Besides protecting our native songsters that do so 

 nmch to aid the orchardist, I most earnest]}^ recommend 

 the importation of English spar^o^ys, whose principal 

 occupation is to feed their numerous progeny with in- 

 sects. The experiment was tried in New York three 

 years ago, and, proving very successful, led to the intro- 

 duction of these birds last spring into Philadelphia. I 

 know of no way hy vvdiich a portion of the income of 

 this society can be so profitably expended as by the im- 

 portation of several thousands of these birds, to ])e dis- 

 tributed in different parts of the county. 



It may be worth the notice of the curious observer, 

 that of the several varieties of apple and pear trees, each 

 grows with form and feature peculiar to itself, and varies 

 ^ as much as do the diflbrent kinds of fruit. No one fa- 

 miliar w^ith them can mistake, for example, the Pickman 

 Pippin, Ribstone Pippin, or Killhamhill, among apple 

 trees, or the Winter Nelis, Louise Bonne de Jersey, or 

 Rostiezer, among pear trees. So marked are their pe- 

 culiarities, however different the stocks these varieties 

 are grafted into, that the quality of the fruit (other things 

 being equal) remains the same. It is also a well estab- 

 lished fact that in nursery rows of seedling apple trees, 

 budded at one year old, and taken up at four years of 

 age, each row being budded with a different kind of 

 fruit, the roots of the several varieties will be found to 

 have taken different habits of growth : one variety will 

 have numerous small fibrous roots, growing compactly 

 w^hile another row of a different variety will have a few 

 large and long roots, with few fibres, the varieties of 

 fruit giving distinct habits of root, although the stocks 

 may all differ from each other ; this proves conclusively 

 that the stock exerts no influence upon the variety of 



