No. 105.] 513 



CULTURE OF THE PEACH. 



A gentleman in New Jersey, writes thus. " I planted on my farm 

 900 peach trees. I treated them in every way applying ashes and 

 lime, and cleaning the roots, and had 120 left. One near my house I 

 cultivated as I would a cabbage, leaving no grass or weeds near it ; 

 that one is a healthy and vigorous fruit bearer; cultivation does that for 

 it. The tree and all plants must, like animals have good and proper 

 food. The grub worm does not mind ashes, lime or salt, he will crawl 

 out of it, and I have tried by wrapping them in these substances to kill 

 them, but find they do not mind it. I tried it on bots taken alive from 

 a dead horse ; the bots were not killed by it, nor by any of the arti- 

 cles given to a horse as remedies for bots. This animal does not die 

 either in or out of a horse by being enveloped in the articles. As to 

 the peach tree, I wrapped a bandage, and a mat over that around the 

 body of the tree, just under the forking of the branches, yet the worm 

 eat down to the ground. All the remedies applied to the roots of the 

 tree, were, I have no doubt, useful to the soil ; they invigorated the 

 tree, but did not kill the worms. 



^' Tansey planted at the roots of trees has been found to prevent the 

 attack of worms. The worm bores a hole through the bark at the 

 edge of the ground ; its eggs are hatched in June." 



CURING MEAT. 



Mr. Ethan Campbell. — " Between the years 1838 and 1842, 1 made 

 several experiments on curing meat. I tried the exhaustion of air, 

 and high pressure also. I had an iron cylinder made, put in meat, ex- 

 hausted the air by steam vacuum, proved the vacuum by using a glass 

 tube with a portion of water through which the air might be detected 

 in passing. I made a perfect vacuum. I then administered a saturated 

 solution of salt, applied a pressure of five hundred pounds an inch ; 

 the meat was found after all this not to contain a particle of salt. I 

 broke the cylinder by over pressure. I then made a cylinder of the 

 best cast iron, perfectly tight, solid at one end and the other capped 

 with great accuracy and strength. I placed hams in it, exhausted the 

 air, then admitted the saturated solution of salt, kept on pressure un- 

 til portions of the liquor passed through the pores of the iron ; kept it 

 on for half an hour. The ham was not at all salted. I repeated the 

 experiment leaving it under pressure for 24 hours ; the hams were 

 not salted half an inch into the meat. I then tried it for four days, the 

 meat started from the bone, and assumed a round figure. I cut it to 

 the bone and found no salt in it. I put it into fresh water to test the 



