tree, predispose it to injury by frost, and thus to the blight; and that the fine- ness and firmness of texture of trees growing in a sand- loam on a gravelly subsoil give them great power of endur- ance. 406 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK 4. Let trees which are found to be in an injured condi- tion be marked and examined again as follows: (1.) At the breaking up of winter, to see if any change of condition has taken place. (2.) At the breaking of the bud into leaf. (3.) At the full development of leaf and when the down- ward current of sap is begun. 5. It isa matter of great importance to ascertain whether the character of the season which follows such frost-injuries as have befallen fruit-trees in this region, modifies the dis- ease. Some think that blight will follow without regard to the ensuing season; others suppose that a dry, and warm season will very much prevent the mischief; but that a moist and warm spring and summer, will give it a fatal development. It is ardently to be hoped that accurate observations will be made, and upon a large scale. We presume that it need not be added that the exact truth of facts is the first step toward any sound explanation ; and that our object should be to find out facts, and then, afterward, to deduce principles, Borne Porators.—Not one housekeeper out of ten knows how to boil potatoes properly. Here is an Irish method, one of the best we know. Clean wash the potatoes and leave the skin on; then bring the water to a boil and throw them in. As soon as boiled soft enough for a fork to be easily thrust through them, dash some cold water into the pot, let the potatoes remain two minutes, and then pour off the water. This done, half remove the pot-lid, and let the potatoes remain over a slow fire till the steam is evapo- rated ; then peel and set them on the table in an open dish. Potatoes of a good kind thus cooked, will always be sweet, dry and mealy. A covered dish is bad for potatoes, as it keeps the steam in, and makes them soft and watery. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 407 SEEDLING FRUITS. ALREADY the varieties of hardy fruits have become s0 numerous, that not only can they not all be cultivated, but the mere list of names is too bulky to be printed. Down- ing’s book gives a list of 181 apples. The London Horti- cultural Society’s Catalogue, expurgated at that, gives 900 kinds of apples, and 1,500 have been tested in the Society’s gardens. Manning’s experimental grounds and nursery at the time of his death, contained 1,000 named varieties of the pear! Swollen as is the list, there are scores annually added ; many under the advice of scientific bodies; many have popular approbation; many from the partialities of some parental nurseryman; and many come in, as evil came into this world, no one can tell how. It has become necessary, therefore, to exclude many from the catalogue, and especially necessary that none should enter without the very best passport. In the main, one set of tests will serve, both for receiving and expurgating ; for no matter how long a fruit has been on the list, it should be ejected if, being out, its qualities would not gain it a fresh admission. There are no hereditary rights, or rights of occupancy, in pomological lists. Titles, rank, antiquity, pedigree and other merciful means of compensating a want of personal merit, may do for men but not for apples. A very glorious pomological reforma- tion broke out in the London Horticultural Society’s gar- dens at Chiswick, and that Luther of the orchard, Mr. Thompson, has abolished an astonishing number of sine- cures, and reformed, if not worthless rotten boroughs, very worthless apples and pears. The Society’s first catalogue issued in 1826. Its third catalogue was published in De- cember of 1842. The experience of the intervening six- teen years led to the total rejection from their list, on the ground of inferiority, or as synonyms, of 600 varieties of apples ; 139 of cherries ; 200 of gooseberries ; 82 of grapes, 468 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK 80 of strawberries ; 150 of peaches; 200 of pears; and 150 of plums. Only twenty-eight peaches are allowed to stand ; and only twenty-six strawberries out of the hundreds that were proved. We have no similar society in the United States whose authority would be generally acknowledged. Our only resource is the diffusion of the very best fruits that every neighborhood may have a standard of compari- son by the reduction of experience to the form of rules. Although it is difficult to lay down general rules‘on this subject, there are three which may be mentioned. 1. No fruit should be admitted to the list and none retained upon it, which is decidedly poor.—One would sup- pose this truism to be superfluous as a rule. But it is only necessary to go out into seedling orchards in any neighbor- hood to find small, tough, and flavorless apples, which hold their place alongside of orchards filled with choice grafted fruit. 2. No seedling fruit should be added to the list, which ts in no respect better than those of the same period of ripening already cultivated—It is not enough that an apple is nearly or quite as good as another favorite ap- ple. It must be as good in flavor, and better in some of its habits. 3. In testing the merits of fruit, an estimate should be the result of a consideration of all the habits, jointly, of the tree and of the fruit.—lIt is in the application of this rule that great experience and judgment are required. This will be plain, if one considers how many essential particu- lars enter into a first-rate fruit beside mere flavor. Of two fruits equal in flavor, one may surpass the other in tenderness of flesh, in juiciness, in delicacy of skin, and in size. It is rare that any single fruit combines all these excellences, and therefore it is that we retain several vari- eties, among which such properties are distributed. There are many fruits which, having good substance and flavor, derive their value from some single peculiarity. = ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 409 Thus a fruit may be no better than many others, but the tree, blooming very late in spring, is seldom overtaken by prowling and irregular frosts. Some of our best fruits have stingy bearing-trees, or trees of very tender and delicate habit ; and we are obliged to tolerate more hardy and pro- lific trees with fruit somewhat inferior. A few fruits are retaimed on the list because they have the singular property of being uninjured by frosts, and others because, though not remarkable for flavor, they are endless keepers, of both which properties the Rawle’s Jen- netting is an example. In fruits designed for market, beauty and abundance must be allowed to supersede mere excellence of flavor. Some very rich fruits are borne in such a parsimonious way that none but amateurs can afford tree-room. Nor are we to overlook nursery qualifications ; for, of two fruits equally good, preference should be given to that which will work the kindliest in the nursery. Some will bear grafting on the root, some will not; some take well by budding, and grow off promptly and with force; others are dull and slugglish, and often reluctant to form the new partnership. While then it will always be to the nursery- man’s interest to work such kinds as he can sell the most of —he has a right, in so far as he directs the public judg- ment of his neighborhood, to give a preference, among equal fruits, to such as work the surest and strongest. It is as much the interest of the purchaser and the public to have the freest growing sorts, as it is the nurseryman’s interest. Thus, if another Seckle pear could be found grow- ing on the tree of Williams’ Bon Chrétien, it ought to sup- plant the old Seckle tree, which, in spite of its incomparable fruit, is a vexatious thing to manage; and, as often in the case of other and fairer fruit, makes one wonder how such amiable and beautiful daughters ever had such a surly and crusty old father. A pomological censor must also have regard to varieties 410 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK of taste among men, and to commercial qualities of fruit, and to its adaptation to soil and climate. No one man has a right to make his tongue the monarch over other people’s tongues. Therefore, for instance, it is none of our business, if a rugged mouth chooses to roll a slice of the austere Vanderveer pippin, like sin, as a sweet morsel under his tongue. The mild delicacy of an apple, which fills our mouths with admiration, would be mere insi- pidity to all who are favored with leather mouths. So that there must be toleration even among apple-mongers. Nor are the humbler tests of cooking to be overlooked. Some fruits are good eaters and poor cookers; some cook well but are villainous to the taste when raw; some will stew to a fine flavor and sweetness without sugar, and some have remarkable jelly properties. But after the largest allow- ance is made for taste, hardiness, keeping, prolific