AMONG THE BERRIES. 



The season, throughout the Middle States, has been discouragingly 

 backward ; the weather being unusually cold, with a prodigious excess of 

 rain. Two frosts in the first week of May cut off the pioneer blossoms 

 of many acres of strawberries ; yet other fields escaped almost entirely. 

 Blight fell upon the careful and cleanly grower, while the slovenly one es- 

 caped ; for the older beds, wherein the grass and clover had overtopped the 

 plants, suffered less from frost, the grass and clover acting the part of a 

 protector. The later bloom escaped uninjured. Here, at Burlington, we 

 picked ripe berries on the 29th of May ; being some days later than the 

 previous year. In this region the strawberry crop is an immense institu- 

 tion, as its collaterals alone will testify. We have two steam-factories run- 

 ning full time in making the small boxes in which they are sent to market, 

 the proprietors of which have found it difficult to keep up with their orders. 

 Probably not less than a million of such boxes are annually made in this 

 city. 



One of these factories contains machinery which produces them with mar- 

 vellous rapidity. A rough log, from two to three feet in diameter, is drawn 



VOL. II. 9 65 



