314 Editorial Miscellany. 



Eden was a garden, but vre have no idea that Adam cultivated 

 onions or cabbages. We tliink it must have been a natural 

 flower garden. The plants we now cultivate were the accursed 

 weeds which have been brought to edible perfection by that 

 terrible mandate, the sweat of the brow. We believe that there 

 is not a weed that springs from out the " teeming ground" that is 

 not worth its culture, either as a balsam or a table esculent. But 

 we of America never appropriate or improve our wildings, for the 

 table, until they have first been to Europe, and come back with 

 high sounding names. It is a wonder how we ever found out the 

 edible qualities of maize or Indian corn ; probably some hungry 

 horse, or discerning chicken, first taught us ; or, more likely, the 

 rude savage of the forest. One of the American aristocracy, tra- 

 veling recently in Europe, heard much of the rare beauty and 

 medicinal v":tues of the American Velvet Plant. At a high price 

 he procured the seed, brought them home, sprouted them in his 

 green-house, and transplanted them into open borders with the 

 utmost care. Daily, and almost hourly, he, in common with his 

 horticultural fi'iends, watched its expanding beauties ; when, lo ! 

 the maturing plant stands confessed, a Mullen in all its charms. 

 So much for our appreciation of American indigenous plants. A 

 garden is not merely a place for the culture of exotics. Aspara- 

 gus is cultivated with considerable expense, when our native 

 Poke plant, almost its equal for the table, flourishes in the 

 neglected fence corners. The Endive, a bitter salad, is cultivated 

 assiduously, whilst the sweeter and more nourishing Purslane is 

 cut up as a worthless pestiferous weed. Europe and Asia are 

 ransacked for Broccoli and Kale, and our own Milk Weed and 

 Dandelion, infinitely their superiors, left as Nature's wildings. — 

 Soil of the South. 



The Gr.^pe Vixe. — Wbatever priming is to be done, should be 

 done now. We have no faith in European pruning for American 

 culture. The native vines are found only to succeed well in open 

 culture. They will not need pruning so much to force the forma- 

 tion of fruit, as to keep the vine within bounds ; for, in good 

 soils, they are all rapid growers. The small limbs branching 

 from the main stem may be cut back to three buds : each one of 

 these buds will make fruit. So if each one of the lateral branches 



