editor's table. 479 



becoming extinct, as its range of latitude was great, and there were forests of it of fabulous 

 extent yet untouched. Notwithstanding this fact, its bark, from which quinine is made, 

 has become a monopoly of the Bolivian government, and its price unwarrantably enhanced 

 in this and other markets. 



Tlie Flore des Serres recommends the French government to plant the gutta percha and 

 cinchona trees in Guyana, where the climate is propitious for both. The plan is a good 

 one. 



Gossip. — Tliat quaint old writer. Sir Thomas Browne, in his Urn Burial, says : " Grave- 

 stones tell truth scarce forty years. Generations pass while some trees stand, and old fami- 

 lies last not three oaks. To be read by bare inscriptions, to hope for eternity by enigmatical 

 epithets, or first letters of our names, to be studied by antiquaries who we are, and have 

 new names given us like many of the mummies, are cold consolations unto the students 



of perpetuity, even by everlasting languages." Potatoes. We saw, on Saturday, says 



the Newport News, fifty potatoes which weighed fifty and a half pounds ; they were raised 

 on the farm of J. Prescott Hall, Esq., on some low, swampy land which has but recently 

 been reclaimed. We saw them weighed, and consequently know that the statement is cor- 

 rect ; this exceeds anything that we have heard of lately in the potato line. Microscopic 



Photographs. Some microscopic photographs exhibited at Manchester, England, excited 

 much admiration. One, of the size of a pin's head, when magnified several hundred times, 

 was seen to contain a group of seven portraits of members of the artist's family, the like- 

 nesses being admirably distinct. Another microscopic photograph, of still less size, rei)re- 

 sented a mural tablet, erected to the memory of William Sturgeon, the electrician, by his 

 Manchester friends, in Lonsdale Church. This little tablet covered only l-900th part of a 

 superficial inch, and contained 680 letters, every one of which could be distinctly seen by 



the aid of the microscope. Uncommon Growth. Tliere is hanging in our ofiice, says the 



New Haven Register, the forked bough of an apple-tree, each part of which measures only 

 twenty-two inches in length, on which there are one hundred and forty-seven apples ! thicker 

 upon the wood than human ingenuity could possibly affix. They are of an average diameter 

 of two and a half inches, and the weight of the branch is thirteen pounds. It was cut from 

 a tree on the premises of Mr. J. Haley, in the western part of the city, and is called the " Anti- 

 Know-Nothing Apple," from its great yield. Squash. A squash was on view, at Chicago, 



the other day, weighing one hundred and ninety -two and a half pounds ! The Garden. 



No land pays a higher rate of interest than the humble, despised garden. — The quantity of 

 vegetables which it can be made to produce almost exceeds belief ; and farmers may well 

 open their eyes when told that under good management two acres of a garden will be more 

 profitable than twenty acres of a farm as it is usually conducted. In the vicinity of cities 

 and large towns, the raising of vegetables for market is conducted on a large scale, and is 

 very lucrative, and even the poor man can, by his own labors at odd times, secure an abund- 

 ance of food for his family, which is as good as money saved as well as earned. Tows 



and Country. We wish that any hints we can oflfer might induce our stalwart young men 

 who are struggling for a livelihood in towns and cities, to go forth into the country, throw 

 off the livery of conventional life, put on the frock, and, with uproUed sleeves, seize them- 

 selves the plough, and " greatly independent" live. The prolific bosom of mother earth has 

 enough for all her children who will seek their supplies from her abundancies, for giving doth 



not impoverish her ; and scattering her blessings but increases her means. At the last 



meeting of the British Pomological Society, Mr. Snow again showed his new Black Grape 

 with a muscat flavor. It was pronounced by all present to be a first-class sort, and it was 

 stated that it ripens satisfactorily in the same house with the Black Hamburgh. It was 

 named Snow's Muscat Hamburgh. A new French grape came from Mr. Rivers. It h 



