1882.1 



AND HORIICULTURIST. 



211 



ported from the West Indies are cut before ma- 

 turity. Few persons know how enjoyable a truly 

 ripe Pine Apple is. This is one advantage of 

 cultivating them. In our country it is not near 

 so difficult to grow them as in Europe. Their 

 culture ought to be more common. We pen 

 these lines after viewing some fairly grown speci- 

 mens on exhibition at the April meeting of the 

 Germantown Horticultural Society. 



Massachusetts Apples.— The Baldwin, Rox- 



bury Eusset and Hubbartson Nonesuch, are 



among the most profitable Massachusetts 

 Apples. 



Seckel Pear. — A correspondent of the London 

 Journal of Horticulture notes that Dr. Hosack, 

 the noted Xew York botanist, in a lecture before 

 the New York Horticultural Society in 1819, re 

 marks that " the Syckle Pear has been some 

 time in cultivation, and has all the character- 

 istics of a new variety." 



Quince Culture. — At the Gettysburg meeting 

 of the Pennsylvania State Horticultural Associa- 

 tion, it came out in the discussion that Quince 

 of almost all fruits was greedy for manure. It 

 is useless to attempt to get profitable Quince 

 crops from poor ground. 



SCRAPS AND QUERIES. 



Sulphur for Fuxgus. — We often have letters 

 about fungus attacks. It should be generally 

 known that powdered sulphur—" flour of sul- 

 phur " — is generally successful in destroying all 

 of these minute vegetable organisms. 



Flat Chinese Peach. — May 18th, there came 

 from Mr. P. J. Berckmans specimens of the Peen- 

 to, or flat Chinese Peach. They are about the 

 size of the Alexander or similar early Peach, but 

 seem as if pressed down and widened laterally. 

 The stone is also wider than long. They are 

 also like the other early ones, partial cling- 

 stones, being juicy and of good flavor. Mr. 

 Berckmans specimens were grown in tubs, 

 under glass, and put out on first of April. In 

 Florida it has already become popular, ripening 

 there on the 1st of April. 



Manuring in the West. — " A New Subscriber " 

 in Iowa says : " I like the Gardener's Monthly 

 for some things. It is a very peculiar paper, 

 and unlike any that I have seen. I shall proba- 



bly remain a permanent subscriber, though it 

 seems to me that many of its practical recom- 

 mendations are of no value at all out here. For 

 instance, the whole burden of Eastern men is 

 manure, manure, manure. The trouble here is 

 we have all the manure we need and more. 

 Our virgin soil is one vast bed of manure, and 

 we could spare you half, and still have all we 

 need." 



Our " new subscriber" may remember that 

 the editor of the Gardener's Monthly is per- 

 sonally acquainted with Iowa, and all the other 

 Western States, and knows what is good there 

 just as well as do the people of Iowa themselves. 

 In regard to this manure question, we have 

 heard it before, and now know people who use 

 manure heavily, who not twenty years ago 

 boasted of the " virgin soil," as our correspon- 

 dent does now. Fearing, however, our corres- 

 pondent might not be disposed to place as much 

 weight on the editor's personal experience in 

 Iowa, as on some one now resident there, he 

 glanced through a series of Iowa exchanges, and 

 finds the following, with the signature of 

 John G. Stradley, Cresco, Howard County, Iowa, 

 attached to it. It seems to cover the whole 

 ground : 



" The great majority of the farmers of How- 

 ard county have tried wheat farming as a busi- 

 ness, and for over twenty years they never had a 

 failure. For the past' four years wheat has 

 failed, and every farmer who stuck to it has lost 

 his land and everything else he had made, while 

 the men who made a business of stock and dairj' 

 farming are rich, and those who changed before 

 it was too late are independent. We have had 

 a chance here to compare the two systems and 

 we find that wheat farming impoverishes the 

 land, while stock farming enriches it. The 

 wheat farmer is always a borrower ; the stock 

 farmer nearly always a lender. The wheat far- 

 mer is dependent, while the stock farmer is in- 

 dependent." 



Eureka Peach.— "B," Independence, Miss., 

 writes : " I send you by mail a specimen of the 

 Eureka Peach, which originated near this place, 

 and came into bearing in 1878, and is said to 

 have ripened on more than one occasion by the 

 loth of May. The first fruit ripened this season 

 on the 20th, but was doubtless retarded by the 

 unusually cool weather %ve have had for the last 

 fifteen days. Amsden, Alexander, Briggs' May 

 and Waterloo are just beginning to color, and I 

 think will not be ripe before the 30th of the 

 month, although they have two degrees advan- 

 tage in situation as to temperature, as they are 

 in the valley and the Eureka on a high eleva- 



