128 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULtURE. 



cused on the ground of having indulged there in solitary meditation before break- 

 fast ; but would accompany them on condition that any one of them (some being 

 first-rate house-keepers, as we knew, if one might judge by the cleanliness of 

 their establishments and the luxuries of their tables) could tell the prices they 

 were giving at home for filberts ! when, mirabile dictu, they " did not know, but 

 thought it was a quarter and a fippenny bit a pound !" So we got off, and will 

 proceed only to say that it is not in this, and in many cases like it, that we would 

 inculcate home cultivation, merelj' or even in great part only for frofit ; but 

 to cultivate and gratify that taste for fruit culture, and arboriculture generally, 

 which every right-minded farmer should cherish in himself and his family. 



HICKORY-NUTS, BLACKBERRIES, &c. 



Is any sentiment more natural or worthy of encouragement than the pride 

 which every gentleman agriculturist may be supposed to feel in having it in his 

 power to say to his guests that the most luscious fruits and the choicest nuts on 

 his table — the grape, the apricot, the pear, the melon, the peach, the almond, 

 the filbert, and the hickory-nut — are from trees of his own rearing, improved by 

 his personal care and his skill ? We have before remarked oq the wonderful con- 

 geniality of the north side of Long Island to the growth of trees. In the orchard 

 of Judge Mitchill at Plandome, are the most thrifty and vigorous hickory-nut 

 trees we have ever seen, from nuts which he brought so*ue years since from 

 Pennsylvania ; and if we are not deceived by a very bad memory, they are be- 

 ginning to bear in twelve years from the nut. Such is the effect of transplanta- 

 tion and regular culture, in a friendly soil. For taste and skill of this sort, so 

 indicative of fine feeling and a character above the common order, few were so 

 much distinguished as the late General T. M. Formal, of Rose Hill, on the 

 beautiful shores of the Sassafras River, in Maryland. 



We have somewhere a memorandum or list of the great variety of trees 

 growing, in the finest health, at Roswell House, residence of R. L. Colt, Esq. 

 at Paterson, New- Jersey. We shall publish it some day for the sake of those, 

 of whom we hope the number is fast increasing, who may be disposed to sur- 

 round their dwellings with as great variety as possible of the beautiful and in- 

 nocent inhabitants of our forests, with forms of every shape, and habiliments of 

 every hue. A friend at our elbow suggests that in New-Hampshire he has 

 known the common hazel-nut to be in fields or gardens where it was exposed to 

 chance cultivation, and that the nut was much enlarged, while its native flavor, 

 altogether superior to the filbert, was retained. 



It were much to be desired, if any stimulus should be wanting in a case which 

 should require none, that our horticultural societies should ofler medals or pre- 

 miums in some form, for the best specimens of cultivated filberts and hickory 

 and other nuts, and especially for the best blackberries ; for sure we are that in 

 not many years of perseverance in a course of improvement, that berry would 

 take a high stand among our table fruits, as its known sanatary qualities have 

 given it a rank among the most efficient and agreeable medicines. For the ex- 

 ercise of skill and horticultural taste, few things offer a better subject for experi- 

 ment, or one more promising, than the blackberry, beginning with the largest, 

 the sweetest, and the kind most exempt from seed ; for the wild variety is al- 

 ready as great as that of our native grapes, and who knows but that in a shorter 

 time a more interesting result may be realized ? In some parts of the country it 

 may not be too late to preserve the seed of the best ; and from seedlings who 

 knows what new varieties may not come? How wide is the field ! how unlimit- 



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