278 Transactions of the American Institute. 



and I have experimented on barberry for ten yeai-s, and cannot see 

 its character as some do. Ten j-ears ago, or about that time, I planted 

 100 barberry bushes in Delaware county, Iowa. The following 

 winter, on thirty different days, the mercury sunk down from ten 

 degrees to thirty-eight degrees below zero, and it did not injure the bar- 

 berry. This ought to establish its hardiness. Four j^ears ago I 

 planted ten rods of small barberry plants for a hedge on my place. 

 That hedge now appears much like a perfect fence. Man or beast 

 would try more than once before passing through it. Two years 

 more of such growth as it had last year would make it hog-tight, 

 horse-high and bull-strong. As to its blasting crops, I have raised 

 wheat, corn, sugar cane, potatoes and many varieties of fruit 

 right along beside the barberries, and the only thing I knew 

 blasted was a few Masted English gooseberries, which always 

 blasted, even when far away from the barberries. A Massachusetts 

 man complains of the seedlings springing up. I will pay him $100 

 for 20,000 such plants delivered to me next fall. One writer com- 

 plains of their sprouting from the root, and becoming a nuisance. I 

 deny that one plant of the barberry ever sprouted from the root. It 

 does, it is true, throw up each year straight sprouts from the collar 

 of the plant. The second year said shoots throw off lateral branches, 

 which lock the interlock Avith the previous growth. All of these 

 sprouts unite below the collar in one central root, which at the depth 

 of eight or nine inches branches out into proper roots, but I have 

 never seen one bud on the root of any plant of the barberry. Let 

 no one send to me for seeds or plants for I have neither for sale. I 

 do though fully believe that the barberry is yet destined to become 

 the great hedge-plant of America. 



June 30, 1868. 



Mr. Nathan C. Ely in the chair ; ]Mr. John W. Chambers, Secretary. 

 Cheap Buildings. 



Mr. R. G. McDougal explained at some length a method, called by him 

 building by steam. Its chief idea is this : To produce at lumber yards 

 and in shops furnished with steam-driven machinery, all the parts of a 

 house or other building so fitted that it can be put up in a day by 

 three or four men. He says there is no more difficult}' in erecting a 

 house than in setting up a bedstead, and that the carpenter and 

 joiner work can be done far cheaper and quicker by macliiner}' at the 



