88 [Senate 



the European mountain ashj white and red Linden, red maple, weep- 

 ing ash, weeping beech, weeping ehn, Madeira nut, (^one five years 

 ohl bearing fruit;) Spanish chesnut, now in fruit, (this tree has also 

 some blossoms on it at this time;) apricots grafted on plum stocks 

 are very thrifty. 



In passing through Mr. M's. barn yard, I noticed a couple of 

 horses, one of which was hoppled with a strong iron chain. What 

 mischievous young horse have you there ? He replied it is my old 

 family mare Kate, who has carried me and my wife and children safe 

 for the last twenty-one years I I bought her when she was about 

 four years old, but she will break fences now (wooden ones) with her 

 irons on; she is active and cunning. 



I remarked at Nyack the work of the locust, and Mr. M. and 

 Thomas A. Emmet, Esq. examined with a good microscope, a twig 

 worked by the little insect. The twig being split in the line of the 

 work, exhibited the whole process of the egg deposit. The twig is 

 pierced nearly to the centre at every three quarters of an inch, or 

 nearly so. The wood is rendered fibrous, it is then lifted up, and the 

 eggs, which are of a long oval form, are deposited side by side at an 

 angle of about 45 degrees to the grain of the twig, and the fibrous 

 tuft of wood placed over them, with its end sticking out. These in- 

 cisions being repeated every inch on a line for some few inches in 

 each twig. With the microscope we saw the eyes of the young 

 locusts, always heads to the centre. The general outline of the young 

 animal was perceptible through its delicate membranous cover They 

 moved slightly on being disturbed. Almost every tw^ig so operated 

 on by the locust was entirely dead. The magnifying power of the 

 microscope was })erhaps forty or fifty. 



I visited an apple orchard at Nyack, which arrested my attention 

 by its regular and healthy appearance. I found young Van Houten 

 at home, who with perfect good feeling and true politeness gave the 

 account of the orchard which I desired. When his father was about 

 fifty years of age, he undertook to plant 150 winter pippin trees on 

 that spot. His neighbors thought him an old fool to plant twigs of 

 apple at his time of day. Young Mr. Houten then about sixteen 

 years of age, held the little nurslings in the holes which his father 

 filled with soil. The old gentleman continued to prune them so that 

 they are widely branched, and open for air and sun within the 

 mass of branches. For twenty or twenty-two years past, the old 

 gentleman has often received $1,000 a year for his apples. Some- 

 times $6 per barrel, sometimes sold in the orchard for $1 per barrel. 

 That old gentleman and his wife are now between them 174 years 

 old. Let no man be afraid to plant winter pippins because he is fifty 

 or sixty years old. 



I have been highly pleased with my excursion. When gentlemen 

 of high rank in learned professions are found turning that intellectual 

 force which has influenced the most wealthy and intelligent portions 

 of mankind, from law, {)olitics, &c. to that greatest, best of all arts, 

 agriculture, I look for good results and I find them. The old world 

 is hard at work in this direction, and I hope that we shall watch her 



