moisture as the air will hold ; or. by corking it, the heated air inside raifrht be 

 rendered sulliciently dry for a Melocactus or a Maniniillaria. You may lix on 

 the proper degree of heat wliieh will best suit your "Wardian Case, from 4(i'^ to 

 05^ or 70^, or more, and with a common lamp, quite out of sight, the refpiired 

 degree is kej^t uj) nobody knows how. I should not wonder to see one of thera 

 at work in the Crystal Palace. If I wished to push the Wardian Drawing-room 

 Case into the world, I would place one or two of them there, to be heated to the 

 right pitch by the "Waltonian system of bottom and top heat. With the Waltonian 

 Case for propagation, you cannot have the cuttings too close, but, if you raise 

 seedlings in it, they must have fresh air as soon as they are up." 



Y I SITS TO COUNTRY PLACES, NO. 1. 

 AROUND NEW YORK. 



The vicinity of New York, as might naturally be expected where commerce has 

 left its most remarkable imprints, and has consigned to the industrious and suc- 

 cessful au amount of spending money nowhere else, in this country, to be paral- 

 leled, presents some remarkable features of rural life and adornment which it is 

 well to chronicle. 



Breaking away from our editorial chair, we have lately made excursions to 

 some of these spots, omitting, for the present, many places that are worthy of 

 remark. 



We first visited Dr. J. M. Ward, near Newark, N. J. The doctor is engaged 

 in the laudable pursuit of fruit culture, for the New York market. This he does 

 from a love of the subject, no less than with a view to the bencGt of himself and 

 his family ; his example is one which we should be glad to see followed by other 

 gentlemen, who, by showing what may be done by the employment of capital and 

 intelligence, will be the means of teaching others, and thus a better supply of 

 wholesome fruit will be at the command of our great cities, now but half supplied. 

 The demand appears to be unlimited ; in New York, for instance, his agents, the 

 middle men, a class of honest dealers who have risen up since the mode of sending 

 fruit by wholesale, instead of accompanying it, and chalfering for the market value, 

 keep an account of the quantity received from each cultivator, and allow full re- 

 turns in a most business-like way. Thus one of the most serious difficulties is 

 obviated. Dr. Ward employs pickers at so much a bushel or quart, and by the 

 hour ; he can be mostly at home to superintend these operations ; the fruit is 

 forwarded by a regular steamboat, consigned to the middle-man, who receives it 

 within an hour or two, has his market engaged for each variety, and the distribu- 

 tion goes on like clock-work. You may leave Dr. Ward's at breakfast-time, and 

 dine at Dclmonico's, on his strawberries, which were being picked when you started ; 

 or be at a private party in the Fifth Avenue, in the evening, enjoying his grapes 

 or pears, which left Newark at four o'clock. 



The proprietor enjoys a great advantage of his own ; as the fruit ripens by 

 degrees, the first picking of grapes, blackberries, or strawberries, being insufficient 

 for market, the family have the earliest for themselves and their friends, and, by 

 the time the period of abundance has arrived, they have probably had sufficient 

 to satisfy all, and can devote the whole remaining crop to sales. Dr. Ward has 

 five acres of strawberries, an acre and a half of raspberries, one acre of grapes, 

 " undred cherry-trees planted along his paths and roads, in such positions as 

 to injure the other crops by their shade, one thousand pear-trees, standards 



