'>h mr&mtr^ Mow 



and planted the beds with the best Hovey's Seed- 

 ling. But, after trying for two or three years, du- 

 ring which his patience and industry met with no 

 reward, the plants looking burnt up and sickly, he 

 learned, to his astonishment, that Hovey's Seedling 

 needed a fertilizing agent to render it fruitful. He 

 now grows Wilson's Albany only, in plain soil, and 

 succeeds rather better. 



Plum trees and Cherry trees Jesse has also plant- 

 ed, which have grown astonishingly. But the Curcu- 

 lio and the Black Knot, and the Aphis and the birds 

 have so far prevented him from enjoying the fruit 

 of these fine trees. 



He has also tried Grrape-vines of all kinds with 

 this result: — he says he believes the vine requires a 

 yolcanic soil, freely supplied with sulphur and su- 

 per-phosphate of lime, and the presence of water, 

 — say a lake or a river, — in the immediate vicinity. 

 He is quite convinced that " aridity " is the prime 

 cause of mildew and oidium. 



Jesse's Potatoes were always large and fine-look- 

 ing, but to my taste rather too juicy. So Jesse sent 

 to England for some new varieties — the Regents, 

 Dalmahoy, Patterson's Seedlings, &c. — and, I regret 

 to say, thinks now that he imported a new kind of 

 rot along with his new seedlings. 



In Peas, last spring, he met with a singular mis- 

 fortune. He read in his favorite journal that if 

 Peas were planted eighteen inches deep they would 

 come up strong, like bushes, and a single row of 

 vines might be cropped the whole season. Jesse 

 planted accordingly, and it is an unpleasant thing 

 to state, but the Peas never came up at all. 



The Peas having failed, Jesse looked forward with 

 increased interest and hope to his fine patch of Can- 

 telopes. The little black flea beetle and the striped 

 bug, however, threatened to destroy the whole crop. 

 There were millions of them engaged in the pleas- 

 ant pastime of skeletonizing the leaves. Jesse 

 heard that coal oil would destroy or drive them 

 away : so he sprinkled his vines with petroleum. — 

 The bugs disappeared for a time, but Jesse is now 

 convinced that rock oil is not good for tender foli- 

 age. Something injured the vines so seriously that 

 they nearly all went into a decline. J esse thinks it 

 was the petroleum. 



Jesse has tried faithfally to produce spring Tur- 

 nips, and tender Radishes, and Cauliflowers out-of- 

 doors, but is now satisfied that the gardeners are 

 correct ; — that these things are not worth doing. 



Asparagus, Jesse says, is a marine plant ; that it 

 grows wild on the seashore, and likes salt as a ferti- 

 lizer : but I fear he has put too much old fish brine 

 on his Asparagus bed ; for the heads of Asparagus 



come up with a curled corrugated aspect, looking 

 more like sea kale than Asparagus, and have a fla- 

 vor like rusty mackerel. 



Jesse once went into chickens with great earnest- 

 ness. He hatched 400 chickens in the loft of his 

 barn one winter, and fed them all in-doors till spring. 

 He fastened each hen up on a nest full of eggs, and 

 attempted to" make them hatch by force. Some 

 rebelled and would not sit at all ; — and some died 

 on the nests from some mysterious cause. The rats 

 killed many small chickens, many died of the pip, 

 and, finally, when the chickens were nearly ready 

 for use, some chicken thieves took ten and twenty 

 pairs of a night. I think Jesse decided that the 

 chicken business was not an inviting speculation, 



Rural Architecture is one of Jesse's favorite 

 studies. So is landscape gardening. He fancies 

 he is quite an oracle on these subjects. Last year 

 Jesse built a summer-house on a pretty knoll, — a 

 sort of ideal rustic reading-room, — intending to be or- 

 namental as well as useful, and to express Jesse's 

 own conception of use and beauty in harmony with 

 Nature. 



The engraving at the head of this article is an 

 off-hand sketch of Jesse's Summer-house. Unfor- 

 tunately, by some accident, the builder has made it 

 resemble a human face, or head, with eyes, nose, 

 mouth, moustache and side-whiskers, — and Jesse's 

 Summer-house is known throughout the neighbor- 

 hood as Jesse Rural' s Head. My friend Rural, in 

 his aesthetic efforts to put the man into his work, 

 has not only given us a copy of his idea, but liter- 

 ally a copy of his head ! In fact, some say it is so 

 like the original that he will have no need of photo- 

 graphs to perpetuate his likeness. 



MARSHAL NIEL AND OTHER ROSES. 



BY CHARLES CRUCKNELL, GREENWOOD NURSERY, 

 POTTSVILLE, PA. 



Some of the recent additions to this handsome 

 genus of the Floral Kingdom are truly magnificent. 

 The ambitious dreams of the Resists of a past age 

 bid fair to be realized, if not indeed surpassed. Who 

 is there, ten years ago, had the remotest idea that 

 a Rose, combining in itself the qualities of many of 

 the species, would, to-day, be in existence ? . Uniting 

 as it were the rich golden color of Rosa Harrisonii 

 with the dreamy perfume of the beautiful Tea ; the 

 profuseness of bloom of the prodigal Bourbon with 

 the Noisette's rampant growth ; the classical form 

 of the Remontant with the goodly proportions of 

 the June Roses, which are fast being driven out of 

 cultivation, as they ought to be. Yet such is the 

 case. 



