AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 365 



delicious. The Secretary said that the lands of Long Island, 

 condemned as worthless for two centuries by every know-nothings 

 were good for these peaches, as we see and taste. 



Mr. Charles Wilson, from the bad lands aforesaid, presented 

 fine samples of tomatoes of the best kind, having three fruits on 

 one stalk; the finest, not yet ripe, but measuring in circumference 

 about fourteen inches each; some carrots of best quality, and red 

 peppers equal to any raised anywhere. The ground on which 

 these grew was, in April last, covered with its ancient dress, the 

 scrub oak, sometimes called hear oak, because originally the for- 

 mer bears of the island fed upon the abundant acorns grown 

 on this singular oak, which seldom grows so high that a bear 

 cannot stand upon his hind legs and eat the acorns. Mr. Wilson 

 cut away these oak bushes, plowed well, manured with horse and 

 cow-dung mixed, and has excellent crops of all sorts on this bad 

 land which no one would take as a gift seven years ago, but now 

 deemed by the know-somethings worth nearer one hundred dol- 

 lars an acre. 



Mr. Coleman exhibited in operation an admired apple parer, 

 which pares the apple perfectly at one motion of a lever, moving 

 in a circle, leaving a paring about half an inch wide, and as thin 

 as blotting paper, entire, and instantly at a blow the core of the 

 apple is turned out a little cylinder, just including the seeds and 

 the two ends, leaving the four quarters of the apple perfect. 

 Smith & Fenwick are the patentees of it. 



Paul Stillman presented bean pods containing white beans (pole 

 beans), raised from a bean found in the crop of a wild goose by 

 one of his ancestors, and long cultivated by his descendants; it 

 has scarcely any string in it; also some of Freeman's stringless 

 bush beans; also some turtle-soup beans, the Frijoles of Mexico; 

 also a white bean pod containing dark blue beans, almost trans- 

 parent when young; this was obtained from a German; also apples 

 of an oblong figure, red, medium size, cooking very tender in ten 

 minutes, pleasant acid, ripe by the 15th of July. These apples 

 are from the farm of Mr. D. B. Rogers, of Short Hills, near Plain- 

 field, New- Jersey. 



Mr. Stillman also exhibited a singular egg laid by a Chittagong 

 hen ; the shell is about as thick as a common small clam shell. 

 It is a lusus naturce in the egg line. 



Addington D. Frye exhibited splendid specimens of the Lami- 

 naria from the east end of Long Island sound, where the bottom 

 is extensively covered with it and other algse, forming an ocean 



