1 66 Notes and Gleanings. 



Notes from Missouri. — The weather, on the whole, during the past month, 

 has been quite favorable to all kinds of fruit. The interest in horticulture is 

 fast increasing in this State. The May 30 meeting of the Jefferson-county 

 Society at Victoria was very interesting, and the officers should send you a 

 synopsis of their doings. They were addressed by Mr. Peabody, President of 

 the State Society ; and regaled between discussions by a most generous straw- 

 berry repast. The society furnishes the fruit ; and, while its members are ad- 

 mitted free, outsiders are charged fifty cents. The plan works well. The old 

 Meramac Society keeps up its monthly meetings, and increases in interest ; while 

 the N. E. Missouri Society recently held a very satisfactory fair and festival at 

 Hannibal. During recent trips along the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, we 

 found every thing looking very fine and encouraging. Apples and pears promise 

 well; peaches also. Chickasaw plums were ripe by the 15th of the month. 

 Gooseberries and currants did very well, though in some instances utterly 

 destroyed by insects, — the foliage by Ellopia ribearia, and the fruit by an unde- 

 scribed Tineidan worm. At Hermann, we found the grapes looking exceedingly 

 fine, and unusually free from disease or insects : the white and banded tettigo- 

 nias both being comparatively few in numbers ; and the grape-vine Fidia, though 

 less numerous than' last year, doing the principal damage. All the common 

 varieties were heavy with fruit; while the new seedling "Hermann " hangs thick, 

 with long, compact bunches, on Mr. Husmann's place. The prettiest lot of 

 Hartfords and Delawares we found in Mr. Rummel's vineyard, where the CHn- 

 ton, Taylor, and Ives were also doing unusually well. At Bushberg, on the 

 Iron-mountain Road, Mr. Bush, undaunted by long and frequent failures, has 

 planted many foreign, especially Hungarian varieties, which are all bearing well ; 

 though it is difficult to say what they will do in future. The soil, however, is so 

 perfectly adapted to the grape, that Mr. Bush is hopeful of success with them. 

 At Bluffton, we found the grape prospects still more startling ; the unusual 

 growth of vine, and weight of fruit, telling well how perfectly adapted was the 

 soil. Here the Bluffton Wine Company has settled, — a company only organized 

 on the 4th of July, 1866, and now owning three miles of land along the river, 

 comprising seventeen hundred acres, with fifty-five acres in grapes, and sixteen 

 leases taken. The oldest vines on the place have but five years' growth ; and 

 the company has two hundred thousand salable plants, and an experimental 

 vineyard comprising ninety varieties. Those already most extensively planted 

 are the Concord, Norton's Virginia, Delaware, Herbemont, Rogers's No. i, 

 Creveling, Cunningham, and Clinton, all of which do exceedingly well. They 

 have six propagating-houses a hundred feet long, and three pits sixty feet long. 

 Some of the bluffs along the river reach a height of five hundred feet, and the 

 scenery is grand and wild. We found the red cedar growing in tolerable abun- 

 dance, while an old red mulberry gave us with a few shakes a shower of luscious 

 berries that rivalled Downing's Ever-bearing in flavor. That rather rare wild- 

 flower, ffi"«<?//^^r^ ilZ/jj^z/r/V/^j'/j, with its peculiar seed-pod and bright yellow flow- 

 er, was in its full glory about the middle of the month ; while the compass-plant, 

 walking-fern, salvias, verbenas, and a host of other interesting plants, abound on 

 the hills. The Bujnelia lanuginosa — a shrubby, half-thorny tree, which bios- 



