Vol. IX. 



5-2. 



AND HOllTICULTURAL JOURNAL. 



413 



TIIK CURCUIJO. 



Frost so fVc(|neii(ly occnn-i'il in llic r)tli moiitli, 

 Is.iO, that the o|)eraii.in,s ot" thu Ciirnilio were 

 iiiMi-ly siiS|irii<l<Ml, cvtii on trees which were not 

 ; I leeted, and whiili in other years hnd lost the 

 ■'.<• crop of iVuit. — Ahhonuh on the eoeniiienee- 

 ,t of wanner weather, some oC these inseets 

 aipeared, vet I helieved that lew of" the larvfe 

 had e.-ica|i.-il ilie vi;,'ihinee of the jreesc; and |>igs ; 

 and felt a eonlidence tlial we had little lo appre- 

 liind from their d.-predaiinns this season. It 

 apiiears however, that the mimher of f^uards 

 \^hi^;ll I had appoio'eil was loo small for the size 

 of my frnit L'ardeii. We have lately discovered 

 that miicli of the frnit has been puMCtiired hy the 

 Cu/-ci(/io,and we have found it necessary to re- 

 sort to the method wliieh 1 proposed in the N. 

 York Farmer, Vid. 3, No. 3. By spreading sheets 

 and jarring the trees, we have destroyed more 

 than 300 of these insects within the last 24 

 hours, and have only to regret that this work lias 

 been so long delayed. * 



I now find that the trees in iny frnit garden 

 might have heen inneh hetter arrange<I. Had 

 the aprir.ots, plums, and nedariyies heen planted 

 on one siile, a temporary fence wonhl have con- 

 fined the geese and pigs amongst those trees, and 

 their services wonid have been rendered inucli 

 imore effectual. 



It lias been said hy the late Dr TiLTojf, (to whom 

 we have been indebted for iiin(di information on 

 ithis subject) that the Curcvlio seldom uses its 

 ■kvings, and that it elindis up the tree. Probably 

 ;his may he its usual practice, but we have seen 

 It fly from one tree to another, and- we have ob- 



rved in a great many cases, that in falling on 

 dhe sheets the wings were at lea.-t partially ex- 

 Uaoded. One observer lias even seen it fly from 

 ihe sheet into the tree. 



Before chrsing this note, I wish to express my 

 ntire contidenre in the method which we now 

 mploy (iir destroying this insect ; and again re- 

 oniniend it to those whose fruit trees stand in 

 mclosmes from whieli geese and pigs must iieccs- 

 aarily he excluded. Diligent attention to this busi- 

 ness night and morning, for a short period, 

 Ibough rt may not destroy the whole colony, will 

 >ecure a sufficiency of fruit ; and we ought to re- 

 member that the labors < f next year may be great- 

 er lessened by gathering and destroying in the 

 »resejit season, the damaged fruit as it falls. 



6th mo. 2. D. T. 



placed them ill the bolloin of the box ; ponring tbi' 

 .-■and well ill among the berries, so as to prevent 

 as much as |)ossible any two berries from touch. 

 ing each other. I then placed the box in a 

 warm dry room ; and by these means I have 

 kept the grapes this season for aliove two months 

 from tin: time I cut them, as I only finished the 

 last of them yesterduy ; and they were acknow- 

 ledged, by those who partook of them, to be as 

 good as when put into the sanil, except that the 

 stalks had turned brown. Yours, &.C. — E. S. — 

 Gardener's Magazine. 



Hole can Grapes he best and longest preserved 

 fler they are cut '? — 1 have many vines under my 

 are, and am expected to supjily grapes at table as 

 Dng as possible: I consequently allow theni to 

 ang longer on the vines than is right they should. 

 Anxious to learn the very best mode of keeping 

 rapes after they are cut, I communicate my pre- 

 ent mode, that its defects may be perceived and 

 mended by some kind coriespomlent knowing 

 better. I save the Syrian till last ; the Ham- 

 urgh and other kinds were last year ripe at the 

 nd of July, and were not all cut till December 2. 

 "he Syrian, which I never cut till perfectly ripe, 



cut about the lOth of December. I then jirocur- 

 d some clean sand, and dried it by the fire, till it 

 fould pass through a fine hair sieve. The grapes 

 ind the sand being dry, and the sand become cold, 



took a shallow box, and having separated the 

 houlders from the main stalks of the bunches, I 



Jf'hy du Peas boil hard? — Sir, Your correspond- 

 ent J. M. wishes to know the cause why 

 peas boil bard. I suppose he means when dry 

 for soup. The cause is I believe their being too 

 old. I mean more than one year old. After that 

 age they do not break well, not even the best boilers; 

 I have seen Knight's crumbled marrow and the 

 blue Prussian, at three years old, boiled for twelve 

 hours in soft water and in an iron pot (which one 

 would suppose is iron enough, if that metal woii'il 

 affect them,) and they would not break nor bruise 

 kindly when beaten in a marble inorter wilb a 

 wooden pestle. From this I consider the cause 

 of hard boiling peas to be age, even if they are 

 split — so far probatum est. — Eng. Gar. Mag. 