bearing, color, size, texture, season, adaptation to soils, etc., etc., there will be found, we think, a large number of tenants in our nurserymen’s catalogues, upon whom should be instantly served a writ of ejectment. TIME FOR PRUNING. We do not believe in severe pruning at any time. If a man has the education of his orchard from the start, it is an utter abomination to leave his trees in such a condition as to require it. If, however, one comes into possession of a much abused orchard, or of a seedling orchard; or, if a_ single tree is to be changed, or an old tree is to be headed back for health’s sake, then it may be necessary to prune with a free hand. But in such cases, the change should not be attempted in one season, but divided between two. There is, we suppose, a critical time in which pruning will injure the tree. It is after the sap is in full motion, the ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 411 vegetable system impleted, but before the pores and sap passages have acquired a contractile power. Thus, if a grape is pruned when the buds begin to swell, the wood does not contract, and the vine bleeds to excess. But if pruned after the leaves are as large as the palm of the hand, no injury ensues from cutting, for now the sap pas- sages contract and close speedily. Thus if a tree be handled before or after this period, it does not suffer; but if pruned at this critical state of the wood, it will bleed, the stump part will become diseased, probably from the relaxed state of the woody tissue, and canker will ensue—a word indicating, we presume, simply a state of decay, covered by or accompanied with, some sort of fungus growth. Pruning before this critical time, is sometimes the most convenient. But if it be a question, at which of the two periods is the tree in a state to suffer the least, and to recover the soonest, we say, after it is in full leaf and well a-growing, viz. the last of May and the first of June. The wood has then a contractile force, does not bleed; the tree is making new wood with great energy, and has therefore a full supply of organizable matter with which promptly to heal the wound. Mr. O. V. Hill thus speaks in the Boston Cultivator: “Fruit growers at the present day, are generally of the opinion, that the proper time for pruning is the last of May or early in June, when the tree is in full leaf and in a vigorous, growing state. This, on many accounts, appears to be the most suitable season, as the wounds heal much more rapidly, the tree throws out less suckers, canker is avoided and the sap circulates freely to every part of the tree; but there are some objections to pruning in the early part of summer, which I do not recollect to have seen noticed. Any one who is familiar with vegetable physi- ology is aware that there is a new layer of wood and a new layer of bark deposited every year, and that in June this 412 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK process is in active operation; the newly-forming wood and bark are then consequently in a tender and imperfect state, and very susceptible to injury. Standing in the forks of the branches as it is sometimes necessary to do in pruning, will frequently separate the bark and wood, especially in young trees at this season. In grafting late in the season, this is frequently the case; sometimes where the ladder is placed against a branch it will remove the bark; and in sawing, unless the saw runs very clear, and the teeth are fine, the same results will follow; if pruning is done in June, it should be performed with the greatest cau- tion.” The New York Harmer and Mechanic, commenting on the above, says: “The best time for pruning apple-trees is, as yet, we believe, undetermined by the most experienced orchardists, but we are of opinion that the early part of June is, for reasons above given by Mr. Hill, to be preferred. The objection arising from the fear of injuring the bark of the tree can easily be obviated by: having the operator use moccasins instead of shoes, and surrounding the upper round of the latter with straw or flannel.” Downing says: : “We should especially avoid pruning at that period in spring when the buds are swelling, and the sap is in full’ flow, as the loss of sap by bleeding is very injurious to most trees, and, in some, brings on a serious and incurable can- ker in the limbs, “There are advantages and disadvantages attending all seasons of pruning, but our own experience has led us to believe that, practically, a fortnight before midsummer is by far the best season, on the whole, for pruning in the northern and middle States. Wounds made at this season heal over freely and rapidly ; it is the most favorable time to judge of the shape and balance of the head, and to see at a glance which branches require removal; and all the stock ~ ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 413 of organizable matter in the tree is directed to the branches that remain.” Some of the western States are so much earlier than that of New York, that early June will be equivalent to the time specified by Downing. We have now fortified the opinion which we heretofore expressed, by good authority, and by what seems to us good reasons. As it is, however, with some, yet a debated question, we shall carefully insert the experience of any man for or against our position. PLUMS AND THEIR ENEMIES. Mouttirupes of men have had plum-trees, and every year, for ten years, have seen the fruit promise fair at first and then prematurely drop, without knowing the reason. Even well-informed men have said to us that it arose from some defect in the tree, from too much gum, from a worm at the root, ete. The plum-tree is very hardy; is less subject to disease than most fruit-trees; its fruit is highly prized; and the varieties of it are numerous and many of them delicious, By a proper selection of trees a succession of fruit may be had from July to November. The trees are usually sure and enormous bearers, every year. With so many good qualities the cultivation of the plum is well-nigh probibited, as a garden or orchard fruit, by the valor of one little bug! The Curculio (a very hardy fellow, with a constitution yet unimpaired by such a name as Rhynchenus Nenuphar /) is a small beetle, about a quarter of an inch long, which attacks the plums almost as soon as the fruit has set. They seek this, and almost all smooth-skinned fruits, as a place ot deposit for their eggs. Many of the facts which we shall 414 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK narrate, were mentioned to us by Mr. Payne of Madison, who has closely and curiously observed this depredator. An incision is first made, of semicircular form, by a little rostra or lancet which he carries in his head for this very purpose. After the opening is made, the curculio deposits an egg therein; then changing positions again, it carefully, with its fore legs, secures the egg in its nidus, and pats the skin under the edge of which its treasure is hidden, with repeated and careful efforts of its feet. Where fruit abounds it deposits, usually, but one to a plum. But we have had trees, just beginning to bear, whose few plums were scari- fied all over. The egg hatches to a worm, and this feeds on the plum, causing it prematurely to fall; the imsect issuing from it, enters the ground, to undergo its transformations, and soon to reappear, a beetle, ready for fresh mischiefmaking pro- pagation. The climate of the West is entirely glorious for all man- ner of insects. They can put the East to shame in the mat- ter of aphides, cockroaches, cutworms, army and wire- worms, curculios, peach-worms, grubs, etc., etc. There are many questions relating to the history of insects, about which eastern writers are in doubt, not at all doubtful with us. 1. Do the larve remain in the ground all the residue of the summer, and come forth only in the ensuing spring ? In cold latitudes it may be so. Harris says, that they undergo their transformation in twenty days. Downing admits this of a few stragglers. But the main supply of bugs, he thinks, remains all summer and until spring, in the ground, But with us the curculio is not exclusively an early summer insect. It is found, in its appropriate haunts, through the whole warm season. Mr. Payne put plums containing the worms into a glass, and in eleven days obtained full-grown curculios. In cool regions they pro- bably have but an annual generation; but in warm and ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. Ato long summers, in the West, they reproduce often in each season. 