enough for the table, for which it will be a fine ornament. It is a hybridized fruit. From 

 the somewhat immature state of the seed, we should judge that the grapes had been pulled 

 prematurely, and that a greater development of the saccharine principle would have resulted 

 from its longer continuance on the vine. 



It was grown, in Hamilton, by the Rev. James Brennan,aud is quite hardy, even in Canada. 

 The bunches weighed from sixteen to twenty-four ounces ; the vine is a most i^rolific bearer, 

 producing and ripening this year, cold and backward as it has been, one hundred and thirty- 

 four clusters, a great many of them weighing a pound and a pound and six ounces. It is 

 a decided acquisition. Mr. Fearman is the agent for its sale, which, we predict, will be 

 equal to his ability to supply. 



With the grape came a photograph, exhibiting the vine covered with its tempting bunches. 



We seem to be entering upon an era of new grapes ; hybridizing has just begun to exhibit 

 its results, and we may well congratulate the successful experimenters, but still more the 

 benefited public. A good gardener said to us, lately : " I consider the introduction of a 

 new and valuable flower to confer a greater honor than being elected President of the United 

 States." We add, that the originating an entirelynew and valuable fruit — a grape like this, 

 or the " Kebecca" — confers more real honor than to be the factitious Emperor of France. 



Errata. — On page 509 there is an error of the printer, regarding the Church Pear ; it 

 should be read, "ripens slowly from the 15tli of September to the first week in October." 

 Also, the^^wre of No. 1 should have been called " Huntingdon," and No. 2 is the "Church" 

 Pear, which were reversed. At page 533, we are made to call an Abies a Larch, for the want 

 of the word and after "Abies Kjempferi." 



Gossip. — A correspondent lately compared the usual habitual mode of trimming aj)ple- 

 orchards by the ignorant, who have learned from their fathers that spring was the time to 

 do it, to the Connecticut deacon's ideas of family government. He read in his Bible, " cor- 

 rect thy son. betimes," which he construed to mean by times, or stated periods. Accordingly, 

 he was accustomed to call his boys before him at regular intervals, and give them the rod, 

 however exemplary their conduct might have been ; thus fulfilling, as he thought, a Scriji- 



tural injunction. Perthes, the celebrated German bookseller, established himself in that 



business not merely for the purpose of making money, but with a deep feeling of the im- 

 portant part which a bookseller of the present day may perform in the intellectual and moral 

 elevation of the community to which he belonged. He had observed that where a book- 

 seller possessed an educated taste, works of a high class were in demand, and, in the reverse 

 case, a licentious and worthless literature had a wide circulation. This is true in all coun- 

 tries, and is applicable to newspaper publishing as well as books. The bookseller here, 



generally boasts that he has no literary taste whatever. The resident medical officer of 



St. Thomas's Hospital, London, asserts that, in Paris, last year, he watched the growth of 

 grass seed sown upon earth prepared with the " town guano" for a lawn, at the Duchess 

 d'Alba's, and on the eighth day it was mown. At Milan, where this guano is extensively 

 adopted, and the town produce for years has been converted to its legitimate uses, the land, 

 he says, yields eight cro^is of grass a year. He ought to have added that its use is in con- 

 junction with systematized irrigation. [See the Leader of August 30.] The name of the 



town in England, Sajfron-'WaXHen, has puzzled us a long time. The latest Floricultural Cabinet 

 says it originated from safi"ron being first planted at Walden, in Essex, where it increased so 

 rapidly as to confer a name on the place. It grows there plentifully ; the stigmas of this 



plant are cut away and dried, forming the article so much employed as a dye. An ex- 



iraent has been tried, of considerable interest, to prove what cflect the different kinds of 

 had on the plants grown below them. Five years ago, a four-light frame was devoted 



