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302 



THE ILLINOIS FAEMER. 



October 



vast forest, from west to east is 1,200 miles, its 

 breadth var\ing from 600 to 800 miles. Towards 

 the east, indeed, it continues "700 miles further, 

 terminating only on the shores of the Atlantic. — 

 This easterly portion, however, or that which 

 clothes the valley of the lower Amazons, I exclude 

 from the present description, since it is, in one 

 part, much broken and contracted in breadth by 

 large tracts of open grassy land. The forest of 

 the great plain of the Upper Amazons has suffi- 

 cient compactness and peculiarity to be treated as 

 a separate area. But as there is no complete break 

 of continuity, the statement of Humbolt (who had 

 a glimpse of the immeasurable wilderness only 

 from its western commencement, in Peru,) still 

 holds good, to the effect that a flock of monkeys 

 might travel amongst the tree tops, were it not for 

 the^ rivers, for 2,000 miles in a straight line with- 

 out once touching ground ; namely, from the slopes 

 of the Andes to the shores ot the Atlantic. At 

 the top of the grassy slope on which the town is 

 built, rises a compact wall of foliage, with a small 

 narrow gap in the midst ; the leafy barrier is the 

 frontier line of the forest, kept from encroaching 

 on the few acres of cleared space only by the in- 

 habitants doing constant battle with powers of 

 vegetation, and the gap is the entrance to the only 

 road by land that the townspeople possess. A lew 

 minutes' walk under the shady arcade, and the 

 traveler finds himself in the heart of the solitude. 

 The crowns of the tall trees on both sides meet 

 overhead, and admits the rays of the sun only at 

 rare intervals, where some forest monarch has 

 been uprooted by the storm. The paih leads to a 

 few small plantations belonging to the poorer in- 

 habitants, and at the distance of about a mile 

 dwindles down to a mere hunter's tiack, which 

 none but a native can follow. Beyond this point 

 all traces of the presence of man cease, — the land 

 untrodden and unowned, — and so it continues for 

 hundreds of miles. — Good Words. 



Value of Science. — The generalizer in botany, 

 zoology, or any other science which may rightly 

 be denominated the science of observation, must 

 rely for his generalities on the aggregation of re- 

 sults of innumerable observations. Thus it was 

 once supposed that a certain moss, Buxbaumia 

 aphyUa, was destitute of le(ivc?, and it might not 

 have mattered whether it h;\d leave or not, except 

 that there are physiological as well as technical 

 reasons for concluding that a moss without leaves 

 is an impossibility. It was Brown's good fortune 

 to discover at the base of the footstalk true leaves 

 like wisps of silk, and this observation tended to 

 confirm and establish the law that all mosses have 

 leaves, botli of necessity and in fact. No observ- 

 er can say what is the value of his observing ; he 

 may at the moment when he feels most deeply 

 convinced he is but admiring or examining what 

 has been admired or examined by every one of his 

 predecessors, be actually taking note of something 

 that was never observed before, and the result of 

 his observations may in the end prove the untying 

 of some gordian knot in classification, or the es- 

 tablishing some principle of utility that maybe of 

 incalculable benefit to mankind at large. The 

 great Linnaeus, by simple observation of the habits 

 of Cantharis Navalis, was enabled to point out to 

 the Swedish government how to avoid the loss of 



many thousand pounds every year, through the ra- 

 vages of an insect which destroyed immense qaan- 

 tities of timber in the dockyards of that country. 

 The remedy suggested by Linnaeus was the immer- 

 sion of the timber in water during the period when 

 the fly lays its eggs, and this was found to be com- 

 pletely effectual in putting a stop to the ravages. 

 The same r-aster of the art of observing detailed 

 the cause of a dreadful disease among the cattle 

 of North Lapland, which was thought to be unac- 

 countable and irremediable, but which Linnaeus 

 discovered to be owing to the prevalence of poi- 

 sonous plants in the marshes where the cattle fed, 

 and the eradication of these put a stop to the ca- 

 reer of national calamity. — Gardener's Weekly. 



Crops in the Great San Jose Valley. — What 

 of the drouth ? Let those who hear so much of 

 the drought in the San Jose and Santa Clara val- 

 leys, those who fear a famine for man or beast, 

 just go and visit those gardens of our land, and in 

 order to see them iruly, go to that grand semina- 

 ry of learning, the Santa Clara College, go up into 

 the observatory (about 100 feet above the college 

 ground) and take a view of the magnificent land- 

 scape from there. A grander scene was never pic- 

 tured than an hundred miles' circuit around, one 

 grand panorama of beauty. 



This view presents no scene of drought or mil- 

 dew, but one of beauty and fertility — orchards and 

 vineyards, gardens and fields, richer than the 

 mines of Golconda, and wheat is plenty. To a 

 casual observer, the stacks of grain, the moun- 

 tains of hay, and the vast amount yet spread over 

 the plain, it would seem there was enough hay 

 and grain, and fruit, and luxuries to supply the 

 whole State. It is one vast sea of plenty. We only 

 wish every si)eculator would go to this observito- 

 ry and see what we saw this week — we don't think 

 we are very near a famine. — Ualifornia Farmer. 



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The Raspberry. — No fruit except the curraBt 

 and perhaps the gooseberry, can be so cheaply 

 raised as the raspberry, and yet no fruit adapted 

 to our climate is so much neglected. The rasp- 

 berry, like most of our small fruits, has been much 

 improved within a few years. Dr. Brinckle, of 

 Philadelphia, has done more, perhaps, than any 

 other man, to improve this fruit, having given us 

 some of the best varieties now in cultivation, if 

 not the very best, and what has been said of the 

 strawberry may also be said of this, that it is diffi- 

 cult to tell how far this improvement may be car- 

 ried. 



Raspberries will grow on almost any good soil, 

 but flouri-h best on a moist soil containing con- 

 siderable vegetable mold. For garden culture, af- 

 ter spading in a good coat of well rotted manure 

 and ashes, mark off your rows four feet apart, and 

 if you have plenty of room, five is better, setting 

 the plants two or three feet apart in the rows ; in 

 either case they will, if well mulched, (which I con- 

 sider almost indispensable) soon fill all the inter- 

 mediate space. A plantation of raspberries will 

 need but little care for five or six years, except 

 thinning out, so that the plants shall stand about 

 a foot apart — tying up and heading in about one- 

 third the length of the canes in the spring ; laying 

 down and covering the stocks in the fall with ey 

 ergreens, leaves, or anything that will shield them 



