1879. 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



271 



points that make up a good berry." Tliis is 

 going back a quarter of a century, what will our 

 improvers say ? 



Book Gardening. — A "Woodbury, New Jer- 

 sey, farmer writes to the Liberal Press of that 

 place about the short comings of Horticultural 

 Book writers. Our friend believed implicitly in 

 books, and when one good man thought that 

 potatoes should be in three feet apart rows, he 

 steadfastly believed, though more common sense 

 hands demurred. They told him that a cart 

 with manure could not be got through a field of 

 three feet rows, without running in the row •, — but 

 he knew it would because the book said so. As 

 he was "boss" he had his way, but the thing 

 wouldn't work, and in spite of the good books 

 his workmen now plant in two feet nine inch 

 rows. The cart goes along smoothly. The 

 workmen grin because they have beaten the 

 "boss," and the latter grins because the book 

 maker " sold "him. 



Osage Orange Hedges. — Discussions are 

 still going on as to whether Osage Orange is 

 cheaper than wooden fences. That depends. If 

 wood is abundant it may not be. Some talk of the 

 plants "robbing the earth for ten feet on each 

 side, so that nothing will grow." This shows 

 that the hedge has been badly managed. The 

 writer has a hedge twelve liundred feet long, 

 which admits of cropping to within three feet as 

 well as any where else in the field. It has never 

 cost the tenth part of what a wooden fence of any 

 kind would have cost ; but it costs about S2.50 a 

 year to trim and keep in order ; and in this an- 

 nual care perhaps a wooden fence has the ad- 

 vantage. Still in this part of the world the 

 cheapest kind of a wooden fence woukl have cost 

 SI 20, and the annual interest of this even at 4 

 per cent, would have been more than the annual 

 cost of the Osage Orange. 



A well kept Osage Orange hedge is not a nui- 

 sance, nor is it expensive ; the one that robs the 

 ground for ten feet away is quite another thing. 



Early Tomatoes. — A correspondent of the 

 Country Gentleman^ says that cuttings of tomatoes 

 taken in the Fall will root, and notes that plants 

 kept over Winter will give tomatoes two weeks 

 earlier than the best encouraged seedling plants 

 of Spring. 



Testimony on the Sparrows. — An English 



sparrow docs, if it is as bad as some American 

 newsi)apers represent. But American newspa- 

 pers are somewhat like English papers, in this, 

 that they sometimes make a great story out of 

 slender materials. This has been especially 

 marked in articles on the English sparrow. It 

 will eat bread, grain, bugs, caterpillars, buds, 

 and other things indiscriminately rather than 

 starve. It would live in a city, and get what 

 it can from the streets in preference to any 

 other mode of life. But when it is pressed it 

 will go to the grain fields, or if these are not at 

 hand perchance the fruit bushes. It is on the 

 whole a very good bird ; but it is by no means 

 an unmixed blessing. How much of good or bad 

 it has in its nature will depend on what the 

 writer whoever he may be, saw just before he 

 took up his pen to write. Just as we write, we 

 see one running away with a " nasty black 

 beetle;" and once while we were writing last 

 Winter, when the snow was on the ground, we 

 saw one trying to make a dinner off of the leaf 

 buds of a Norway spruce. But we do not know 

 that the tree is any the worse for it now, but we 

 are glad the beetle has been devoured. It 

 might have been a harmless one, but we did not 

 like its looks. 



A Sad Fate. — The Lancaster Farmer thus 

 pathetically describes the " sparrow " situation 

 in those parts : 



" Our native birds have almost entirely retired 

 from their old haunts, and have resigned the 

 field to these impudent 'carpetbaggers,' in dis- 

 gust. Some time ago we noticed a poor lone lit- 

 tle native sparrow sitting on a high post, mourn- 

 fully overlooking Lancaster, something like a 

 lone Indian overlooking the innovations of the 

 white man. How similar their fates." 



If any of our readers have a copy of the 

 Farmer to spare it might be as well to send it 

 with the above passage marked in deep black to 

 Sitting Bull, or some other distinguished mem- 

 ber of the tribe of " Lo— the poor Indian." 



The Profit of Cultivation.— In all pro- 

 fessions it is chietly those who aim at excellence 

 who succeed. In fruit growing the market is 

 never "glutted" in good seasons to the grower 

 of a superior article. Superiority in fact is the 

 insurance against over-stock. On this the 

 Country Gentleman truly observes : " Second- 

 rate, scrubby, knotty apples find a slow sale at a 



paper thinks Englishmen degenerate when they j low price. Those who with good culture, ma- 

 come to this country, and supposes the English uuring, thinning, assorting and careful packing, 



