editor's table. 



gl!i«s, in the positions required by the device. The entire face of tlie glass tlius trcnlcd, is 

 then covered over with a composition of oil, tallow, and ■wax, in a warm state. When this 

 composition coat becomes solid, the objects arc removed from the glass, which is now sub- 

 mitted to the action of fluorine gas ; or liquid fluorine may be poured upon the glass ; or further, 

 the plate may be treated with fluor spar and sulphuric acid. This is the ordinary treatment 

 involved in glass-etching — the peculiarity of Mr. Smith's process being the mode in which the 

 design or the line of action of the acid is produced. The fluorine corrodes tlie glass only at 

 tiie parts where the flowers or pattern objects have been placed, and hence the forms of the 

 objects, however elaborate or delicate, are faithfully reproduced from the models supplied by 

 nature herself. The ornamental designs produced in this way are extremely beautiful ; the 

 figuring may be colored as fancy suggests, by the common process of " burning-in" in a 

 furnace. 



DowsiNG-Hii.T. NrusERY. — The catalogue of this nursery, at Atlanta, Georgia, is received, 

 and appears to be worthy of the attention of Southern cultivators, from the proprietor having 

 selected his fruit trees for a Southern climate. We should be glad to hear more frequently 

 of Southern nurseries and planting. 



The California Fair. — California exhibits, at the present moment, the most marked difi'er- 

 ence between the Anglo-Saxon and the Spanish race and habits. A fair on a grand scale has 

 been held at Sacramento, and the California Farmer discourses of fruit in a style which must 

 silence some boastful exhibitors among us. On one sprig of a pear-tree was a cluster of twelve 

 large pears; on another, a stem five feet long, wore no less than thirty magnificent peaches, 

 some of which measured seven inches in circumference. Double musk and water-melons, 

 monster pumpkins, 135 pounds in weight ; a Newtown pippin, 15.1 inches by 14 J inches ; lemon 

 oranges 19 inches ; seedling peaches a foot in circumference ; Hovey's strawberries, four inches 

 in circumference ; stalks of corn twenty feet in length, and so on, were some of their trophies. 

 It speaks, too, of parks six miles square, presenting the appearance of a magnificent English 

 domain, the handiwork principally of nature. What a variety of climate our people have to 

 enjoy; cultivation embraces every soil and latitude. When shall we receive specimens of 

 California productions over a good railroad ? 



The Grape Dise.vse.— The devastation of this disease lias been more widely spread in 

 Europe, the passt season, than is generally credited ; indeed, the disease may be called sporadic, 

 and its fatality may be judged of when we state that the owner of a Portuguese Quinta, who 

 used to draw from one of his vineyards twenty to seventy-five pipes of wine every year, drew 

 but three the past season, and that these were of very bad quality. Various methods of treat- 

 ment have been suggested, tried, and abandoned as useless; the only course which gives promise 

 of any success, being that of restraining vegetation by severe pruning. A very interesting 

 new book has been published in London, lately, entitled Gatherings from the Wine Lands. It 

 says, among other clever things, to show there is nothing new under the sun, that the method 

 of imbibing that vinous preparation called "sherry cobbler," was practised by an Asiatic people, 

 with respect to their ale. Xenophon came upon a people who made the Greeks as weary of 

 laughing as they were of marching and fighting, by drinking their barley wine through straws. 



The disease of the grape is said to have destroyed fifty per cent, of the Cincinnati crop, in 

 1855. 



r)ARTLETT PEARS havc bccn Selling in New York market, at wholesale, at §9 per barrel. 

 cultivator of this delicious fruit realized at the rate of $9,200 per acre, from his orchar 



