466 



THE CULTURE OF THE CHINESE PRIMROSE. 



to market per day, for some weeks, and are 

 supposed to have realised, last season, forty 

 thousand dollars clear of all expenses. 



EoBERT L. Pell of Pelham, Ulster coun- 

 ty, N. Y., is known to have raised, for seve- 

 ral years past, four thousand barrels of 

 Newtown Pippin Apples per year ; and 

 what he chooses to sell in New- York city, 

 will always command six dollars per barrel. 

 Those he sends to London have sometimes 

 sold [at retail] as high as twenty-one dol- 

 lars per barrel. Last season Mr. Pell's 

 crop was ten thousand barrels.* Suppose, 

 for argument's sake, that one-third of this 

 amount is swallowed up in expenses, there 

 is still left the handsome sum of forty thou- 

 sand dollars. 



Dr. R. T. Underhill, of New-York, has 

 a vineyard of twenty acres of Isabella and 

 Catawba grape vines at Croton Point, on 

 the Hudson river. It is a well known fact, 

 that some thousands of baskets of grapes, 



from this vineyard, are annually sent to 

 New- York, and find ready sale at nine dol- 

 lars per hundred pounds. 



The doctor says there ought to be started 

 a hundred vineyards immediately as large 

 at his ; and we coincide with him. New- 

 York city, with Brooklyn and Williams- 

 burg, is half as large as Paris ; and in this 

 latter city, ten million pounds of table 

 grapes are consumed yearly. 



You will, I think, be surprised to hear 

 that many wealthy farmers, near Philadel- 

 phia, buy their apples yearly, — this year, at 

 one dollar per bushel; and this, too, when 

 they acknowledge that feeding cattle and 

 raising grain does not pay more than three 

 per cent, on the capital invested in farm- 

 ing. Some of them mean well ; they have 

 intended to plant out trees every year for 

 the last twenty years ! 



B. G. BOSWELL. 



Philadelphia, Feb. 14, 1848. 



THE CULTURE OP THE CHINESE PRIMROSE. 



BY S. B., NEAR PHILADELPHIA. 



A FEW REMARKS, upon the cultivation of 

 one of the most desirably popular and free 

 flowering winter plants, — one, too, so ea- 

 sily cultivated by all who have a taste for 

 flowers, and a window that lets in the least 

 rays of the sun, will, perhaps, be accepta- 

 ble to many of your readers, as this is the 

 time to prepare for next winter's blooming. 

 The Primula sinensis, or Chinese Prim- 

 roses, are window or parlor plants of easy 

 culture; and, when properly attended, the 

 pink and white varieties afford a constant 



[* We know the apple crop at the Pelham farm, last sea- 

 son, was an enormously large one; but we presume our cor- 

 respondent's estimate of that crop is only an estimate, and not 

 a precisely ascertained amount. We endeavored to obtain 

 an exact account of the product of this really great orchard 

 for 1847, but without success. Ed.] 



succession of flowers from the 1st of De- 

 cember to the 1st of April. If the cultiva- 

 tor has a few plants to begin with, he would 

 do well to choose two plants of each varie- 

 ty, and place them where they will receive 

 the free benefit of the sun, so that they may 

 ripen their seed early and well. In choos- 

 ing such plants to save your seed from, take 

 those whose flowers are nearly semi-double, 

 with thick and regularly shaped petals ; 

 and it would be better never to cut the 

 flowers of the seed plants, as the seed 

 saved from the first flowers is the best. I 

 need not say that selecting the seed care- 

 fully, from fine blossoms and of the best 

 varieties, is a matter of great consequence ; 



