A Patterti Pear-Orchard. 279 



The only objection is, they often are forgotten, dry up, become stunted, and 

 never fully recover. 



Plunging house-plants with the pots in the open ground during summer 

 is not to be recommended. The pots become full of worms, which are 

 somewhat difficult to entirely get rid of; and usually the plant roots through 

 the hole in the bottom of the pot, and attains a vigor, which, when removed 

 to the house, the soil in the pot is unable to sustain. Plunging in a tan-bed 

 is not so objectionable, and, with care, may be successful. 



Some bedding-plants, such as many of the coarser-growing varieties of 

 scarlet pelargoniums, may be wintered in a light cellar most successfully : 

 lantanas do well almost at rest under a greenhouse-stage, and calocasias 

 and cannas may be dried off like dahlias. 



We propose to give in our next number an article on the winter-protection 

 of half-hardy plants. E. S. R., yun. 



Glkn Ridge, September, 1868. 



A PATTERN PEAR-ORCHARD. 



Some of our fruit-growers have heard of what was going to be done in 

 the way of a pear-orchard by a quondam nursery-man who had retired to 

 the shores of Maumee Bay, near the head of Lake Erie. Our attention was 

 drawn to this enterprise by the correspondence of the planter, as to the 

 success of varieties, which he carried on with leading pomologists in differ- 

 ent parts of the country, and by his intelligent queries that were presented 

 at some of the horticultural meetings, where the pear was always his 

 hobby. 



Finding that his advisers very nearly agreed with himself as to the selec- 

 tion, he set to work in earnest to produce the trees, and to choose a site 

 for planting them. The rich clayey loams of the drift-formation and the 

 climate of the Lake Shore attracted him ; and he selected a small piece (ten 

 acres) of the heavily-timbered lands on the northern bounds of Maumee 

 Bay, nearly on the State line between Michigan and Ohio. Here he is 

 closely surrounded on three sides by the water of the bay and its estuaires ; 



