CRITIQUE ON THE JULY HORTICULTURIST. 



rate views on this subject, and when more men like him get control of these matters, we 

 may expect some useful result from the vast means which our different states, and our 

 general government, have at command for such purposes. But a host of literary 

 "grannys," who think that " education" is only intended for " the professions," must 

 first retire from the field. Railroads, steam engines, and telegraph wires, will run them 

 off the track after a while, and the demands of the time will set the thing right. So we 

 live in hope. 



Birds, fnsects, and other matters. — A man who writes with the perspicuity and force, 

 of J. C. 11., should tell us something to instruct as well as to amuse. There is pith in 

 him, beyond question; and he holds a quarry of information behind these salient arrows 

 which he lets fly with such facile directness. He has a kind heart too; otherwise he could 

 not talk of the charming little birds as he does. But my friend, many of them do catch 

 worms — caterpillars even — and bugs, and spiders, although you may not believe it. 



Closing remarks on the Theory of Pruning. — This is a most comprehensive subject, 

 and I regret that Jlr. Young has " closed" it so soon. The question of " pruning" can- 

 not be fully treated of in a general wa3^ It must be applied to limited culture, as in the 

 garden, the close fruit yard — to dwarf cultivation in fact, where ringing, tortillating, and 

 root pruning may be tolerated. Also, to open orchard culture, and on different princi- 

 ples altogether, in practice, from the other, to make it applicable and understandable to all 

 who would profit bj' its discussion. Dwarfing is, in truth, a perversion of nature — not 

 wronglj' — but for our own convenience and profit; consequently it involves more labor, 

 more ingenuity, and is attended with greater risk, and demands deeper knowledge, and 

 observation, both in vegetable physiology, and in the composition of the soils which may 

 be occupied. In open, natural cultivation, the true theory of pruning is simple. Nature 

 will there do her own work, with a little aid in removing incumbrances and repairing ac- 

 cidents. These performed, as a general rule, the less " pruning," scientifically, the bet- 

 ter. But, good cultivation should be given, always. The best orchards, probably, in the 

 United States, are those which have received little aid from the saw and knife, except in 

 infancy, but whose soils have been well fed, if not originally stored with proper food, and 

 carefully tended. Nature, to be perfect in any of her works, should not be forced. JFe may 

 be impatient. Not so her. In her elaborate and harmonious labors, time must be given for 

 all things; and all we have to do is to understand what she intends, and only lend her 

 that grateful aid which will be amply repaid in ten-fold blessings upon our endeavors. 



Fruit growing at the South. — B}' " South," I suppose is here meant any territory 

 below Mason and Dixon's line, for the neighborhood of Washington is not farther south 

 than Cincinnati, which at the real " south," is called " north." It is a most refreshing 

 idea to one who has the true feelings of an American about him, that there is a spirit 

 waking up for good cultivation of any thing in that hitherto tabooed District of Columbia 

 — as if it was not enough that the political bile of the country should concentrate there 

 for its annual eruptions, but that its influence should keep one of the naturally loveliest 

 spots on the globe, about it in a state of sterility. To foreigners, familiar with the capi- 

 tals of their own country, after visiting Boston, New-York, and Philadelphia, "Washing- 

 ton must look like a city of magnificent conceptions, wholly blocked out, partially built 

 UD, and then newly caught and squatted down into one of the most forbidding soils in 

 the whole compass of the American continent. Instead of a place where the good taste 

 and high cultivation of the several states should congregate and plant itself, to embellish 

 tional capitol, ever}' thing of the kind seems to have shunned it as they would an 



mosphere of pestilence. I first knew Washington when a boy. Its maiket was then 



