456 Transactions of the American Institute. 



t 

 Mr. N. C. Meeker. — Mr. Chairman, this is an important subject. 



It is a good thing to tell what one knows — not what he guesses. 

 My friend Lyman practiced law in New Orleans. I do not under- 

 stand that he engaged in plantation labor. I have lived in that 

 semi-tropical climate. I have raised cotton, planted, plowed, hoed 

 and picked it. I was my own overseer, and I do know that the 

 energies of a white man were not sustained there as in the North. 

 It is impossible, during a series of years, while one is subjected to 

 the heat of the sun, the malarious influences, and the attack of 

 insects, to engage in day labor and keep up a supply of health and 

 intellectual vigor. But we are referred to Greece, Italy and Pales- 

 tine, and their imperishable systems of religion and law. Our 

 friend forgets that men of culture did not labor in those countries, 

 and that slavery was established early, and continued for thousands 

 of years. Whenever white men have been the laborers in a warm 

 climate, they have either been enslaved, or have sunk to the lowest 

 depths of degradation, and they have nowhere exhibited intellectual 

 supremacy. As regards the Germans in Texas, we should under- 

 stand that the country where they are located is so elevated as to 

 bring them into a higher latitude. 



Mr. Thomas Cavanach read the following paper on 



THE CULTIVATION OF RASPBERRIES. 



Description. — The raspberry derives its name from the Italian 

 word " raspo," in allusion to the small prickles with which the 

 stems are thickly covered. The roots are creeping, and of a woody 

 character. The stems are erect, and attain the height of five or 

 six feet. It is a perennial, although the fruit-stems are only bien- 

 nial. It is a native of various temperate climates, growing in wild 

 luxuriance by the roadside, through the forests and on the moun- 

 tains, and the only excuse many a truant from school has had to 

 oflfer his teacher was, that he was tempted to loiter by the way to 

 pick wild raspberries. The ripening of the raspberry follows close 

 upon the latter part of the strawberry season. When we are tired 

 of the various flavors of this fruit, and long for a change, we look 

 forward, with pleasure, to the coming of the delicious raspberry. 

 Although it does not, generally speaking, command a higher price 

 in the market than the strawberry, yet some think it the cheaper 

 fruit of the two, on account of its having no hulls; yet, from its 

 peculiar hollow shape, the berries will shrink, and thus be reduced 

 in bulk, if they have to be sent any distance to market. If we 