2. The mode of ascent has been a matter of doubt. J.J. Thomas, in the Fruit Culturist says: “It has the power of using its wings in flying; but whether it crawls up the tree or ascends by flight, appears not to be certainly ascer- tained.” Downing admits that it flies, but says, ‘“‘ How far this insect flies is yet a disputed point, some cultivators affirm- ing that it scarcely goes further than a single tree, and others believing that it flies over a whole neighbor- hood.” Kenrick says: ‘‘ They crawl up trees,” and he quotes an author as saying: “That of two trees standing so near each other as to touch, the fruit of one has been destroyed and the other has escaped; so little and so reluctantly do these insects incline to use their wings.” Dr. James Tilton says, in the “Domestic Encyclopedia,” that “they appear very reluctant to use their wings, and perhaps never employ them but when necessity compels them to migrate.” It is true that the curculio, in cold and chilly weather, is disinclined to fly; but give it a right murderously hot day, and “McGregor’s on his native heath again.” Just before a thunder storm, in summer, in a still, sultry, sweltering day, they may be seen flying among the trees as blithely as any house-fly ; alighting on your arm, or hand, and spring- ing off again as nimbly as a flea. All remedies founded on the idea of their crawling pre- ferences will be signal failures. Troughs about trees, bats of wool, bandages of all kinds about the trunk to impede the ascent will be found as useful as would high fences to keep crows from a cornfield, or birds from the garden. All remedies for this pest succeed to a charm where the curculio does not abound; and almost every one of them fails in places really infested them. In cities, and in country places which are far remuved 416 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK from all orchards or gardens, the crops may be saved. It is not difficult to defend a tree against all the curculios that are bred upon it. Pavements; hard-rolled gravel; gather- ing up, daily, the fallen plums and destroying them; the application of salt, and many other remedies may succeed where the curculio from other gardens or orchards cannot easily migrate to supply the trees with a fresh brood. Trees in cities, and in retired places, on this account, often bear plenteously. But of what use is it to destroy five hundred larve, if twice that number of emigrants, from some other quarter, are anxious, the next spring, to sgwat upon your trees, or to enter them, in land-office style, most nefariously? All remedies founded on the destruction of the larvee will be totally useless if your trees can be reached from some infected point abroad, as we have found to our sorrow. In our own experience, and in that of other amateur-cultivators of fruit, the pavement, salt, and all have been “ love’s labor lost.” But in the experience of others, in climates where the curculio does not abound, or in secluded situations, they have proved effectual. The remedies to be employed, in ordinary cases, must be such as will constantly molest the insect at his work. Inclosures, in which swine root, and rub against the trees; lanes, where cattle resort, to‘rub off their hair in spring, to shade themselves in summer—these are the best situations. In yards and gardens plum-trees should be placed upon the most frequented paths; close to the well, by the kitchen door, near the wood-house, so that, as often as possible, they may be jarred in passing and repassing. Where a few trees stand apart in the garden, it is said that, daily, morning and evening, by spreading a sheet under them, and giving the tree a sudden and violent blow with a mallet, the insects will drop and may then be gathered and destroyed. This should be performed while it is cool, as then, only, the curculio is somewhat torpid. H ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 417 this course is pursued, a block should be put upon the tree, to receive the stroke, with a bit of carpet or some soft pad to it, that the bark may not be injured. A white sheet should be spread under the tre2 to catch the falling robber. A few trees will suffice for a private family, and the fruit must be earned by careful watchfulness.. Those who are too indolent, or careless, or indifferent to the luxury to bestow the requisite attention through the months of May and June, may spare themselves the trouble of planting plum-trees. Plum orchards are not to be thought of. Although the curculio chiefly delights in the plum, it scruples at no fruit. It may be found upon peaches, cher- ries, nectarines, apricots, gooseberries and currants, ROOT GRAFTING. Wate nothing can be done out of doors in the nursery, the process of root grafting may be carried on, and the stock be ready for setting as soon as the grounds are open in spring. When this method of grafting is employed with discretion, it greatly aids the nurseryman. It is a resource in case he cannot procure stocks to bud or graft upon; it makes finer and handsomer trees; and it can be carried on at a season of leisure; and the scions, being early in the ground, have a longer season of growth by two months than buds, or ordinary grafts. Although any healthy root with some fibres will answer to graft upon, yet experienced nurserymen prefer the tap roots of young seedling stocks. Those who have apple and pear stocks which are to be removed, should employ the open weather of winter to raise them. The tap roots may 418 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK be taken for grafting purposes and the stocks put away in cellars, or buried in the ground. We do not know that there is any difference in favor of the root of one variety over another; but it will not do to propagate every variety of fruit by this method. Expeii- ence has shown that some sorts do better by root grafting than in any other way; but other kinds are very apt to be winter-killed ; and some varieties have such a straggling habit of growth, that it would be extremely difficult to train them to a good head; and such sorts, therefore, require to be budded or grafted high up on good stocks. The roots being washed, are cut into four or five inch pieces; and the scions prepared as for ordinary grafting. Splice, or tongue grafting is the most convenient method. Woollen yarn, cut to ten or twelve inches’ length, is wound around it closely at the point of junction. Let the grafting wax be kept in a melted state, by being put in a pan, over a few coals. Holding the work over the pan, with a spoon pour a portion of the liquid all over the yarn; it hardens immediately, and the whole may be set in rows in a box and covered above the poimt of union with moist sand, and kept in a cellar till it is time to turn them out in the spring. Tue cherry, plum, pear and apple trees, in a diseased condition, will often throw up numerous and_ thrifty sprouts that will offer to an inexperienced cultivator invit- ing temptations to multiply his stock at a rapid rate with little labor. If he be deceived by these appearances, and propagate his valuable kinds upon these diseased growths, his efforts will ultimately result in his disappoint. ment. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 419 BLIGHT AND INSECTS. Iy an article on employing suckers of fruit-trees for stocks, which we shall copy, Dr. Kirtland says: “The practice of grafting and budding pears upon this quality of stocks has extended a diseased action, a kind of canker among our pear orchards, that has, in some instances, been mistaken for blight, a disease that has its origin im the depredations of a minute coleopterous insect, which has been satisfactorily described in all its stages of transforma- tion by Dr. Harris, and other Massachusetts entomologists.” That the fire-blight is, to any considerable extent any- where, but especially at the West, occasioned by an insect, is an idea, we believe, totally unsupported by facts, That some injury has been done by the scolytus pyri, the investi gations of Mr. Lowell and Professor Peck leave no room to doubt. But we are not satisfied that, even in these cases, they were the cause of the dlight, but only an accidental concomitant. Did Mr. Lowell or Professor Peck always find this beetle upon blighted trees? Was it found in every blighted limb? Did not blight occur without these insects? Has any one of New England since found the blight to proceed from the gnawings of this beetle ? Has any one found this beetle before the blight occurred at its mischievous work, or is it only after the blight is seen that the beetle is found? If the scolytus pyri has been found only after the tree is thoroughly affected, there is reason to suppose that it did not come until after the disease had pre- pared the way for it. We are seriously skeptical of this alleged cause. What- ever may be true of the blight at the East, the blight in the West is unquestionably not an effect of the scolytus pyri. We have examined with the utmost pains, multitudes of trees in all soils—several of our shrewdest nurserymen have searched year by year, and we have, unfortunately, had too tauch opportunity and too many subjects, and yet no insect 420 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK or insect-track has been detected, except those which have attacked the tree in consequence of the blight. To be sure, we can find bugs, black, brown, green and grey, but the mere presence of an insect is nothing, though with many, it seems enough, when a tree is blighted, if a bug is found on it, to