490 TRAXSAcrioxs OF THE America X Ixstitute. 



slionld he as sterile as the shore of the nnphanted sea. 3. Can you 

 build a dam so as to flood it in winter and keep the side ditches half 

 full all summer ? 4. Can you expend from $200 to $400 per acre 

 and lie out of your money three years ? If Mr. Cummings can 

 answer these questions in the affirmative, let him go in. He can have 

 a cranberry garden in that swamp worth $1,000 an acre. 



The Sunflower. 

 A correspondent sends the following account of the sunflower. 

 This plant produces the finest 4i on ey and wax, large quantities of 

 which are exported from Russia and Turkey. When the seed is 

 crushed as linseed is, it will produce the finest oils, in larger quanti- 

 ties in proportion to any other seed, for the table as well as the 

 painter, particularly in mixing green and blue paints. The cake is 

 superior to linseed for fattening cattle ; the oil makes the finest soap, 

 very softening to the hands and face, and superior to any other for 

 shaving. Sheep, pigs, pigeons, rabbits, poultry of all sorts, &c., will 

 fatten rapidly upon it and^this seed to any other, pheasants in particu- 

 lar, causing them to have much glossy plumage and plumper in 

 body; this seed when shelled, makes on being ground, the finest flour 

 for bread, particularly tea cakes. It will grow in any corner that 

 may be vacant, and make all farms have a most agreeable garden-like 

 appearance. It should be planted about six inches apart, and about 

 one inch deep, and when about one foot high it should be earthed up ; 

 it w^ill then require no further attention ; every single seed will pro- 

 duce 1,000 or more ; the main head generally produces from 800 to 

 1,000 seeds, and there are generally four collaterals, producing fifty 

 or sixty seeds each ; another great advantage this seed has over any 

 other is that when ripe it turns its head downward, so that no rain 

 can effect the seed ; but it ]^is not only the seed that is so valuable, 

 the stalk is most so, for by treating it exactly as flax is, it will produce 

 a fiber as fine as silk, and that in large quantities. And now that 

 rags have become so valuable, arising from the unprecedented 

 demand for paper, the stalk might be make useful for that purpose. 

 On some grounds two crops may be growing at the same time, for 

 when the farmer has given his early potatoes their last hoeing, he 

 may plant this seed twelve inches apart in the ridges. 



Report on IIorsford's Baking Powder. 

 It will be remembered that a number of communications were 

 received by theJClub some weeks ago, stating that injurious results 



