1867. 



NEW ENGLAND FARTHER. 



63 



CELOSIA.— [Aurea Pyramidalis.] 

 This magnilicent, free-flowering, graceful- 

 growing plant, belongs, with cocks-comb, to 

 the natural order Amarantaccce. It produ- 

 ces in the greatest profusion spikes of the most 

 beautiful feath- 

 ery-looking 

 flowers, which 

 are well repre- 

 sented in the 

 annexed en- 

 graving, copied 

 from Wash- 

 burn & Co/s 

 Catalogue of 

 Flower and 

 Vegetable 

 Seeds, in which 

 three varieties 

 are described. 

 The variety 

 Celosia Argen- 

 tea produces 

 its flowers in 

 spikes, like a 

 G o m p h r e n a 

 {Glube Ama- 

 rantlais,) but 

 much longer ; 

 and, if gath- 

 ered when 

 young, they 

 are valuable 

 for winter bou- 

 quets. Plants 

 of the Celosia 

 flower freely if planted out in June in a warm, 

 sheltered situation. Grown in pots, they are 

 the most elegant of greenhouse and conserva- 

 tory plants, where, with a little management, 

 they may be had in flower the whole winter, 

 growing freely in rich loamy soil. Half-hardy 

 annuals. 



mg the city of Canterbury. In 18G2 there 

 were in these forty-flve parishes 3269iJ acres 

 of hop gardens. In the present year there are 

 41951 acres, showing an increase of over thirty 

 per cent., besides 411 acres of young hops not 

 yet come into bearing. Of the 41 95^ acres, 



2715:1 are en- 

 gaged in grow- 

 ing " Gold- 

 ings," which 

 are reputed to 

 be the highest 

 class grown in 

 England ; the 

 remaining 

 1480 acres are 

 devoted to 

 "G rape s," 

 "Jones ," 

 "CuUings," a 

 few " Cole- 

 gates,'" and 

 some less 



known descrip- 

 tions. The 

 growers have 

 made no com- 

 plaints since 

 the duty ,was 

 remove d ; 

 there could 

 hardly be nam- 

 ed five years in 

 succession that 

 prices have 

 stood so high 

 as during the 

 last five, and it 

 is computed 

 that the pro- 

 duce of each 

 of those years 

 would pay for 

 the land on which it was grown. Looking to 

 current prices, it would seem there is still 

 abundant room for further increase. 



»m 



HOP CULTUKE IN ENGLAND. 



A careful attempt has been made by a cor- 

 respondent of the London Times to ascertain 

 the number of acres of hops under cultivation 

 in 18G6. As long as the duties on hops contin- 

 ued, a P arliamentary return was published ev- 

 ery year, showing the acreage devoted to that 

 cultivation. The duty was abolished in 1862, 

 and since that time there have been no statis- 

 tics taken of the area under cultivation. 



The present inquiry has embraced a survey 

 of forty-five parishes in East Kent, surround- 



The Cattle Plague in England. — At 

 last the cattle plague in Britain has come to an 

 end, after destroying upward of two hundred 

 thousand animals — the aggregate value of which 

 must have been considerably upward of a mil- 

 lion sterling. It is estimated that about five 

 per cent, of the cattle of England perished 

 throuc;h this di-eadful murrain. 



Crops. — The Commissioner of Agriculture 

 estimates the crops as follows : wheat, 180,- 

 000,000 bushels; corn, 880,000,000, an in- 

 crease of 400,000,000 bushels over that of 

 1859 ; cotton, 1,750,000 bales of 400 pounds 

 each, 