determine the parentage of the mis- chief. Nor do the published accounts of insects, found on blighted trees, increase our respect for this theory. The observations seem to have been not thorough enough, and not carefully made, and the reasonings even less philo- sophical. Men have searched for a theory rather than for the mere facts in the case. But by far the greatest num- ber of those who write, give no evidence of relying upon any observations which they have themselves made, but go back perpetually to the old precedents, Mr. Lowell and Professor Peck, without being at any pains to verify them. Has Dr. Kirtland ever found the scolytus pyri? Has he ever, in time of extensive blight, found it under such cir- cumstances as to satisfy his mind that it was the real cause of fire-blight ? or does he rest satisfied that blight is occa- sioned by an insect simply because so it is set down in good books? The canker may be mistaken for blight by those who have not been acquainted with either; but surely, no one who has ever attentively examined one real case of fire- blight would ever mistake it for anything else, or anything else for it. . The insect theory we regard as wholly untenable except for special, local, peculiar ravages which are not properly blights. The blight is a disease of the circulation. It affects every tissue of the plant. It is not a disease from exhaustion of sap by the suction of aphides, as Dr. Mosher, of Cincinnati, supposed, for the trees have a plethora rather than scarcity of sap; it lacerates the sap-vessels, bursts the bark, flows down the branches, and dries in globules upon the trunk. On cutting the tree, if the blight is yet new, the texture of the alburnum will be found to resemble what _ ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 42] is called a water-core in the apple, its color is of a dirty greenish hue, soon changing by exposure to brown and black. But if the blight is old, the wood is of a dingy white, the alburnum colored likeiron rust, and the bark of a brownish black. These appearances are incompatible with any idea of exhaustion by the gnawing of the scolytus pyri, or the suction of aphides, which would result in mere shrink- ing of parts, dryness and death. If insects have a hand in the mischief, it is by the secretion of poison, of which fact, we have never seen the trace of proof, although it has often been suggested, and is by some empyrically asserted. To our minds the insect-poison-theory is imaginary. It is entirely convenient to refer every excrescence, or shrinking of parts, every watery suffusion, wart, discoloration, crump- ling leaf, wilting, etc., to poison, and still more convenient to find the insect so atomic that it cannot de found, and thus to heap the multiform sins of the orchard on the scape-goat of a hypothetical insect. As to electricity, as no one knows anything about this ‘elemental sprite, his out-goings or in-comings, we are like to have acted over again all the caprices of witch-times, when elves and gnomés cut up every prank imaginable, and when any prank, which was cut up, of course was performed by them. Everybody is agog about electricity. But we respectfully suggest that it is one thing to ascertain facts by cautious, guarded experiments or careful observation, and quite another to set down everything, which one does not know what else to do with, to electricity, simply because it may be so for aught that we know to the contrary. People reason somewhat in this wise ; electricity performs a vast number of very mysterious operations, therefore, every operation which is mysterious is performed by elec- tricity. We believe electricity to have something to do with it, only because it seems to have concern with every living, growing thing. We believe that the blight is, in all eases, the effect ot 499, PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK frost upon the sap. We have, until recently, supposed it to arise from autumnal freezing, while the tree is in fall growth. We are now inclined to suppose that severe freez- ing and sudden thawing at any time, autumn, winter or spring, when the sap is in motion, will result in blight. The blight of 1844 was from the freezing of growing trees in the autumn of 1843, and the premonitory stages were clearly discernible in the tree during tke whole winter months before it broke out in its last malignant form. When a warm winter allows continuous motion of sap, and sudden, severe freezing with rapid thawing occurs, we suppose it to cause a variety of blight. We are making investigations on this head, but are not yet prepared to speak with certainty. When a sudden violent freezing overtakes growing trees in spring, with rapid thaws, it, we suppose, results in a light resembling the autumn-caused blight. We are diligently searching into this whole matter, and hope to throw some light upon it. But now comes ¢he question. What is it that makes some trees so obnoxious to this evil while others escape? Why are some orchards generally affected, and contiguous orchards entirely saved ? It is very plain that the blight occurs, as a general disease, in some seasons more than in others, because it depends upon the peculiar condition of the season, the time and degree of frosts. But it does not seem so clear why, when these conditions are favorable to blight, one tree should suffer, and the next in the row should not; why one orchard should be depopulated, and another in the same town not touched. We think that light will be afforded on this point by a consideration of the texture of trees. When trees are rapidly grown by stimulating manures, or upon strong clay loams, or from any other cause, the wood is coarse, the passages enlarged, the tissue loose and spongy. The tree passes a great volume of sap—it is but imperfectly elaborated (as is seen by the late period to ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 423 which such trees defer the bearing of fruit), and the tissues formed by it are correspondingly imperfect in wholesome- ness, compactness, and solidity of parts. The tree is bloated —is dropsical. On gravelly soils, or loams with a gravelly subsoil, or on any kind of soil, which gives a slow and thorough growth, the wood is fine, close and perfect; the vessels are not expanded, their sides are firmer, less sensitive to sudden changes of temperature, and when exposed to them better able to resist them. Whatever soil produces rank or coarse wood, a flabby tissue will be subject to blights. Whatever soil induces a fine-grained, compact fibre, and vigorous tissue, will be free from blight. The same is true of the various methods of cultivation ; those who drive their trees, who aim chiefly at a rapid and strong growth, will give their trees a con- dition requisite for blight. ‘Those who pursue a more cau- tious, a slower method, and look to the guality rather than the quantity of their wood, will be comparatively free from blight. To be sure, there may be seasons so extreme that blight will occur in the most healthy tree; so disease will occur in the most temperate men; yet temperance, conformity to the laws of nature, is the rule of health, and nonconformity the preparation for disease. Meanwhile, will those who are unfortunate enough to have a good opportunity for observing, examine— 1. The soil and subsoil of blighted trees ? 2. The habit of the tree, as to rankness of growth ? 3. The character of the cultivation which has been em- ployed ? 4. In short, the relative condition of orchards and trees which have escaped or been blighted, as to fineness and closeness, and health of texture. It is high time that this matter should be minutely investigated. It is the oppro- brium cultorum. 424 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK APPLES. FOR HOGS. Farmers are afraid of sour apples; if stock have only sour fruit they are injured; but let both sweet and sour grow in the orchard, and experience has determined that they will, of themselves, eat the due proportion of each. Cattle and hogs are as fond of variety in fruit as men are. In raising potatoes, pumpkins, apples, etc., for animals, it is frequently supposed that the larger and ranker the growth the better; that, at any rate, cattle fare as well on coarse- grained vegetables as on others. But a rank, coarse, watery vegetable is no better for an ox than for a man. The nutritious principle is the same to man or beast. A fine- fleshed, highly nutritious apple or potato is as much better for stock as itis for man. If a variety is not fit for men, it is not worth while to cultivate it at all. Cattle show them- selves to be of this opinion when left to range; they avoid coarse, rough herbage, and pick the sweetest and highest flavored. Let the dest sorts of apples be planted for stock. If one has a seedling orchard which it would be worth while to graft over for human use, let not its poor, miserable fruit be fed to hogs; let it be grafted over even if one means to use it for stock. PuLLiInG orF Potato FtowErs.