434 



DOMESTIC NOTICES. 



taincd tlio scions in l"<r{7,of Mr. Jonathan Tyson, 

 Jr., an elderly iTondrnian, rcsiilinf^ a milp beyond 

 Jfnkintiiwii. Mr. Hancock kindly oUcrfd to ac- 

 company nie to Mr. Tyson's; but 5infortunately, 

 his subsequent eiitrafjements preventeil his doing 

 so. On the 'JOili ult., I made the contemplated 

 visit in comjiany witli Mr. Rout. IIuist, of this 

 city. A\'e hail the pleasure of finilins" IMr. Tyson 

 at liome, saw the orijrinal tree, and obtained the 

 following satisfactory information in relation to it. 

 The Tyson Pear originated with INlr. .Ionath.^n 

 Ty'son, ileceased. of .Jenkintown. It sprung up in 

 a hedge; and in J794 was removed from the hedge 

 and planteil owl; it being then about an inch in 

 diameter. His son, the jiresent Jonathan Tyson, 

 Jr., was liesirous of grafting the Catharine Pear 

 on it; but the father objected to this course, alleg- 

 ing that it might be a better kind than the Catha- 

 rine. It continued to flourish, and in a few years 

 it bore three pears. The fruit proved so fine, that 

 a number of trees were grafted from it in 1800. 

 Several of these trees we saw; they were large 

 and flourishing, ^\'e were also shown two trees 

 that hail been suckers from the root of the original 

 tree, and are now nearly fifty years old; they like- 

 wise were large, health}-, fine looking trees. The 

 fact, that these two trees bear precisely the same 

 kind of fruit as the original, is conclusive evi- 

 dence that the latter was a seedling that had not 

 been grafted. The original tree is still standing 

 in the yard of a house in the village of Jenkin- 

 town. J\Ir. Buist and myself measured this tree 

 two feet above the ground, and found it six feet in 

 circumference. Very truly, yours, W. D. Brinkle, 

 Philadelphia, Feb. 11, 1847. 



Culture of Grapes at the South. — I have 

 made some progress in the successful cultivation of 

 the Grape, that may not be uninteresting to your 

 readers, and give my mode and the results in as 

 few words as possible. That every one may draw 

 his own conclusion, I state all the facts first, and 

 afterwards mj- success. 



When I purchased the place upon which I re- 

 side, while walking in the garden, my attention 

 was directed to a few grape-vines, (of the varie- 

 ties Isabella, Bland's and Hcrbemont Maileira) and 

 was assured by the former proprietor that they had 

 been of little use to him, invariably blasting be- 

 fore maturitj^ My first year's exjieriment did not 

 give me a ilozen bunches of matured grapes. The 

 seconil, which was 1845, I used the pruning knife 

 in January very freely, and took off closely all the 

 decayed baric, and then gave the vines, (that is the 

 old wood) a thick coating of lime and sulphur, 

 made into a white-wash in the jiroportions of one 

 pound of the former to half a pound of the latter. 

 The result was far beyond my most sanguine ex- 

 pectations. Of the whole amount of grapes pro- 

 duced I took no account, except from three vines 

 of the Isabella. From these three vines I furnish- 

 ed to a relative, giving a wedding entertainment, 

 grapes in jirofusion, for one hundred and fifty per- 

 sons. And so delicious were they in flavor, having 

 remained on the vine till the first of October, that 

 they were preferred to all the other delicacies of 



the evening. They olicilod the ronitnendat ions of 

 every one, and were pronouneed by :ill the most 

 superior fruit of tlie kind that hail e\er been seen 

 here. The last year, 1S16, I pursued the same 

 plan, and though not with altogether the same 8uc- 

 cess, owing to the immense (piantity of rain that 

 fell from the beginning of si)ring till late in the 

 fall, yet with sutFicient success to satisfy me that 

 there is virtue in the apjilication of which I have 

 spoken. My grapes last year were far sui)erior to 

 those of my neighbors, who had not become con- 

 verts to my mode of cultivation. 



I am aware that in all experiments in horticul- 

 ture, we should be cautious in arriving at conclu- 

 tions before we are satisfied of the true causes ; 

 and hence I have been i)articular in giving all the 

 facts connected with my succe.ss. Some may say 

 that it was not the simple barking of the vines 

 and the white-wash. Why then should 1 have suc- 

 ceeded the two years I used it ? — for it was the 

 same soil and the same vines, that before I and my 

 predecessor had been unsuccessful in making pro- 

 duce any thing. I do not claim originality in the 

 matter, being indebted to an article in Ilovey's 

 Magazine of Horticulture for the information that 

 gave me such successful results. The soil in which 

 my grape-vines grow, is a sandy one, made rich 

 by stable manure, and an occasional dressing of 

 wood ashes. They are trained upon trellises about 

 seven or eight feet high, and are i)runed in the 

 summer also. I, however, doubt the benefit of 

 summer prunning, especially to the vigor and health 

 of the vine. Of this, however, I hope to make 

 some further experiments, the result of which you 

 shall have in due time, from the experiments 

 made in this section with the diflTercnt varieties of 

 grape, I fear that we shall be compelled to relin- 

 quish the cultivation of the foreign varieties, as 

 thus far they have by no means answered our ex- 

 pectations Yours very^ respectfully, P. Clayton. 

 Jthens, Feb. 2, 1847. 



P. S. I am using my exertions for the circula- 

 tion of your Horticulturist, and hoi)e to see it on 

 the centre table of every lover of flowers and fruits. 

 Our community is becoming more and more ena- 

 moured with the beauties of the garden, and though 

 we are on the outskirts of a people that for many 

 years have thought of no other flower but a cotton 

 bloom, and considered all attention paid to the 

 cultivation of fruits as time unemployed, we can 

 boast in some few of our gardens of fine collections. 

 We already have upwanls of one hundred vari- 

 eties of the pear, and trust that in a few years we 

 shall be the Boston of the South in the successful 

 cultivation of that delicious fruit. 



The Locust — Mr. Editor : Having been my- 

 self uncertain about the varieties of trees to which 

 the name "Locust" has been applied, and finding 

 many persons with whom I have conversed, give 

 very different opinions about them, I set myself 

 about the investigation, being desirous of procur- 

 ing slocks or seeds for planting about my farm. 

 In the spring of ]X44, I procured seeds from Mr. 

 Thorburi), in New York, and having prepareil them 

 by pouring boiling water over them and letting 



