carricil oflf about 8 per cent, of the above, and the slugs have attacked many of the trees 

 very voraciously, but the latter depredator Mr. Barker has eoncjuercd by constant killing:. 

 Tlie Seckel jiear has been least subject to the blight, the Louise Bonne the most so, and 

 Piatt's Bergamot the next. Mr. Barker is just tlie enthusiastic planter we like to see; ho 

 has not expended all his money on houses, though these are all-sufficient for comfort, but 

 has given lus attention to garden and orchard, and ornamental planting, in a manner that 

 promises to make his place in a short time one of the most attractive within the distance of 

 a daily drive from Philadelpliia. He is realizing the enjoyments of true country life, at the 

 same time that a large city business receives its due attention ; in short, we can say Mr. B. 

 lias begun ri<jltt, precisely as we have so often recommended. 



Gossip. — Agriculturists have their jokes as well as literary men. Judge Peters, of punning 

 memory, one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Agricultural Society, commenced a 

 reform in butter making, as an example that should render Philadelphia what it is, the 

 best butter market in the world. At his first experiment of making sales in the market 

 house, his butter was seized as being of short weight, and his weights were consequently 

 sent to the examiner, coming home stamped, C. P., for Commonivealth of Pennsylvania. 

 "Ah!" said the inveterate and veteran wit to his wife, "they've found us out and marked us 



C. P., Cheating Peters!" A lady of our acquaintance has lately been much interested by 



a family of flying squirrels which were born inside a latticed shutter of her boudoir win- 

 dow. At Dr. Ward's we saw a wren's nest in a similar situation in the library window of 

 the good doctor, who, to give no disturbance to his welcome visitor, kept liis shutters closed 

 till the brood was gone. This kind of attention humanizes and delights the lover of 



nature. Of late years many beautiful wall flowers have been raised in Germany, such 



as crimson with white stripes. These have been originated between the wall-flower and 



the stock, and well deserve attention. The great verbena, in England, now is the 



Favorite, with exceedingly large trusses of flowers, of a rich dark scarlet. To destroy 



mice in a garden, bury pickling jars in the groiind, with their mouths even with the surface ; 



pour a little water in them, and the mice will fall in during the night and be drowned. 



Mr. Snow, of Chicopee, Mass., has devoted himself to a speciality, cultivating verbenas 

 alone. The idea is a good one, and might be successfully followed by others. Rhododen- 

 drons should be taken up in this way, and every hardy kind dejnonstrated to be so. The 

 Messrs. Waterer, of England, have done this ; they get fifty guineas sometimes for a fine 

 new plant. They have hybridized the Himalayan and American kinds till the variety is 

 infinite. The Belgian rhododendrons, hardy and fragrant, are a great acquisition among 

 lis, but we have failed in introducing some of the best of our own country. The dande- 

 lion is very prolific of seeds, as many as two hundred ripening on a single plant. To 

 exterminate them they must be cut very low down, for without this treatment numerous 

 new sprouts appear, and getting rid of them becomes yearly more diflicult. The manu- 

 facture of beet-root sugar continues to prosper in France. There is a company established at 

 Dresles, with a capital of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, dividing 15 per cent, annu- 

 ally. Last year they grew 1200 acres of beet, from which they made sugar and alcohol, and 

 with the pulp fed an enormous herd of animals. The State exacts an onerous tax of two 



hundred dollars the hectare of two and a half acres. The waterworks of the new crystal 



palace, near London, are spoken of on all hands as beautiful in the extreme. Tlie number 

 of jets is nearly 12,000, discharging 120,000 gallons of water per minute; jet succeeds jet, 

 fountains of all kinds sparkle and dash into fantastic forms, and on each hand a vast 

 torrent struggling perpendicularly to the sky, sighing and surging, and panting, like some 

 fierce water god endeavoring to force its way upwards from a subterranean prison, surrounded 

 by a crowd of attendants clustering round its base, and giving solidity to the space he stood 