—The man who makes his potato-ground feed flowers, prevents it feeding his children. Every ounce of matter consumed by the flowers is so much taken from the consumption of the family. To RESTORE an exhausted, or rather tired field, it should be sown in grass, and stock fed upon it during the winter months. Hogs fattened upon tired land enrich it very much, ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 425 THE FLOWER GARDEN. Spring Frowertne-Buitss.—When crocus, hyacinths, narcissus, tulips, have done flowering, let the seed stalks be cut down, as the ripening of the seed severely taxes and exhausts the powers of a plant. Some persons are accus- tomed, after the bulbs have flowered, to cut off the tops, as if to do the most mischief possible. The success of the next year’s flowering will depend very much on the care given to your beds now. Many bulbs, as the tulip, form entirely new bulbs; and others, as the hyacinth, form the flower bud for the next season. The /eaf is the indispensable means of doing this; in it are perfected the juices which are returned and deposited in the root. If the bed is left to be choked with weeds, and your bulbs robbed of nutriment, or if the soil is left compact, or if there is too much moisture, or on the other hand, too little, the bud or bulb for the next year will be weakened. A very deep bed, or a sandy soil, will sufficiently prevent the effects of too much water. The surface should be mellowed by the hand, and _ tho- roughly weeded. The mosé¢ careful cultivators raise their bulbs every year. The careful at least every third year. The careless let them alone and wonder, from year to year, why their bulbs do so poorly—“ The moles must eat them, or, worms probably injure them ;” but the worst worm in a flower-garden is careless indolence. When balbs are raised, it should not be done until the leaves are dry. GuapioLtus.—We are surprised that this fine soldier-like plant is not more extensively employed to adorn gardens, yards, and lawns. A few varieties only are found in our gardens. Great attention has been given in Europe, espe- cially in Belgium, to raising new varieties, and many mag- nificent kinds are now found in European collections which, so far as we know, are not to be had for love or money in 426 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK America, The bulb, or rather corm,* increases very rapidly, and by a little attention one may obtain from a few, a very large supply. They may be planted with good effect in rows, in clumps, and in beds, but not singly. A sandy loam, well mixed with leaf-mold, is their delight. We usually remove the top soil, and then take out and reject about twelve inches of the subsoil, making in all about twenty inches’ depth; return the top earth, together with enough compost of leafmold, sand, and thoroughly decayed manure, to fill it; plant about four inches deep, measuring from the top of the corm. When your plants are growing, examine every day; if you see a sawdust-like matter about them, they need attention. On searching, a perforation will be found in the stem. With a penknife slit the stem down from the hole until you reach the worm which caused the mischief. If this course is not properly pur- sued, you will lose stem and root. With a thin strip of bass matting, or a bit of green ribbon, the stem may be tied and fastened to a rod for support. In door-yards, and in the scanty grounds of city yards, clumps of ten or fifteen gladioli would have a very beautiful appearance, especially if dif ferent varieties, instead of being mixed, should be planted in separate but contiguous patches. Tuserose.—The beauty of its pure, white florets, but especially the delightful odor of this fragrant flower, has rendered it a favorite wherever it is known. It is very * Bulbs are of two kinds: those which have a number of coats, or skins, one within the other, like the hyacinth, which are called tunicated bulbs; those which consist of a number of scales, only attached to the base, like the lily; but what are called corms, are only a solid mass of feculent matter, and which modern botanists do not allow to be bulbs, but call underground stems. Corms do not require taking up so often as bulbs; and when they are intended to remain for several years in the ground, they should be planted from four to six inches deep at first; as every year a new corm will form above the old one; aud thus, if planted to> near the surface, the corm, ina few years, will be pushed out of the ground.—Loudon. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWEKS AND FARMING. 427 tender to frost, and must not be planted out until about the first of May. It is to be treated like the gladiolus. Its effect is heightened by being put in a half shade, where its pure white is relieved by a green background. The flower stem rises from two to three feet and requires a rod to sus- tain it. The fragrance is so powerful that a few plants will, at evening, scent a whole garden; a circumstance well known to owners of pleasure gardens, who render their grounds very delightful by dispersing these, and other odo- riferous flowers, in various parts of their grounds, thus loading the dewy evening air with delicious perfume. They may be planted in ten-inch pots and sunk in the ground until they have begun to blossom, when the pots may be raised and conveyed to the parlor or veranda. A single plant will sometimes make a room disagreeable by its exces- sive odor. The roots are imported to England from Italy, as that climate is too humid and cool too perfect them for flower- ing. But, in our soil and climate, we have found no diffi- culty in raising, from offsets, the finest possible bulbs. No yard or garden should be without tuberoses. Priants in Pots.—It is better when one has ground at hand, to turn out plants which have been housed through the winter into the open garden. Roses, geraniums, azaleas, cape jasmins, fuchsias, etc., will be wonderfully invigorated by such treatment. The tea and Bengal roses can hardly be brought to perfection in pots, and those who have only seen the penurious growth and diminished and sparse blossoms in the parlor have no idea of the beauty of these roses. We usually excavate a place two feet square and two feet deep for each rose, filling it with sandy loam very highly enriched with leaf-mold and decayed manure. The trouble will be repaid four fold; for nature has never made a plant that forgets to be grateful for attention. In turning out plants, put the left hand in such a way upon the top as that the stem shall come between the 428 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK second and third finger, then invert the pot and give the bottom of it two or three sharp raps, when the pot will come off. Ifthe plant is in a lively, growing state, and the outside of the ball of earth is covered with fine, white, new roots, it will be best to put the ball into the ground with- out disturbing the roots at all. But if the plant is not grow- ing, the earth may be carefully worked out from the roots with the hands, taking care to break the fibres as little as possible. Spread out the roots as much as possible in every direction, and cover with fine earth. Rose bushes will need attention soon, as worms and bugs begin their depredations. When the number of bushes is limited, hand-picking every day or two is best. For a large collection one must resort to more general methods. Drench your shrubs, which aphides and worms infest, with soapsuds, made of two pounds of whale-oil soap to fifteen gallons of water. This is by far the most efficacious—the only efficacious—course for destroying insects. As flower-seeds come up, see that they are well weeded, and if crowded, thin them out. We would recommend the cultivation of some old-fashioned flowers. Nothing is more showy than a bed of poppies of mixed colors. Holyhocks are becoming very great favorites, and we saw recently flowers as magnificent, and as well worth having, as any dahlia. The varieties of lupine should be sought for, and for those who have seen nothing but the white and blue lupines we make an extract from Mrs. Loudon’s “Com- panion to the Flower Garden ””—an admirable work, which, though professedly written for ladies, may be used with profit by everybody who cultivates a garden. “ Luprnus.—Leguminose.—The Lupine. A genus of herbaceous annuals and perennials which contain some of our most beautiful border flowers: yellow, blue, white, and pink lupines are among the oldest border annuals; LZ. nanus is a beautiful little. annual, with dark blue flowers, a native of California, and requiring the usual treatment of Cali- ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 429 fornia annuals. ZL. mutabilis and Cruicshankii are splen- did plants, growing to the height of four or five feet, and branching like miniature trees. Z. Polyphyllus and its varieties are perennials, and they are splendid and vigorous- growing plants, with spikes of flowers from one foot to eighteen inches in length; ZL. nootkatensis is a handsome dwarf perennial, and £. arboreus, when trained against a wall, will attain six feet in height, and in sheltered situations it will grow with equal vigor trained as a bush tied to a stake; L. latifolius is a perennial from California, with very long spikes of blue flowers. All the species will thrive in common garden soil; the annuals are propagated by seed sown in February or March, and the perennials by division of the roots.” PREPARATION OF SEED FOR SOWING. Many persons suppose that when seeds have been select- ed, nothing is necessary but to put them into the ground just as they are. A careful preparation of seed, both for field or garden use, will add much to the success of a planting. 