trate this, as remarked by Professor Lindley ; they always grow best when merely laid on 

 the surface of the soil with a little earth raised round their edges. 



The finest oaks spring from acorns dropped in the forest, and covered by a few leaves. 

 The sycamore, the ash, the beech, the horse-chestnut, &c., will all sow themselves wherever 

 their seeds can stick to the ground, until a coverlet of leaves is moistened by an April shower, 

 and warmed by an April sun. Neither have such seeds any difficulty in steadying themselves 

 by their i-oots ; a fang is driven by a vital impulse into the earth, and it is to that, and not 

 to the buried neck of the stem, that the seedling trusts for support and nourishment. 



It is not a little remarkable^ that not only do seeds germinate unwillingly if buried too 

 deep, but that, although they may grow, they cannot, even if forest-trees, develop with 

 vigor for many years. Atmospheric air, which is indispensable to germination, is too much 

 excluded ; the injury is not from the superincumbent pressure of the soil. 



Tliouin, in his Cours d' Agriculture, remarks, that small seeds should be covered only a 

 line deep, with earth spread very loosely ; seeds, of the size of peas and beans, about three- 

 quarters of an inch deep, and the bulky seeds of our fruit-trees, such as the apricot, nuts, 

 peaches, almonds, with from two to three inches of soil. 



" The Floicer Garden, or Breck's Book of Flowers," is the title of a large duodecimo, pub- 

 lished by J. P. Jewett & Co., of Boston, and a very good hand-book it is, being a revised 

 edition of the one published in 1851. It contains a chapter on the cultivation of plants in 

 the parlor, which we recommend to the ladies. 



Gardening for the South. — Mr. William N. White, of Athens, Georgia, one of the esteemed 

 correspondents of the Horticulturist, has written, and C. M. Saxton & Co., of New York, have 

 published, a very clever book with the above title, which we desire to make fully known in 

 the large section of country for which it is designed. It is an able manual, with directions 

 for a jiractitioner in the kitchen and fruit garden, together with hints upon landscape and 

 flower gardening. Mr. W^liite is a practical man, and his book is evidence that he knows 

 what he inculcates ; if it is well studied and followed, it will prove a blessing to a land 

 where some climatic influences should be counteracted which render the northern books 

 unsuited to the wants of the learner. We hope to see many editions of this work, because 

 it fully deserves a large popularity. 



Michigan Agricxdtural Societi/. — " A littlfe farm well tilled, a little house well filled, and a 

 little wife well willed, are three most desirable objects," says Mr. J. S. Tibbits, in the Trans- 

 actions of the Michigan Agricultural Society, a large octavo volume for 1854, which has been 

 kindly sent to our table by J. C. Holmes, Esq., its industrious and intelligent secretary. 

 Like the Illinois Transactions, already noticed, the work is full of intelligible facts, and is 

 a highly important contribution to the agricultural literature of the country; we pronounce 

 it a big book well distilled. 



It embraces the Annual Report of the State Society, and takes up in detail the proceed- 

 ings of the subsidiary county societies, reports of the great fair, and of the county fairs, 

 statistics of farming, addresses delivered in various places, and incidentally strong argu- 

 ments in favor of a State Agricultural School, that cannot be gainsaid. Lands in abund- 

 ance belonging to the State are at its disposal, and we do not see how its legislators can 

 help themselves from prosecuting so truly valuable a scheme ; a scheme which is, or must 

 be adopted and patronized by every progressive State. 



One of the reports alludes in strong language to the exhaiistive process of perpetual 

 cropping ; this sad but common error the farmers are becoming aware of, but do they realize 

 that the system of impoverishing our lands, without sustaining their natural strength and 

 fertility, will, sooner or later, end in barrenness ? and that if tlie present population may 

 rightfully exhaust one-third part of the arable lands of the United States of their natural 

 fertility, the population which will bo here at the close of the present century will, long 

 before that period, have consumed the remaining two-tliirds of all American territory ! By 

 a calculation which has appeared in a late report of the Patent Office at Washington, it is 

 estimated that one thousand millions of dollars would not more than restore to their original 

 richness and strength the one hundred millions of acres of lands in the United States, which 

 have been already exhausted of their fertility! As a nation of farmers, is it not time that 

 we inquire by what means, and on what terms, the fruitfulness of the earth and its invalua- 

 ble products may be forever maintained, if not forever improved. 



Agricultural schools would furnish all classes an opportunity to acquire a definite laiow 

 ledge of all the known principles by which agricultural pursuits should be conducted. We 



