PUBLISHED BY J. B. RUSSELL, NO. 52, NORTH MARKET STREET, (at the A.^kiculi uhai. Waiuhousk.) — T. G. FESSENDEN', EDIT( 



VOL. X. 



BOSTON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, APRIL. 18, I8S3. 



NO. 40. 



ORIGINAL AGRICULTURAL ESSAYS. 



CULTURE OF THE HOLLY FOR 

 HEDGES, & c. 



By the Editor. 



Holly — (flex.) This is a small evergreen tree 

 or shnib, but little known in tlie United States. 

 It has shining, irregular anri spinous leaves, and 

 white flowers which grow in clusters round tbe 

 branches, and are succeeded by small red berries. 



These shrubs, or dwarf trees, present very 

 agreeable picturesque objects to adorn a landscape, 

 and on that as well as other accounts, they are 

 cuhivated, in England, in gardens, shrubberie;. &.c. 

 4s a plant for hedges, holly is highly recomirend- 

 ed, and is said to be eminently serviceable. ' n 

 admits of being clipped or cropped, and rstains 

 its verdure and beauty through the severest win- 

 ters. Its growth is slow, but its duration is lon- 

 ger than that of most trees. 



The wood of the holly is hard and has a close 

 grain, is much used in veneering, and is frequently 

 stained black to imitate ebony. It is advanta- 

 geously used in making handles for knives, cogs for 

 mill wheels, and other similar purposes. The 

 leaves in winter afford a grateful food to sheep and 

 deer ; and the beriies^ yield a subsistence during 

 this inclement season,' to the feathered tribes. In 

 some places the inhabitants use the seeds of the 

 holly as a substitute for coffee, but the beverage 

 thus made is inferior to that obtained from the gen- 

 uine berry of Mocha. 



" The bark of the holly," according to Willich's 

 Encyclopedia, " is smooth, and replete with a strong 

 mucilaginous substance, from which the article 

 called bird-lime is made. For this purpose it is 

 boiled ten or twelve hours ; and when the green 

 rind is separated, it is covered up in a moist place 

 to stand for a fortnight. It is afterwards reduced 

 to a tough paste, and washed in a running stream 

 until no impurities are left. The next part of the 

 process is to suffer it to ferment for four or five 

 days ; after which, it is mixed over the fire, with 

 a third part of nut oil or some other oily fluid, and 

 is thus rendered fit for use. 



"Holly deserves to be much more extensively 

 cultivated than it now is. Some years ago, a per- 

 son who purchased a holly wood in Yorkshire, 

 (England,) sold the bird-lime prepared from the 

 bark, to a Dutch merchant, for nearly the whole 



sum of his original purchase. Bird-lime has an 

 adhesive quality very leniarkable, particularly to 

 feathers and other dry sid)stances. It is on this 

 account employed for the smearing of twigs, to 

 ensnare birds. In its elasticity and inflammable 

 nature it has much resemblance to India rubber ; 

 and, if any means could be adopted to harden it, 

 there is little douljt but it might be substituted for 

 that article. 



"Among the ancient Romans it was customary 

 to send branches of holly to their friends, with 

 new years' gifts, as emblematical of good wishes. 

 We [in England] decorate our houses and church- 

 es with it at Christmas, to give an air of spring in 

 the depth of winter." 



The Library of Entertaining Knowledge ob- 

 serves, " A holly hedge is a pleasing object, though 

 it is too often clipped into formal shapes. Evelyn 

 had a magnificent hedge of this sort, at his garden 

 at Say's Court, which he planted at the suggestion 

 of Peter the Great, who resided at his house when 

 he worked in the dock-yards at Debtford. He 

 thus voluntarily speaks of this fine fence : — ' Is 

 there under heaven a more glorious and refreshing 

 object of the kind, than an impregnable hedge, of 

 alHiut four hundred feet in length, nine feet high, 

 and five in diameter, which I can show in my 

 new raised gardens at Say's Court, (thanks to the 

 Czar of Muscovy,) at any time of the year, glitter- 

 ing with its armed and varnished leaves, the taller 

 standards, at ordinary distances, blusliing with 

 their natural coral." 



The following receipt for raising holly plants, is 

 copied from a work by Mr Phillips, entitled Sylva 

 Florifera. 



" The English nurserymen have collected fifty 

 different kinds of holly, all of which maybe prop- 

 agated by grafting in a common stock. The ber- 

 ries, like the seeds of the hawthorn, hang on all 

 winter, and remain in the earth two years before 

 sprouting, unless they have passed through the 

 stomach of fowls, when they vegetate in one year. 