1. AssortInG SxEEps.—In every lot of seed there are many imperfect ones; some are insectiferous, some are un- ripe, some are the extreme terminal seeds, small and weak, some are very often a little moldy. In some way all de- fective seeds should be removed. Then it should be remembered, that the soundest and largest seeds will produce plants of a corresponding vigor, and that by planting only the healthiest, the variety is kept pure—or even improved. For garden use hand picking will suffice. We pour our corn on a table, and select only the kernels which are plump and large, rejecting any which show an intermixture ot 430 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK other varieties. Beet seed requires careful winnowing, nearly one-fourth, as they are usually sold, being unfit for planting. Peas are more uniform in size and quality, and require but little selection. Melons, squashes, and cucum- bers should be culled, or better yet, be put into water; only those which sink promptly should be used, the swimming and floating ones being light and trashy. Beans are apt to be imperfect. We have usually found occasion to reject full one-third of every quart, for seedsmen are apt to put in every seed that grows, whether they will ever grow again or not. There is no dishonesty certainly in this; but if one would habitually screen or select, and put up only the very choicest, he would ultimately get a higher price, and secure for his seed a universal demand. 2. Soaxine SEEDS.—Some seeds will not germinate for a long period, unless they are artificially brought forward. Locust seeds are scalded before planting. Peas are scalded to kill the bug, when thusinhabited. The cypress vine seed require soaking to induce a quick germination, Celery seed is very sluggish unless soaked. Seeds are often steeped in prepared liquids to force their growth. Old seeds, whose powers of germination are much diminished, are made to vegetate by being put into a weak solution of oxalic acid. Wheat is pickled in salt brine, then rolled in lime, as a preventive of smut. Corn is protected from worms by copperas water; and peas are put into train oil to guard them from moles and mice. T'anner’s oil, and a solution of saltpetre are often used; the first for turnip-seed, to protect them from a destructive insect; and the latter for all seeds, as a stimu- lant to their growth and to guard against worms and bugs. Some excitement was made in Scotland, not long ago, by - the great effects alleged to have been produced by so pre- paring seeds that they would contain in or on themselves all those fertilizing qualities usually looked for in the soil. It is possible, by employing chemical mixtures, or coatings, to ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 431 make the seed germinate with great vigor, and to establish itself strongly; but we do not suppose any process can be made to reach beyond this. No mere soaking or coating can extend its influence through the whole growth of the crop. . ; When seeds are soaked they anticipate the weeds in com- ing up, especially seeds planted in May and June, and this is a very important object, as crops are, often, almost smoth- ered with weeds before they are large enough to be weeded. SOWING FLOWER SEEDS — TRANSPLANTING. Many flower-seeds require no more skill in planting than do peas or beans, for they are as large and as easily ger- minated. But very many are small, and some extremely small, and if planted too deeply, they will not shoot, or will shoot very feebly. . Select a free-working and rich piece of ground—a sandy loam is best, and a stiff clay the worst—let it be spaded deeply, incorporating very thoroughly-rotted manure, 7. e. manure full two years old and which will crumble in the hand as fine as sand. With a fine-toothed rake reduce every lump and bring the surface to the finest state of pulveriza- tion. If the seed is very small, it had better be mixed with a little sand, or dry soil, to increase the bulk. The sowing will be easier and more equal. Scatter the seed upon the bed; then with the hands or a fine garden sieve, sift fresh and mellow earth upon it from a quarter to half an inch in depth. To bring the earth compactly about the seed, spat the bed with moderate strokes with the back ofa spade. Ifthe weather is very dry, water the bed at evening with a watering-pot—to pour it from a pail or cup would wash up the surface. Keep the plants from weeds, and when they are one or two inches high, they may be trans. 432 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK planted to the places where they are to stand. Balsams, larkspurs, poppies, and, indeed, most flowers do better by being transplanted. The operation checks the luxuriance of the plant, and increases its tendency to flower. Sometimes seeds are planted where they are to remain; the treatment is precisely the same as before, except they are thinned out instead of transplanted. No mistake is more frequent, among inexperienced gardeners, than that of suffering too many plants to stand together. One is re- luctant to pull up fine thriving plants; or he does not reflect that what may seem room enough while the plant is young, will be very scanty when it is grown. There is much taste to be displayed in arranging flowers in a garden so that proper colors shall be contrasted. It is important that proper colors should be matched im a gar- den, as on a dress. PARLOR PLANTS AND FLOWERS IN WINTER. Tur treatment of house plants is very little understood, although the practice of keeping shrubs and flowers during the winter is almost universal. It is important that the physiological principles on which success depends should be familiarly understood; and then cultivators can apply them with success in all the varying circumstances in which they may be called to act. Two objects are proposed in taking plants into the house —either simple protection, or the development of their foliage and flowers, during the winter. The same treat- ment will not do for both objects. Indeed, the greatest number of persons of our acquaintance, treat their winter plants, from which they desire flowers, as if they only wished to preserve them till spring; and the consequence is, that they have very little enjoyment in their favorites. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 433 HOUSE PLANTS DESIGNED SIMPLY TO STAND OVER. Tender roses, azaleas, cape jasmins, crape myrtles, or- anges, lemons, figs, oleanders, may be kept in a light cellar if frost never penetrates it. If kept in parlors, the following are the most essential points to be observed. The thermometer should never be permitted to rise above sixty degrees or sixty-five degrees ; nor at night to sink below forty degrees. Although plants will not be frost-bitten until the mercury falls to thirty-two degrees, yet the chill of a temperature below forty degrees will often be as mischievous to tender plants as frost itself. Excessive heat, particularly a dry stove heat, will destroy the leaves almost as certainly as frost. We have seen plants languishing in a temperature of seventy degrees (it often rising ten degrees higher), while the owners wondered what could ail the plants, for they were sure that they kept the room warm enough! Next, great care should be taken not to overwater. Plants which are not growing require very little water. If given, the roots become sogged, or rotten, and the whole plant is enfeebled. Water should never be suffered to stand in the saucers; nor be given, always, when the top-soil is dry. Let the earth be stirred, and when the znterior of the ball is becoming dry, give it a copious supply; let it drain through thoroughly, and turn off what falls into the saucer. PLANTS DESIGNED FOR WINTER FLOWERING. It is to be remembered that the winter is naturally the season of vest for plants. All plants require to lie dormant during some portion of the year. You cannot cheat them out of it. If they are pushed the whole year they become exhausted and worthless. Here lies the most common error of plant-keepers. If you mean to have roses, blooming geraniums, etc., in winter, you must, artificially, change 484 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK their season of rest. Plants which flower in summer must rest in winter; those which are to flower in winter must rest either in summer or autumn. It is not, usually, worth while to take into the house for flowering purposes any shrub which has been in full bloom during the summer or autumn. Select and pot the wished-for flowers during sum- mer; place them in a shaded position facing the north, give very little water, and then keep them quiet. Their ener- gies will thus be saved for winter. When taken into the house, the four essential points of attention are light, moisture, temperature, and cleanliness. ae Ines —The functions of the leaves cannot be health- fully carried on without light. If there be too little, the sap is imperfectly elaborated, and returns from the leaves to the body in a crude, undigested state. The growth will be coarse, watery, and brittle; and that ripeness which must precede flowers and fruit cannot be attained. The sprawl- ing, spindling, white-colored, long-jointed, plants, of which some persons are unwisely proud, are, often the result of too little light and too much water. The pots should be turned around every day, unless when the light strikes down from above, or from windows on each side; others wise, they will grow out of shape by bending toward the light. 