86 



NEW ENGLAND F/VRIMER. 



Feb. 



of foliage from our common Indian com. It 

 grows from five to six feet high, and has alter- 

 nate foliage ; the leaves being about four feet 

 long and two to three inches wide. Like our 

 common corn, it is of easy cultivation. To 

 produce, however, early plants, it is well to 

 sow the seeds in a pot in the house, or in a 

 hot-bed, planting out in the latter part of 

 May. By July 1, the plants will attain the 

 height of three or four feet, and show their 

 magnificent foliage. If planted in the open air, 

 it should be sown about the 20th of May, and 

 in a warm and rich soil. 



CUKIOUS THINGS ABOUT FROST. 



One morning in October, I found all the 

 tomato and pumpkin vines used up and killed 

 by frost. But the bean vines, the potatoes 

 and the cabbages in my garden were in fine 

 growing order still. Three weeks afterward, 

 frost came again, and not finding any more 

 tomatoes and pumpkins, he laid hold on my 

 pole beans and my potatoes. They turned 

 black and died, as if strangled. An old 

 farmer said that this frost that killed the pota- 

 toes was a "real black frost." 



"Ha!" said I, "black frost, white frost; do 

 they ever mix?" 



"You watch and you'll see the diiference," 

 said the old farmer. 



And I began to watch. The cabbages in 

 my garden were not killed yet. The chickens 

 have a wonderful good time nipping off 

 the thick edges of the big, tough leaves. 

 Well, I watched, to see what the frost would 

 do next. One morning I noticed that the 

 bridges and board walks were white as snow, 

 but the dirt roads, gravel walks, and stone 

 sidewalks could not show a single fleck of 

 frost. And I saw that there was no frost on 

 or near the spikes in the board walk, but were 

 spots instead. 



Yet I remember, one winter day about noon, 

 when things were thawing a little, that the 

 board walks all dried off, leaving a spot of 

 frost on ever}' spike, and all the stone walks 

 and dirt roads were cold and hard as ever 

 with snow and ice ! Every fall the boards are 

 frosty, while the spikes and stones are warm 

 and wet. Every spring the boards are warm 

 and wet, while the spikes and stones are 

 frosty ! Funny frost ! 



One day the good woman who cooks for us 

 made some doughnuts ; some folks call them 

 fried cakes, (they are good, no matter what 

 they call them,) and when she had done frying 

 them, she set the hot lard out at the door, 

 along side of a basin of water to cool. The 

 lard and the water both of them froze solid 

 that night, and the next morning I saw that 

 the frost had made a hollow in the lard and 

 a hump on the water ! Frozen lard shrinks, 



frozen water swells ! Funny frost, how you 

 do act. And out in the barn on a beam, I 

 had one bottle with castor oil in it, to oil my 

 carriage wheels, another with neat's-foot oil 

 for ray harness, and another bottle half full of 

 water. They all froze up solid, one cold 

 night, and the water bottle split. But the 

 others did not. 



Off the coast of Nova Scotia and the New 

 foundland, sailors often meet icebergs a hun- 

 dred feet high, and all the books say that 

 there is nearly six times as much ice under 

 water as there is above. But when I went 

 skating on our canal, the ice lay, all of it, on 

 top of the water, and none of it that I saw was 

 under the water at all. And yet when I break 

 off a piece of i«e and put it in a pitcher of 

 water, it floats just like an iceberg, six times 

 as much under water as above it. 



An Indian was found dead by the roadside, 

 one very cold morning, with an empty rum 

 bottle beside him. He was frc-^en stiff. The 

 wise Indians came and examined to find what 

 had killed him. They decided that there had 

 been too much water in his rum, and the water 

 had frozen hard and killed him. Rum never 

 freezes, but men with rum in them freeze 

 more easily than other men who drink cold 

 water only. Queer, funnv frost again. 



These are only a few of the curious things 

 that frost has set me to thinking of. If any 

 one of the readers can explain all these curi- 

 ous things, they will be wiser than some pro- 

 fessors in our colleges. And professors are 

 the wisest people I know of. — Thos. K. Beech- 

 er, in Little Corporal. 



A SWEET AND SOUR APPLE. 



Capt. Benj. Allen of Greene, Me., raises in 

 his orchard a variety of apples which is a great 

 pomological cui'iosity, as well as a puzzle. It 

 is made up of alternate sections of sweet and 

 sour, each section including about one-eighth 

 of the apple. When the apple is well grown, 

 the sections are regular and vary but little, if 

 any, in different apples, and they are always 

 distinct. In size, form and keeping propensi- 

 ties, it resembles the Rhode Island Greening — 

 in fact, the sour part is that kind of apple. 

 When first picked, the whole apple is of a 

 greenish color, and the sweet and sour sections 

 are not easily distinguished ; but as it matures, 

 the sweet sections assume a rich yellow color, 

 while the sour part is that greenish yellow, pe- 

 culiar to the Greening. 



My father obtained scions from Mr. Allen's 

 orchard, and for many years raised some of 

 the apples, but the tree was blown down, and 

 now, 1 think, there are none to be found only 

 in Mr. Allen's orchard. Man\- a time I have 

 seen my father, when he had company, sur- 

 prise them by cutting first a piece of sour apple 

 for them to taste, and adjoining that a piece of 

 sweet, from the same apple. The tree now in 

 Mr. Allen's orchard was grafted many years 



