EDITOR'S TABLE. 



Raisixo FnnTS from Seeds. — I have read ■with pleasure, and I hope with profit, too, your 

 remarks on "Raising Fruits from Seeds," and tlic importance of husbanding "home reeources." 

 Too little nttention to this important subject has hitherto been paid by fruit-growers; I trust your 

 woll-timcd and judicious remarks will wake up a new and livelier interest in improving the 

 native fruits, by a more general and thorough cultivation. There is mueli meaning in the word 

 cuKivation, whether applied to the -heart or the mind, tlie garden, the orchard, or the farm. All 

 need careful, constant, and thorough cultivation. To plant a rose, or a raspberry bush, and leave 

 it to "cut its own fodder," or neglect it in its infancy, is not cultivation, any more than for a 

 mother to neglect her infant ofl^pring, and deny it the food congenial to its nature, would be 

 to nurse and cherish it during its helplessness, and prepare it for usefulness, and the rich fruits of 

 a Ion"' and virtuous life. If we would hope for rich clusters of good fruit, we must not only 

 plant and transplant, but carefully nurse, feed, cherish, cultivate ; and the process must go on 

 and on, unto perfection. The wild flowers in our fields, and the wild berries upon our plains, in 

 our valleys, and upon our mountain tops, are susceptible of great improvement and perfection by 

 cultivation. These wild natives of the forest — the long blackberry, the red and the black rasp- 

 l^erry — are all vastly improved in size and flavor by being removed from the forest and the field 

 to the garden, and, under the watchful eye of the gardener, receiving food adapted to its nature, 

 in the form of manure, and proper cultivation, doubles its size, and more than trebles its value 

 for the table. What a luxury to the lovers of fruit is a bowl of berries plucked from the bush 

 in your garden, planted, nursed, and cultivated with your own hands ! That luxury it has been 

 my pleasure to enjoy for a number of years, in the shape of native gooseberries, of the smooth 

 species, blackberries, white, red, and black raspberries ; they have more than doubled in size and 

 amount of fruit, and increased in richness since taken from the woods and cultivated in the 

 gai-den. The black raspberry, especially, is easy of cultivation, and is multiplied to any desirable 

 extent by barely placing the end of a luxuriant twig, while in growth, an inch or two in the 

 earth. In a few weeks the top thus buried in the soil takes root — cut it six inches from the 

 ground, and you will have a fine plant growing with great luxuriance, but upwards, and ready 

 for transplanting the ensuing autumn or succeeding spring. I have a fine bush of the white 

 blackberry, a native of the Green Mountains of Vermont, in great perfection, and capable of 

 being divided and transplanted into many bushes next spring, and hope, in due time, to accom- 

 modate myself and neighbors with this delicious fruit for the table. I may seem a little enthusi- 

 astic, but, believe me, there is a luxury in cultivating and partaking of the fruits of the earth, 

 as well as in receiving and in doing good. E. P. W. — Montpclicr, Vt. 



"The Spuixg Flo-uter Gakden," in the June number of the Horticulturist, is so much to the 

 purpose, and the idea of planting bulbs when in full bloom, comes home so close that I should 

 have thought you were "poking fun" at us, if I had not known the practice to be so common 

 elsewhere. There is, however, another error very frequent at the south-west, in planting what 

 are generally called Dutch bulbs. Many suppose because winter sets in later, and digging the 

 garden can be done in some seasons even late in December, that bulbs may be planted later here 

 than at the north ; but it ought not to be so. These bulbs bloom much earlier here than with 

 you, and if kept out of the ground till late, they have to bloom before they are ready (if the 

 expression be a proper one), and the flowers will be poor. On the 23d of December, 1851, I 

 planted two dozen Tulip?, of the same kind I had planted already in the middle of October ; 

 the bulbs were, to all appearance, perfectly sound ; they came into bloom almost as early as those 

 of the first planting (only three days dift'erence), but the flowers were small, lasted only a few 

 days, and when I came to take up the bulbs, they were lean and lank, having none of that solid 

 look one expects to see in a Dutch bulb. I usually plant my bulbs in October — the fore part of 

 November will do very well, but the only excuse for planting late in December should be the 

 imjiossibility of getting the bulbs sooner. J. M. I. Smith. — Fmjctteville, Ark. 



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