2. Moisturre.—Different species of plants require differ- ent quantities of water. What are termed aquatics, of which the Calla -dithiopica, is a specimen, require great abundance of it. Yet it should be often changed even in the case of aquatics. But roses, geraniums, etc., and the common house plants require the soil to be moést, rather than wet. Asa general rule it may be said that every pot should have one-sixth part of its depth filled with coarse pebbles, as a drainage, before the plants are potted. This gives all superfluous moisture a free passage out. Plants should be watered by examination and not by time. They require various quantities of moisture, according to their ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 435 activity, and the period of their growth. Let the earth be well stirred, and if it is becoming dry on the inside, give water. Never water by dribblets-—a spoonful to-day, another to-morrow. In this way the outside will become bound, and the inside remain dry. Give acopious watering, so that the whole ball shall be soaked; then let it drain off, and that which comes into the saucer be poured off. But, in whatever way one prefers to give water, the thing to be gained is a full supply of moisture to every part of the roots, and yet not so much as to have it stand about them. Manure-water may be employed with great benefit every second or third watering. For this purpose we have never found anything of value equal to guano. Besides water to the root, plants are almost as much benefited by water on the leat—but of this we shall speak under the head of cleanliness. 3 3. TEMPERATURE.—Sudden and violent changes of tem- perature are almost as trying to plants as to animals and men. At the same time, a moderate change of tempera- ture is very desirable. Thus, in nature, there is a marked and uniform variation at night from the temperature of the day. At night, the room should be gradually lowered in temperature to from forty-five degrees to fifty degrees, while through the day it ranges from fifty-five degrees to seventy degrees. Too much, and too sudden heat will destroy tender leaves almost as surely as frost. It should also be remembered that the leaves of plants are constantly exhal- ing moisture during the day. If in too warm an atmos- phere, or in one which is too dry, this perspiration becomes excessive and weakens the plant. If the room be stove- heated, a basin of water should be put on the stove to sup- ply moisture to the air by evaporation. Sprinkling the leaves, a kind of artificial dew, 1s also beneficial, on this account. The air should be changed as often as possible. Every warm and sunny day should be improved to let in fresh air upon these vegetable breathers. 436 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK 4. CLEANLINESS.—This is an important element of health as well as of beauty. -Animal-uncleanliness is first to be removed. If ground-worms have been incorporated with the dirt, give a dose or two of lime-water to the soil. Next aphides or green-lice will appear upon the leaves and stems. Tobacco smoke will soon stupefy them and cause them to tumble upon the shelves or surface of the soil, whence they are to be carefully brushed, or crushed. If one has but a few plants, put them in a group on the floor; put four chairs around them and cover with an old blanket, forming a sort of tent. Set a dish of coals within, and throw ona handful of tobacco leaves. Fifteen minutes’? smoking will destroy any decent aphis. If a larger collection is on hand, let the dish or dishes be placed under the stands. When the destruction is completed, let the parlor be well ventilated, unless, fair lady, you have an inveterate smoker for a husband ; in which case you may have become used to the nuisance. The insects which infest large collections of green-houses, are fully treated of in horticultural books of directions. Dust will settle every day upon the leaves, and choke up the perspiring pores. The leaves should be kept free by gentle wiping, or by washing. Wartr CLover is an important grass on flourishing old meadows. It grows very thick at the bottom of the other grass, although in a good season it will grow to the height of from twelve to sixteen inches. I have seen it in low spots completely covered for weeks together. Therefore - land which produces abundant crops of grass, would require extensive draining for grain, and seeing that plowing such land destroys its life, it is far better to keep it in grass con tinually. ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 437 PARLOR FLOWERS AND PLANTS IN WINTER.—(A77. 2.) THERE are so few who care enough for flowers to trouble themselves with them during the winter, that it seems almost unkind to criticise the imperfections of those who do. But it is very plain that, for the most part, skill and knowledge do not keep pace with good taste. Vot to point out defects to those who are anxious to improve would be the real unkindness. There are two objects for which plants are kept over. Plants are housed for the sake of their verdure and bloom during the winter ; or, simply to protect them from the frosts. Our first criticism is, that these two separate objects are, to a great extent, improperly united. Tables and window-stands are crowded with plants which ought to be in the cellar or ina pit. Plants which have bloomed through the summer wi// rest during the winter. To remove them from the heat and dust of the parlor—to place them in a dry, light, warm cellar, will certainly conduce to their entire rest, and the parlor will lose no grace by the removal of ragged stems, falling leaves, and flowerless branches. When a large quantity of plants are to be pro- tected, and cellar room is wanting, a pit may be prepared with little expense. Dig a place eight or ten feet square, in a dry exposure. The depth may be from five to six feet. Let the surface of this chamber be curbed about with a plank frame, the top of which should slope to the south at an inclination of about three inches to the foot. This may be covered with plank except in the middle, where two sash may be placed. The outside of the plank may be banked up with earth, and if light brush or haulm be placed upon the top, in severe weather, it will be all the better. The inside may be provided with shelves on every side for the pots, and thus hundreds of plants may be effectually protected. During severe freezing weather the sash should be covered with mats, old carpet, straw or anything of the 438 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK kind; and in very cold weather this should not be removed during the daytime: for if the plants have been touched with frost, the admission of light will destroy or maim them, whereas, if kept in darkness, they will suffer little or no injury. Several families may unite in the expense of form- ing a cold-pit and thus fill it with plants at a small expense and very little inconvenience to each. Very little if any water should be given to plants thus at rest. Even where plants are wanted to bloom in the parlor late in the winter, it is often better to let them spend the fore- -part of the winter in the cellar or pit. Our second criticism respects the character of winter col- lections. The most noticeable error is the strange crowd of plants often huddled together, as if the excellence of a collection consisted in the number of things brought together. Every- thing that the florist sees in other collections has been pro- cured, as if it would be an unpardonable negligence not to have what others have. Hence we sometimes see scores of plants, very different in their habits, requiring widely different conditions of growth, reduced to one regimen, viz. a place near the window, so much water a day, and one turning round. This summary procedure, of course, soon results in a vegetable Falstaff’s regiment; some plants being long, sprawling, gangling, some dormant and dumpy ; some shedding