THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



819 



■replaced the floor and laid it close ; nailed slats on 

 the studding, and thrust straw between them and 

 the weather- boarding, thus making a wall of straw 

 in addition to the weather-boarding. Three sides 

 of this division of the pick room was done in this 

 way, and a board partition on the fourth sido, this 

 had no straw. I now threshed out my wheat and 

 put up in the chaff— the division was full to within 

 a /oot of the top; this space was closely packed 

 with straw. Twelve months afterwards I cleaned 

 up from this pen a fraction under five hundred 

 bushels of wheat, and there was no sign of flying 

 weevil, except a few on the side that had no wall 

 of straw. My experience, therefore, for ten years, 

 is that to exclude wheat perfectly from light and 

 the atmosphere, is to secure it from the effects of 

 the flying weevil. I act upon the same principle 

 with my corn, and house it in as large a bulk as 

 possible, and find the centre of a large crib will be 

 sound long after the sides and bottom have been 

 destroyed by the black weevil. — American Cotton 

 Planter. 



BIRDS AND INSECTS. 



Wilson Flagg, in a late number of Hovey's 

 Magazine, makes five classes of insects, and as 

 many of birds, acting as natural checks upon 

 the increase of insects. 



The swallows are the natural enemies of the 

 swarming insects, living almost entirely upon 

 them, taking their food upon, the wing. — 

 The common martin devours great quantities 

 of wasps, beetles and goldsmiths. A single 

 bird will devour live thousand butterflies in 

 a week. The moral of this is, that the hus- 

 bandman should cultivate the society of swal- 

 lows and martins about his land and out- 

 buildings. 



The sparrows and wrens feed upon the craw- 

 ling insects that lurk within the buds, foliage 

 and flowers of plants. The wrens are pugna- 

 cious, and a little box in a cherry tree will soon 

 be appropriated by them, and they will drive 

 away other birds that feed upon the fruit; a 

 hint that cherry growers should remember this 

 spring and act upon. 



The thrushes, blue-birds, jays and crows 

 prey upon butterflies, grass-hoppers, crickets, 

 locusts and the larger beetles. A single fami- 

 ly of jays will consume 20,000 of these in a 

 season of three months. 



The wood-peckers are armed with a stout, 

 I >ng bill, to penetrate the wood of trees, where 

 the borers deposit their larvae. They live al- 

 most entirely upon these worms. 



[Rural New- Yorker, April. 



The Tamarind in Virginia. — Wm. M. 

 Singleton, Esq., of Winchester, communicates 

 the following to the Commissioner of Patents : 



" Of all the ornamental trees propagated 

 among us, either foreign or native, there is 

 none, in my judgment, more desirable than 



the tamarind. Its growth is rapid, its form 

 symmetrical, its foliage beautifully delicate, 

 and it is altogether highly ornamental ; be- 

 sides, it is perfectly free from blight, as well as 

 from the depredations of insects. If cultiva- 

 ted on our Western prairies, it would doubtless 

 form a valuable acquisition. 



" From the growth of some tamarind seeds 

 which I obtained at a confectioner's shop some 

 eight years since, I have a tree standing in my 

 yard, eighteen inches in circumference. The 

 past season it perfected its fruit, which, in qual- 

 ity, was equally as good as that imported. — 

 The seed may be sown in drills, about four in- 

 ches apart, and covered from two to three inch- 

 es deep, with light, rich soil. They may be 

 sown either in the fall or spring. If in the 

 latter, they should be exposed to the weather 

 during the winter previous, in order that their 

 hull or coverings may be acted on by the frost. 

 When grown to the height of three or four 

 feet, the young trees may be transplanted in 

 the sites where they are permanently to re- 



mam. 



The California Quarries are yielding some 

 of the finest white,- black and variegated marbles 

 in the world. They are said to be fully equal to 

 the finest kinds, of Egyptian or Italian, and are 

 found in exhaustless quantities. 



CONTENTS OF NUMBER X. 



PAGE 



Strawberries and their Culture 28'.) 



Cheap Furniture and Ornaments for Ptooms 202 



How to Secure Wheat in Wet Weather 293 



How Wild Geese are Taken 294 



Short-Horns 295 



Preserving Fruit by Hermetical Sealing 296 



An English Experimenter on Wheat 297 



Salt and Guano 298 



Millicent 299 



Rain, Evaporation and Filtration .800 



Food Consumed by Different Sorts of Farm 



Stock .301 



Horticultural Quackery 3&2 



What They Think of Us.. : 804 



Meeting of the Agricultural Society. 301 



Beware of Cutting Wheat Prematurely 305 



The Fruit 300 



Guinea Fowls vs. Rats 300 



Drainage 300 



Seymour's Broadcast Sewing Machine 307' 



Grasses, Sheep, &c 308 



Corn Fodder 309 



The Wheat Crop and its Enemies 810 



Overseers 818 



Chinch Bug BIS 



Analysis of the Tobacco Plant 318 



The Logan. Grazier 314 



Ripening of Apples and Peaj's 315 



Antiseptic Paint . . . ,.31G 



Benefits of Droughts to Land 317 



Two Acre Farm 817 



To Preserve Wheat from Weevil 318 



Birds and Insects 31a 



