Foreign Notices : — North Atncrica. 75 



" old country." I had to send 240 miles for my first year's stock of seeds, 

 but I shall now have a good supply for future wants, and enough of the 

 useful products, such as potatoes, beet, parsneps, carrots, beans, celery, cab- 

 bages, &c., for winter stock ; all which will require some management to 

 preserve from our intense frosts. The radishes here grown are as large 

 almost as Swedish turnips, and, I think, are not so good as the kinds we 

 used to buy at Covent Garden Market. The lettuces, also, are very 

 inferior to those produced by your Bayswater neighbours. Of potatoes 

 I have four sorts, of peas four kinds, and of beans three sorts. I have 

 planted one bed of asparagus from young plants, and a bed of strawberries, 

 besides borders of the indigenous strawberry, which grows in the meadows, 

 and which is of fine flavour, and would improve much by cultivation. So 

 great is the profusion of these strawberries, in certain spots, that one 

 meadow of six acres, that I saw nineteen miles hence, in June, the owner 

 told me, had furnished more than twenty bushels to his neighbours, 

 besides his own family consumption. The wild raspberry has furnished my 

 wife with her stock for preserves ; the huckleberry ( Faccf nium) of our 

 mountains, also, is a wholesome agreeable fruit for tarts and preserves, as 

 is a small wild cherry (the crab cherry), which is now ripe, in vast abundance, 

 in our low woods. Cranberries (Oxycoccus macrocarpus) also occur, and 

 the blackberry (iJubus) is particularly fine, and well worth preserving for 

 family purposes. 



I must not omit mentioning my little patch of corn or maize. This, 

 being planted in rather a new soil, has thriven wonderfully ; the plants 

 being now 9 ft. high. I planted them in rows, 6 ft. apart, and by threes, .*. , 

 3 ft. or 4ft., asunder, in the row. This enables me to weed and stir the 

 ground at intervals ; and, not to lose room, I have transplanted a row of 

 parsneps between each. The arrival of your Encyclopcedia of Agricndture 

 enables me to refer with pleasure to the notice of planting maize, which 

 you have faithfully given. I cannot state what sort mine is ; but it is very 

 fine, and brought out of Kentucky by a friend. We are just beginning to 

 eat the young ears green. You have noticed, I dare say, the singular 

 appendages which occur at the bottom joints of this plant. Cobbett, in 

 your quotation, calls them roots ; but a slight observation shows that they 

 do not perform such an office. I should rather call them props or crutches. 

 They seldom appear whilst the corn is upright and uninjured ; but the mo- 

 ment a plant is shaken down or partly blown on its side, these offsets 

 protrude in the required direction, and support the stem firmly, till it 

 regains its original vertical position, and this, too, in a remarkably short 

 space of time. 1 have some singular instances of this in my garden. 



I have now detailed to you my principal gardening operations, and 

 I need scarcely add, that, with the necessary allowance for difference of 

 climate and other circumstances, I have worked on the authority, in all 

 cases, of your Encyclopedia of Gardening. I might have added that a few 

 apple and peach trees, and plenty of currant trees, I put in last autumn, 

 promise well. There is a vast variety of apples in Pennsylvania, as 

 they are chiefly reared from the seed, without grafting, particularly on the 

 ordinary farms in our district. Occasionally one meets with very fine 

 kinds, whose names and quality are familiar to you. Hops are very fine 

 and luxuriant. I do not know if they are indigenous; but they climb up 

 and surround our buildings in a beautiful style. Our woods produce two 

 or three kinds of grape vine ; in particular the fox grape ( Fitis vulpina), 

 and the chicken grape. Both of these are capable of being made into wine 

 as good as the best Rhenish. I have transplanted a couple of plants into 

 my garden, for the sake of their shade. In a newly settled country like 

 this, gardening, of course, is only a minor consideration, and is much 

 neglected. It is chiefly amongst the Dutch and German settlers that 

 vegetables are cultivated ; and the overplus beyond their family wants is 



