88 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



manure, with a leaf not so large as my hand and as thick and 

 heavy as a board, there was at the rate of one thousand pounds 

 to the acre, worth nothing, and which, as soon as it was 

 weighed, I threw into the barnyard. That made my experi- 

 ment a failure, because I did not get so many pounds over 

 and above what this plot produced as I said I would make. 

 I regard the experiment as a failure ; but those are the facts. 

 It was just such a failure, however, as some of these worried 

 and harassed tobacco-farmers would like to see repeated on 

 their farms. 



Adjourned to two o'clock, p.m. 



Afternoon Session. 

 The Board met at two o'clock, Dr. Loeing in the Chair. 



WINTER GARDENING AND GLASS STRUCTURES. 



BY WILLIAM C. STRONG, ESQ. 



"We are familiar with and deeply interested in the exploits 

 of men who have braved the rigors of the Arctic region and 

 withstood its intense cold. Men are naturally strong and 

 are also capable of providing for and protecting their weak 

 points. They "pluck courage from the nettle danger," and 

 become muscular by endurance. 



But plants are born of heat ; they are the children of the 

 sun ; they bask in its smiles and are cut down and perish by 

 the first breath of the frost-king. With what propriety can 

 we speak of gardening at a season of the year, when all 

 nature is locked in icy, death-like chains ? Yet it is a fact, that 

 at St. Petersburg, which is 1,200 miles north of the northern 

 line of Massachusetts, the most tender and delicate tropical 

 plants are cultivated in the dead of winter. The winter gar- 

 den of Prince Potemkin, which is three hundred feet long and 

 in the form of a semi-circle, at the end of a saloon of the 

 palace of Taurida, is thus described by Storck : " The walks of 

 this garden meander amidst flowery hedges and fruit-bearing 

 shrubs, winding over little hills and producing at every step, 



