AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 281 



is a better way, and that is, if you have time, let them eat the first crop, 

 and then you plant another (Mr. Bergen's method with cucumbers) ; before 

 that, put straw on and fire it, to destroy the larvae. 



We have a Piyie Apple Pear like the Doyenne ; has yellow skin, spot- 

 ted, red check, fine, melting, sugary, juicy, musk perfume. First quality. 

 Pine apple odor ; ripe in September and October. 



We now have fifty-six kinds of pine apples. 



We have the Celery radish which ought to be better known.. It is ex- 

 cellent, very tender, like marrow. 



Bokhara clover grows from six to eiaht feet high. 



John Campbell, formerly a vice-president of the Institute, presented ears 

 of white flint corn, fully grown, having 600 grains on each, and Yellow 

 King Pillip, with smaller grains, 14 rows, having 740 grains. 



THE OYSTERS OF VIRGINIA. 



Mr. Meigs. — The city of New York is said to pay more for oysters than 

 for meat; and the State of Virginia gives them. Virginia has said that 

 she is robbed of her oysters, and should derive a large income from their 

 sale ! 



New York gives back to Virginia more money in oyster shells, than we 

 pay for the oy.«-ters. The shells are mixed with the otherwise useless dust 

 of conl, in kilns, burned to lime, and shipped to Virginia in vast quanti- 

 ties, where it is used for top dressing grass and crops, giving durable 

 fertility to the land. 



The oysters estimated to be taken from there by the first of July, 1859, 

 are eight million eight hinidred and eight thousand four hundred and 

 ninety-two lushels. That amount of shells will be left, after we have 

 swallowed the tenants, to go on the dry land for the use of vegetables ! 



PLUMS ON PEACH STOCKS. 



The Michigan Farmer, of Feb. 26, 1S>59, says, that at the nursery of 

 Mr. Allen, of Walpole, there are plum trees, of twenty years' growth, on 

 jyeach stocks, all free from warts, while the plum trees in the neighborhood 

 are covered with warts. 



BRICK FENCE POSTS. 



William Lyman, of Moscow, Livingston county, proposes to make fence 

 posts out of clay ; burn them hard ; that they will be strong ; will last 

 forerer ; and that that the boards secured to them will last fifty years ! 



Vide the Genesee Farmer, of Rochester, Blarch, 1859. He has cast 

 them of six feet length, and five inches square, and some only two by five 

 inches square. Believes they can be stood on end in kilns and burned 

 hard — i. e., the silex in them melted — become very strong, impenetrable 

 by water. Cast with suitable holes in them, for fence-making. 



Note by H. Meigs. — They can be burned, but at a cost far beyond our 

 wooden posts; but they are indestructible. Violence will break them, aad 

 so it will any one we can make of iron, or anything else. 



