CURRENT PUBLICATIONS IN RURAL ART.. 525 
be placed in a frame, and covered with leaves and boards till January, 
then gradually started and sparingly watered with guano water, made 
by dissolving four or five pounds of guano in a barrel of water. Keep 
the runners cut off, the temperature at 75° by day and 60° by night, and 
a crop of fruit may be expected in ten or twelve weeks after the vines 
are brought into the green-house. 
Mr. Merrick concludes his book with a descriptive catalogue of several 
hundred varieties, filling sixty-eight pages, compiled from various Amer- 
ican and European authorities, “which shows 2 great amount of labor, 
and is more complete than any other extant. 
CRANBERRY CULTURE. By aes J. White, a practical grower. Illustrated. 12mo. 
pp. 126. New York: Orange Judd & Co, 1869. 
The culture of cranberries is still in its infancy. Within a few years 
they have attracted deserved attention, and the demand has increased 
much faster than the supply. Thirty to forty years ago but few were 
gathered, which were sold at 75 cents to $1 per bushel; “put the steadily 
increasing “demand has caused the prices to advance, and notwithstand- 
ing the greatly extended production, they have risen and ranged from $4 
to $6 per bushel, and in 186869 many growers realized $10 per bushel. 
Some of the best cranberry bogs in New Jersey are worth $2,000 per 
acre. 
The cranberry grows naturally in moist bottoms. It requires a peat 
. or muck subsoil, free from loam or clay, which, where the peat is six or 
eight feet deep, should be covered with beach sand to the depth of five 
or six inches; where the peat is only a foot or two deep, two or three 
inches of sand are sufficient. The latter should be clean, rather coarse, 
and entirely free from any mixture of loam. A good test for the proper 
sand or gravel to be used in cranberr y cuiture is this: Take a portion 
of the soil, and compress it tightly in the hand; if it is suitable, it will 
fall apart upon being released ; but if composed in part of loam, it will 
adhere together after the pressure isremoved. The cranberry will grow 
in pure muck, but in such case the growth is apt to be so vigorous as to 
render the vines unproductive. The sand checks the too luxuriant 
growth of the vine, and prevents the growth of weeds. Flooding in 
winter is desirable, for the purpose of killing the vine-worm and other 
insect pests. 
In planting cranberry vines several modes have been followed: 1st. 
Sod planting, by taking from their native marshes sods containing cran- 
berry vines, moss, turf, &c., and placing them on prepared or unprepared 
meadow, was formerly practiced, but is now discarded. 2d. Hill planting, 
with bunches of clean vines, in drills two feet apart each way, and a 
handful of vines planted at each intersection ; but large bunches have 
a tendency to dry up and become woody, thus injuring the plantation. 
dd. In drills requiring no sanding, but susteptible of being prepared 
with the plow, the best method is to ‘‘ strike out” the eround with a 
plow, in rows three feet apart, and scatter the vines thinly and evenly 
along the furrows, putting only one or two in a place. They should be 
inclined against the “land side,” projecting four or five inches above the 
surface, after which the hoe is required to fill up the furrow and thor- 
oughly cover the roots; this causes them to sucker and grow more 
luxuriantly than when left standing upright, to be swayed by the winds. 
4th. On soils properly prepared by. spreading sand over muck or peat, 
the best mode is to mark out the ground fourteen inches apart with a 
small sled having three runners; ‘the vines are then dropped in these 
marks, say two in a place, fourteen inches apart in the rows, and pressed 
