400 3£agnificent Crrapes — Sprouts around Trees. [A\.ig^st> 



Magnificent Grapes. — Mr. Curtis, of Cambridge, Massacliusetts, 

 is furnishing for market, from his green-house, magnificent black 

 Hamburg grapes, at three dollars a pound. It is said that the vinery 

 of the Duke of Portland, at Walbeck, once produced the largest 

 bunch of grapes ever grown in England. A bunch of the Syrian 

 weighed nineteen and a half pounds, and was sent by his grace as a 

 present to the Marquis of Rockingham, and was carried to Wentworth 

 House, a distance of twenty miles, by four laborers, two of whom car- 

 ried it on a staff by turns, just in the same way as the cluster of grapes 

 was carried from the brook of Esheol to the camp of the Israelites. 



Soap Suds for Currant Bushes. — A correspondent of the 

 Indiana Farmer says: — "I have found the cultivation of currents 

 to be very profitable. By care and attention I greatly increased the 

 size of the bushes and the quantity and quality of the fruit. My 

 bushes are now about eight feet in hight, and remarkably thrifty. 

 The cause of this large growth, I attribute, in a great measure, to the 

 fact that I have been in the habit of pouring soap suds and chamber 

 lye around their roots during the summer season. I am satisfied 

 from my own experience, and that of some of my neighbors, that this 

 treatment will produce a most astonishing efi'ect upon the growth and 

 product of the bushes, and would advise others to give it a trial." 



Blue Grass and Woodland Pastures. — Cassius M. Clay 

 gives some valuable diTections in the Ohio Farmer, respecting blue 

 grass pastures. He says the older the sward is the better. He 

 has a pasture which has not been broken for more than sixty 

 years, and it is the best on the farm. As to woodland pastures, 

 he says they will keep young stock growing, or old stock "on foot," 

 but will not fatten them. " Just as far as there is shade, the grass 

 is deficient in nutritious qualities — that grass which is most ex- 

 posed to the sun being best." 



Sprouts Around Trees. — Allow no suckers or sprouts to issue 

 from the roots of your fruit trees ; cut them all even with the surface, 

 and arrest every new development as soon as it appears. Every par- 

 ticle of new wood from this point diminishes the vital force of the 

 system, without yielding anything valuable in return. Pear trees art 

 more seriously injured by a neglect of this duty, than other trees, as 

 they are more delicate and less hardy. — Germaiitoivn Telegraph. 



