editor's table. 



the ignorance of transplanters, perisli from a mistaken notion of deluging tlieir roots with 

 water daily, when their filDres are so feeble as to dread it as much as a patient afflicted with 



hydrophobia. The most important recent botanical works are Seemann's Popular History 



of Palms, and Dr. Danberry's Popular Geography of Plants, or A Botanical Excursion round 

 the World, each about three dollars in London, and, at the same price, Stark's Popular 



Histon/ of British Mosses. Some novice in botany lately sent abroad a paragraph on bulbs 



containing a perfect germ within, which might be examined by carefully unfolding, &c. 

 The article was popular, and ran the circlet of paragraph scissors. It may surprise some 

 who seized on it, to read the following beautiful lines from Darwin's Botanical Garden, 

 a book of the last century : — 



" Lo! on each seed within its slender rind, 

 Life's golden threads in endless circles -wind ; 

 Maze within maze the lucid waves are roll'd, 

 And, as they burst, the living flame unfold. 

 The pulpy aoorn, ere it swells, contains 

 The oak's vast branches in its milky veins ; 

 Each ravel'd bud, fine film, and fibre-line. 

 Traced with nice pencil on the small design. 

 The young narcissus, in its bulb compressed, 

 Cradles a second nestling on its breast ; 

 In whose fine arms a younger embryon lies, 

 Folds its thin leaves, and shuts its floret eyes ; 

 Grain within grain successive harvests dwell, 

 And boundless forests slumber in a shell." 



The Cpkculio. — Mr. J. R. Gardener, of Sunny Side, Montgomery County, Virginia, informs 

 us that he has been successful in destroying the curculio, by piling small stones, to the 

 height of eighteen inches and about thi-ee feet in diameter, round the trees. Those thus 

 treated, he says, are loaded this season, while on trees ten feet distant, without the stones, 

 the fruit is all destroyed. The person who first tried it was led to do so, by observing large 

 quantities of plums on trees growing wild, in the rocks, in some parts of Pennsylvania. 



Another plan is, to remove the soil from around the tree as soon as the insect was noticed. 

 The eaa-th was taken off about five inches deep, and wheeled away some sixty feet, and 

 scattered about, thus destroying the insect. Trees thus treated are loaded with fruit, while 

 the others are destroyed. 



Mr. A. Fahnestock, of Toledo, Ohio, one of the committee on Mathews' Curculio Remedy, 

 has written to the Ohio Cultivator to say it has been perfectly successful ; that Mr. Barry 

 was misinformed in saying it was a laborious process, as it requires to be done but once ; 

 but still, the remedy does not come to the ear of the public. Why is this ? 



The Largest Peak.— Dr. J. M. Ward, of Newark, N. J., sends us a Duchesse d'Angoultimo 

 Pear, grown by himself, the size and weight of which are positively fabulous to those who 

 have not seen it. When taken from the tree, the weight was 35^ ounces ; its dimensions 

 17:i' inches, in its longitudinal circumference, and 15^ in its cylindrical. The weight is 

 attested by the Editor of the Newark Daily Advertiser, and by Mr. Reid, of Elizabethtown, 

 in the presence of Mr. Redman, of the Southern Cultivator. When wo received it, the weight 

 was diminished by the removal of a decay which had been replaced by cotton ; this reduced 

 the weight to two pounds. It is the largest pear, probably, on record, and comes in very 

 well just now, to ease off a little the remarks made at the Pomologlcal Convention about 

 Dr. Ward's management of his trees ! ! We have had it modelled. It is remarkable that 

 the largest pear of last season also came from Newark. 