 We have therefore only to give them a similar 

 fermentation, by art, to enable us to raise plants in 

 one year instead of two. For this purpose take 

 a bushel of bran, mix it with the seed in a tub, 

 wet it with soft water, and let it remain imdisturb- 

 ed for sixteen days, when the bran will begin to 

 ferment ; sprinkle occasionally with warm water 

 to keep it moist, and in about thirty or forty davs 

 the heat of the bran will put the berries in a state 

 of vegetation, fit for sowing in about a week after 

 the fermentation has commenced." 



The American holly abounds, we believe, in 

 Hingham, Quincy, and Bridgewater, and many 

 other places, where seed can be procured. 



CUTTING CORN STALKS. 

 Mr Fesse.nden — I was highly gratified with the 

 perusal of the leading article in your 38th No. 

 from the pen of Mr Clark, on cutting corn stalks. 

 Experiments like those he has detailed are of great 

 value to the farming interest, and richly entitle 

 those who make and publish them, to the appella- 

 tion of public benefactors. I'heg leave to suggest 

 the cause of the difference in the product which 

 resulted from Mr Clark's experiments. 



There K: a striking analogy between the animal 

 and vegetable kingdoms. iFood taken into the 

 stomach of animals does not nourish, but is pre- 

 judicial to health, unless it undergoes the process 

 of digestion. Nor does foor] nourish the plant un- 

 til it has been elaborated by the leaves. Plants, 

 therefore, without leaves camiot grow ; but, on 

 the contrary','if defoliated in hot witf,thcr, the un- 

 elaborated sap becomes stagnant, fetments, and 

 destroys the, vitality of the plant. Thus when the 

 tops of corn are cut, the supply of food to all the 

 ears abov^ the remaining leaves, is cut off, nnd the 

 suj)ply is materially diminished to those below. A 

 diminished product must of course be the conse- 

 quence. 



I very much regret that Mr Clark did not carry 

 his experiments oue step further, and ascertain the 

 relative weight of fortysix hills cut with tbe entire 

 stalks, at the time he topped his No. 2. It would 

 have decided whether the stalks aflbrd nmrimenj 

 to the grain, after they are sef)arated from the roots 

 and to what extent. This last has been my meth- 

 od of harvesting my crop, from an iuipression that 

 I lost by it nothing in the weight of the grain, 

 while I gained much in the quantity and quality 

 of the fodder. The objection that the stalks mould 

 is not tenable. They will not mould while tha 

 corn is upon them, if tied above the ears. And if 

 not sufficiently dry when the corn is picked, they 

 may be left in stacks till perfectly cured ; and yet 

 be housed in far better condition than they are by 

 the ordinary mode of saving them. It is not the 

 drying rhit deteriorates their value for fodder, but 

 the drencM-ngs Which they get when left out till 

 the corn is picked, and the frosts, which diminish 

 very much their nutritive properties. If well 

 cured, and especially if cut and steamed, cattle eat 

 them freely, and I consider them nowise infe- 

 rior to hay. The grain from the crop secured in 

 my way, has weighed sixty and sixtytwo pounds 

 the bushel. It is a twelve rowed early variety, 

 which I denominate the Dutton corn. 



I have remarked, that the modes of planting 

 corn, or rather the distance between the plants, is 

 different in different States. In New England the 

 distance is greater than in New York, and greater 

 in Pennsylvania than in the former. Mr Clark's 

 hills were four by three feet, which gave him 3646 

 hills, or by my estimate 3030, on the acre. Our 

 Mr Stimpson plants at two and a half feet each 

 way, and gets upon the acre C9G9 hills, or nearly 

 double what Mr Clark does. I once planted an 

 acre in drills, two rows in- a drill, the plants six 

 inches apart in the rows, the rows six inches apart, 

 and three feet between the centres of the drills, 

 quincunx, and had, if there were no vacancies, 

 30970 stalks, equal to 7742 hills on the acre. The 

 ground and entire product v.cre accurately meas- 

 ured and weighed While tlie Messrs Pratts, of 

 Madison, produced ]70 bushels on the acre, by 

 planting in drills, three rows in each, quincunx, 

 thus, ] • I . and four feet from the centre of 

 the drills. If the rows were six inches apart, and 

 the plants nine inches in the rows, the plants 

 amounted to 43,5(iO, equal to 10,890 hills. As- 

 suming as data, that in all the above cited cases 

 each plant produced an ear of corn, and that the 

 ears averaged one gill of shelled grain, their pro- 