their leaves and going to rest with unripe wood, some mildewed, a few faintly struggling to show here and there a bewildered blossom. In such a collection the eye is pained by the entire want of sympathy arising from jumbling together the most dissimilar kinds; from the want of robust health, and from the entire disappearance of that vivid freshness and sprightliness of growth, com- pact while it is rapid, which gives a charm to well man- aged plants. All plants which are not growing, or for whose growth your parlors are not suitable, should be put into the cellar ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 439 and should there be allowed to stand over in a state of rest. According to your accommodations, select a few vigorous, symmetrical, hearty, healthy plants for the window. One plant well tended, will afford you more pleasure than twen- ty, halfnurtured. In our dwellings, one has to make his way between two extremes in the best manner that he can. Without a stove our thin-walled houses are cold as an ice-house, and a frosty night sends sad dismay among our favorites. Then, on the other hand, if we have a stove, the air is apt to be parched, and. unwholesome, fit for salamanders, fat and torpid cats and dozing grandmothers. There is not much choice be- tween an ice-house and an oven. There can be no such thing as floral health without fresh air and enough of it. This must be procured by frequent ventilation. PROTECTING PLANTS IN WINTER. Very many shrubs, vines, roses, etc., usually regarded as tender, may yet be safely left standing in the garden if properly protected. The neck of plants, zt. e. that part at which the roots and stem come together, requires thorough protection ; both because it is the most tender (as some say), and because it is at this point, that freezing and sudden thawing must occur. The black soil absorbing heat rapidly, the neck of a plant will be first and most affected by the morning sun; and this is the reason, we think, rather than any special tenderness of parts, why plants are killed at the crown of the root. Let the ground be well covered with leaves or with coarse manure, and let it come up three or four inches high on the stem. It is better to have the top strawy, rather than dark colored manure. 440 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK It is the sun, and not the frost, that, for the most part, kills the stems of half-hardy plants. Protection is often, therefore, only thorough shading. The Bengal tea, and noisette roses are left out at Philadelphia and at Cincin- nati without detriment. Drive a stake by the side of the plant, and drawing up the branches to it, cover them with straw, or bass-matting wrapped around them. Kegs, barrels, boxes, etc., may be turned over such as are not too high and will sufficiently protect them. Air-holes should be bored in barrels, ete., and the north side is the best for the purpose. Grape vines which need protection should be loosened from the trellis or wall, pruned, laid down on the ground and earth thrown over them three or four inches deep. Isabella and Catawba grape vines will need no protection. TO PRESERVE DAHLIA ROOTS. Tuer least frost destroys these roots. In warm and damp cellars they rot. Very many persons have no cellars at all (a very frequent destitution at the West); others are so small and moist, as to be unfit (our own, for instance) ; and the extreme variations of temperature during the day and night make sitting-rooms and their closets very unsafe places for them. The labor of packing them in sand is not great to those who have it ready or men to procure it ; but to ladies, and especially to many in towns and cities who are enthusiastic cultivators of flowers, but grievously vexed with- poverty of pocket, this plan is inconvenient. Why may not dahlias be kept in the soil? We think there is not the least doubt that they can be protected from JSrost and heat. Every one knows that in spading up in the spring the dahlia beds of the previous year, large sec- tions of the tubers, which had broken off when the main ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 441 roots were removed, are found in a fresh and sound condi- tion. Let a pit be dug say two feet deep, the roots carefully disposed in it, covered with soil, and the whole protected by coarse litter, straw, etc. We do not advise any to ad- venture their whole stock in this manner; but we design to select the inferior sorts from our stock and treat them thus; and if successful, we shall, another year, try our whole stock. HEDGES. 1. WuereE a hedge is properly made and carefully trim- med, it is the most beautiful fence that can be made; and, as an object of beauty, it may be well to form hedges in a wood country; but as a mode of general fencing we deem it totally inappropriate to the condition of a country abound- ing in timber. The labor of setting and tending it until it is established, is tenfold more than is required for a timber fence; a hedge requires from five to eight years for its establishment ; and every year of this time it must be well tended ; when grown, it requires annual shearing ; which, on a long line of fence, is a labor to which few farmers will submit for the sake of appearances. It is lable to get out of order by disease, or the death of particular parts; and, | if neglected a few years, it becomes ragged, a covert for vermin and mischievous animals. In yards, gardens, and lawns, hedges should be grown for ornament, and to serve as screens, and backgrounds. Upon the estates of the affluent where money is less valu- able to the owner than decorations, hedges should be estab- lished. Hedges may also be economical in a prairie coun- try; the labor and expense of making and keeping may be less than would be the cost of timber; but on farms ina 442 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK woodland district they are to be regarded as a lweury; and like all luxuries, they are expensive. 2. The white thorn will do very well for hedges if care- fully tended. The usual materials for hedges, at the Kast, are the English white thorn (crategus oxycantha), the buskthorn (rhamnus catharticus), Newcastle thorn (ecra- tegas crus-galli), honey locust (gleditschia triacanthos), red cedar (juniperus Virginiana), the Washington or Vir- ginia thorn (crategus cordata). The Osage orange (maclura aurantiaca) has been high- ly recommended ; it is eminently beautiful, and if proved to be good for hedging, should be employed. Privet makes a sightly hedge, but is thornless. The Washington thorn is employed in this neighborhood by Aaron Aldredge; it is very beautiful; will require eight or ten years to give it maturity. 3. When the thorn is used, the berries should be gath- ered and mashed, in the fall, and the seed exposed, mixed with moist sand, to the frost of winter. In the spring they should be sown in nursery rows, and at a year old, they should be transplanted. A reserve of plants should be kept: in the nursery to supply vacancies which may occur. The ground should be thoroughly and deeply pulverized by plowing (spading would be much better) and the plants set about six inches apart. The ground should be kept entirely free from weeds; this may be done in a profitable manner by planting bush beans on each side, the tending ‘of which will keep the hedge clean, the ground mellow, besides the profit of the crop. Dr. Shurtliff, of Boston, gives the following brief but excellent directions: ‘Prepare your land in the best manner ; use suitable plants of thrifty growth, the older the better; assort and accom- modate to the different kinds of soil ; preserve all the roots, but crop the tops, leaving only few buds; keep a few in your nursery; set them sloping to the north, and leave the ground a little concave about the roots; keep them clear ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 443 of grass and weeds, and add a little earth to the roots at each hoeing; clear away the leaves at autumn; trim the side branches carefully, and leave the main stems to nature till they are six feet high, then crop off the tops to the height you mean to have your hedge. It will look like a wedge with the sharp end upwards, and will exhibit a most beautiful appearance.” WATERING TREES, ETC. We have observed many persons copiously watering young trees and garden plants. 1, In many cases much water is a positive injury. The roots draw up a larger supply of liquid than there is vigor in the tree to digest or appropriate. In such cases the tissue is enfeebled, the roots decay, and the tree perishes in the trying heats of July and August. 2. It often happens that wetting the tree itself is much better than watering the root. Take a watering-pot and drench the leaves, and limbs and trunk, several times in a day. Inasmall tree a large bunch of cotton or rags may be put in the crotch and saturated with water. It will gra- dually trickle down the stem, and also evaporate, keeping the leaves in a moist medium. This trouble is worth while in case of rare trees difficult to be obtained.