Uses and Benefit of the Acarus, or, as it is com- 

 monly called, the Red Spider. — Sir, I have frequent- 

 ly observed in the spring and summer, beautiful 

 insects of a rich crimson velvet appearance, both 

 in the open air and under glass: and have heard 

 tlieni stigmatised hy amateurs, and once hy a prac- 

 tical gardener, as 'red spiders, the gardener's great- 

 est enemy, &c.' I have also had the mortification of 

 witnessing their destruction before I could utter a 

 word ill their behalf. Now, [, Sir, know not wheth- 

 er this insect belongs lo the genus Acarns o:- not ; 

 hut this I do know, that some of its habits richly 

 entitle it to the appellation of thegardener'syijoK/. 

 In the spring of 1828, I observed the under-side 

 of the leaf of a jdant of Neriuin splendens had a 

 row of Coccus hesperidnm attached along one 

 side of the midrib; and, about half way along 

 this row, I observed one of the crimson insects, 

 above described, apparently feeding upon one of 

 the Coccior scales (which, by means of a botanical 

 glass, I convinced myself was actually the case); 

 indeed, the insect in its rear were become truly 

 scales, the spider haviag reduced them to mere 

 dry films ; and those in front progressively shared 

 the same fate. 1 took particular pains to ascer- 

 tain the fact. Since then I have frequently found 

 the .-Vcari not only assisti7ig t\ie gardener ii> the de- 

 struction of the scales, but of th# green Aphis 

 a-lso. 



Indeed , on one occasion, I kept a quantity of the 

 spiders under a bell-glass, with no other food than 

 the Apliiaes, for several da^s, upon wiiich they 

 appeared to thrive amazingly ; and I afterwards 

 distributed them amongst plants infested by the 

 Aphis, when they recommenced their work of 

 destruction. I therefore venture to plead for in- 

 sects, the appearance of which gives additional 

 beauty to our plants, and the utility of which I woiihl 

 fain make more generally known. I am Sir, yours 

 &c, — ff'illiam Godsall. Hereford. London. 



Spirit of Improvement. — Perha[)S at no age of 

 the world has the spirit of improvement so general- 

 ly pervaded mankind, as from 1812 up to the pre- 

 sent time. Man is constantly engaged in new inven- 



tions — his mind not only soars to, and enibraCCB, 

 the most sublime topics, and the most useful con- 

 nivances which man has ever designe<l, but it 

 lakes within its seo[ie, objects which would seem 

 (d' the most trifling importance, and of the least 

 possible benefit to the commiiiiiiy. The spirit of 

 improvement is by no means confined to patent 

 lights. Behold it marching westward, like n strong 

 host — you see a few hardy individuals enter the bor- 

 der ola deep and tangled forest, eagerly bent upon 

 some object, which it is not easy, perhaps, for you 

 to divine ; follow these ever-stirring spirits and 

 you soon see in their ri'ar, villages, towns, and 

 even cities arise, as if by tlie magic wand of en- 

 chantment. 



It is only a few years since Rochester, in the 

 State of New York, was a. descrt^ — a place wliere 

 the owl held her reign unmolested, and the fox 

 and wild cat sported in their native forests secure, 

 and were seldom started from their gambols by 

 the noisy sounds of busy industry in their borders 

 — now a City — a place where thousands have 

 gathered and call it their home — where luxuries 

 from the remotest seas and lands are unladen, and 

 where all nations and all tongues are engaged in 

 the business of life, each seeking his own indi- 

 vidual comfort and advancement — liow unlike 

 the scene. 



'When wild in woods the noble savage ran.' 



AT. H. Spectator. 



7"he following is from a periodical publislied by 

 the students of the Virginia University. 



DEATH or ADAMS AND JEFFERSON. 



When it was announced that the death of Thomas 

 Jefferson had occurred on the fourth of July, 1820, at 

 the time when the whole American people were en- 

 gaged in celebrating the jubilee of their independ- 

 ence, in the consummation of which he had acted 

 so distinguished a part, we were struck with wonder 

 at the extraordinary coincidence. But when the 

 intelligence soon afterwards arrived, that his illus- 

 trious colleague, John ./Idams, had died on the same 

 day, onr astonishment knew no bounds. Every one 

 considered the concurrence of these two events, each 

 in itself so iniprohable, as a prodigy most miracu- 

 lous, and nothing but an amount of evidence abso- 

 lutely irrcsistible,could have convinced us of its truth. 



But while every one can thus feel that this event 

 was in the highest degree improbable, we have not 

 seen any attempt made to estimate in numbers, the 

 amount of this improbability. Yet the problem is as 

 capable of solution as any other in the doctrine of 

 chances. 



[Here fidlows an arithmetical calculation, the 

 result of which is as follows.] — En. 



Hence it appears that the odds were more than 

 1721 millions to one against the occurrence of both 

 these events ; or that a bet against it, to correspond 

 with the chances, should have been more than sev- 

 enteen millions of dollars to a cent. Yet it did ac- 

 tually happen ; and we see how much reason there 

 was for tlie universal astonishment which it excited. 



,']ge of Ships. — The Royal William was launched 

 in 17l!l, and is supposed not to have been repaired 

 till 1757; it was surveyed afloat in 1785. and prob- 

 ably lasted many years more. The Betsey Cains 

 yacht, in which Kinar William performed his first 

 voyage to England, was then several years old ; it 

 was sold to a merchant in the reign of George I. 

 and employed in the coal trade, in which services 

 she existed till February, 1827, when she struck on a 

 reef of rocks near Tynemouth Bar, and was there 

 lost, only for want of timely tssistance, her timbers 

 being, after the lapse of at least one hundred and 

 forty years, still perfectly sound. — How is it that no 

 such ships are built now-a-days.' It is the dry-rot, 

 or underwriting that flourishes. 



