nary ground plough deep. Pastui'es were constantly dried up, so that farmers had to com- 

 mence feeding stock a month earlier than usual, with our corn not one-third of a full crop. 

 Though the wheat and hay crop was tolerably good, provender run out before the pastures 

 were fit to turn in upon, and serious consequences for the coming year are apprehended. The 

 grass in the early part of the season was very impoverishing, and in some places there is not 

 half a crop. Virginia and Maryland usually send large quantities of corn to market, but the 

 past winter and spring there have been tens of thousands of bushels brought up from tide 

 water, so that the high prices of beef have had a cause. 



The winter's effects on fruit trees have been remarkable. At mid-winter, two weeks of mod- 

 erate weather swelled the buds and started the sap, and the severe season that ensued produced 

 the results we now see in our trees ; some branches of Apple, Peach and Cherry trees failed to 

 put out leaves. The twigs seemed plump and green, but no circulation of sap. Some Peaches 

 opened but few blossoms, while the leaf buds opened freely, except on the outer branches ; the 

 Grosse Mignone suffered most. The Cherry trees almost entirely failed to set their fruit ; what 

 could be the cause ? 



A singular circumstance is observable on some fruit trees this year : a tendency to produce 

 double fruit in both Plums and Peaches ; one of my Peach trees has produced several instances 

 of treble fruit from a single blossom, and on several small branches every bloom has set double 

 fruit. AVhy is this so ? has it been that the amount of organisable matter usually laid up in 

 the fall in the body of the tree, had to expand itself in the spring in less compass in conse- 

 quence of the short growth of last year, and thus giving more support to the fruit buds. The 

 same effect has been observed in other States. — Y. T." 



It is observable that when Pear and other trees are forced to a second bloom the same 

 year, those branches are unfruitful the next ; the forcing the trees received in winter 

 produced the same effect. The setting of double fruit our correspondent has satisfactorily 

 accounted for. The present favorable season will probably put all to rights. — Ed. 



Illinois. — A correspondent, Mr. M. Doyle, at the Sangammon Nurseries, Springfield, 

 Illinois, says : 



"The locust borers have made their appeai-ance to some extent in our locust groves, some 

 of which are very extensive in this part of the country ; in fact, we have scarcely a plant or 

 vegetable but has a pest peculiar to itself. We are in need of all the information we can pos- 

 sibly get on the subject." 



The West. — A correspondent says : 



"The Horticulturist is a great favorite of mine ; in travelling thi'ough some sections you can 

 easily tell its subscribers by the appearance of their farms ; you can see the beautiful young 

 orchards springing up m fine order, while their neighbors, who could as well afford it, have 

 not a tree or shrub on their places, although they have been what is called improving for the 

 last fifteen or twenty years, yet their homesteads look as though they had squatted down last 

 spring. They now begin to inquire of their neighbors how they derived such information ; 

 they, of course, refer them to the Horticulturist. 



The crops look well, yet we are not without trouble, as we are subject to the ravages of in- 

 sects to a frightful degree. About the middle of June, the woods in Illinois swarmed with 

 locusts; they have punctured the small limbs of fruit and forest trees, and deposited their eggs; 

 they are now beginning to disappear. There is also the insect, described by Professor 

 Harris, page 43 of his report. They could be seen depositing their eggs in crevices in the 

 bark of fruit and forest trees, all of which suffer severely from these borers while in the grub 

 state, particularly the Apple, Peach, Mountain Ash, Horse Chestnut, Elms and Oaks ; 

 latter they seem only to attack stunted trees." 



