284 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



fruit trees as the most extensive in England and France. Let us lay claim, en 

 passant, to the fact of having added one to their stock — the Shepherdia or "Buf- 

 falo Berry " — received in Baltimore, while Editor of the American Farmer, from 

 an officer in the West, and sent, many years ago, to Mr. Winship. We have 

 often stated to our friends in the South, who are not ashamed of sending to north- 

 ern nurseries for the commonest fruit trees, that in New-England, now, nothing 

 is more common throughout the country than for nurseries of common fruit trees 

 10 be sold by the farmer to the regular nurseryman, to be by him budded and 

 grafted, with one or two hundred per cent, added to its value, and then sold a sec- 

 ond time to the provident farmer in the South ! 



If the habit of consuming fruit, in its natural and prepared state, is thus in- 

 creasing in the North, how much faster yet would it increase, under the same 

 means of encouragement and indulgence, in the South, where the climate itself 

 demands a larger proportion of vegetable over animal food ! But we have ex- 

 hausted our borrowed space for a subject which, besides its intrinsic merit, has 

 for us its peculiar attraction, and to which we shall again and again recur — using 

 this occasion no farther than to add that success might well be predicated of an 

 Association which came into existence under the Presidency of General H. A. S. 

 Dearborn, whose elegant and various acquirements and cultivated taste have 

 been so often and effectually displayed for the benefit of the kindred pursuits, 

 Agriculture and Horticulture, to which The Farmers' Library is dedicated. 



Catch the Scoundrel ! — The Salem Obecrver says that some sacrilegioas houud has robbed 

 the old and time-worn Eudicott Pear Tree, the present season, of its crop of fruit. 



Mr. Editor : The extract above reminds me of a paragi-aph iii Tlie Tribune of the 5th 

 of May last, in which it is stated that the Stuyvesant I'eai- Tree, at the comer of Third-ave- 

 nue and Thirteenth-street, which was brought from Holland in 1647 — two ceutuiies ago— 

 " is, no doubt, the most ancient fruit tree on this continent ;" which is undoubtedly errone- 

 ous — for, ancient and venerable as this honored memorial of bygone days really is, both tra- 

 dition and the records indicate that it is not the oldest of its kind among us. 



The Endicott Pear Tree, alluded to above, it is behaved was brought from England in 

 1C30, and is k?iotvn to have been set out by Gov. Endicott, in his " orchard" in Salem, now 

 Danvers, Mass., in 1632 ; and, consequently, is at least 1.5 years older than the Stuyvesant 

 Tree. It annually bears its share of frait, although the hand of Time has made great havoc 

 with its fair proportions. 



Thi: Cuca. — ^Prescott, in his " Conquest of Peru," says that this is a shrub which grows 

 to the hight of a man. The leaves when gathered are dried in the sun, and, being mixed 

 with a little lime, form a preparation for chewing, much like the betel-leaf of the East. 

 With a small supply of this cuca in his pouch, and a handfull of roasted maize, the Peruvian 

 Indian of our time performs his wearisome journeys, day after day, without fatigue, or, at 

 least, without complaint. Even food the most invigorating is less grateful to him than his 

 loved narcotic. Under the Incas it is said to have been exclusively resei-\'ed for the noble 

 orders. If so, the people gained one luxury by the Conquest; and, after that period, it was 

 80 extensively used by them, that this article constituted a most important item of the colo- 

 nial revenue of Spain. Yet, with the soothing charms of an opiate, this weed, so much 

 vauuted by the natives, when used to excess, is said to be attended with all theraischievoue 

 effects of habitual intoxication. 

 (570) 



