102 
THE SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
it is placed. Tl.is is the asparagus ground^ of 
St. Sebastian. Beds are formed five feet wide, 
without any previous preparation except dig- 
ging and raking. In March the seed is sown in 
two drills, about two inches deep, and eighteen 
inches from the alleys, thus leaving a space of 
two feet between the drills. The rows run in- 
variably east and west—doublless in order that 
the plants may shade the ground during the 
heats of summer. When the seedlings are 
about six inches high, they are. thinned to some- 
thing more than a foot apart. Water is con- 
ducted once a day among the alleys and over the 
beds, so as to give the seedling an abundant and 
constant supply of fluid during the season of 
their growth. This is the cultivation during the 
first year. 
The second year, in the month of March, the 
beds are covered with three or lour inches of 
fresh night soil from the reset voirs of the town; 
it remains on them during the succeeding au- 
tumn; the operation of irrigation being con- 
tinued as during the first season. This exces- 
sive stimulous, and the abundant room the 
plants have to grow in, must necessarily make 
them extremely vigorous, and prepare them for 
the production of gigantic sprouts. 
In the spring, the asparagus is lit to cut. 
Doubtless all its energies are developed by the 
digging in of the manure in the autumn of the 
second year; and when it does begin to sprout, 
it finds its roots in contact with a soil of inex- 
haustible fertility. Previously, however, to the 
cutting, each bed is covered in the course of 
March very lightly wdth dead leaves, to the 
depth of about eight inches ; and the cutting does 
not commence till the plant peeps through this 
covering, when it is carefully removed from the 
stems, in order that the finest only may be cut, 
which are rendered white by their leafy cover- 
ing, and succulent by the excessive richness of 
the soil. 
In the autumn of the third year, after the first 
cutting, the leaves are removed, and the beds 
again dressed with fresh night-soil as before; 
and these operations are repeated year after 
year. In addition to this, the beds are half un- 
der salt water annually at spring tides. 
Let any one compare the mode of culture with 
ours, and there will be no room for w'ondering 
at the difference in the resejlt. The Spaniards 
use a light, sandy soil; we are content with any- 
thing short of clay. They irrigate; w'e trust to 
our rainy climate. 
Some years since, we had a bed of Asparagus 
which from some unknown and inscrutable 
cause, suddenly ceased growing; the spires no 
sooner attained a certain height, than, like the 
fabled trees around the tomb of Protesalaus, 
they withered and died away. We manured 
and watered, but all to no purpose, and we at 
last gave up all idea of renovating the plants, in 
despair. In digging about the roots, we found 
that they had been lacerated and almost wholly 
consumed by worms, a few of which were still 
at their work on the tubers. They were corn- 
worms, or bore »o near a resemblance to them 
that it would have been difficult to distinguish 
them apart. Influenced by the presumption that 
the roots were hopelessly injured, we determined 
to apply salt to the bed in order to test its efiicacy 
both on the asparagus, and in destroying the 
worms. We accordingly applied half a peck, 
I,, and to our surprise the asparagus started almost 
' I immediately, and in a short time acquired a de- 
gree of vigor and luxuriance surpassing even its 
former growth. Since then we have used salt 
as an ordinary manure for this root, and our ex- 
perience has proved conclusively to our own 
mind that it is decidedly the best and most effi- 
cacious stimulant that can be applied. 
A correspondent says, “ 1 have an asparagus 
bed, 30 feet by 5 feet, on which I put one hun- 
dred weight of salt, about the middle of March, 
l| last year, and also this year. The increase of 
crop, both with regard to size and number, is 
most extraordinary.” In another place, a case 
is given where too heavy and often repeated 
dressings of salt destroyed the asparagus, though 
the precise amount of this over-dose is not given. 
HOKTBCCJI/iX'IS AL, CUTLtNSi, 
AN OUTLINE of the first principles of Houticultuhe. 
by John Lindley, F K. S. &c. &c., Professor of Bota- 
ny in the University of London, and assistant Secre- 
tary of the Horticultural Society. — [continued.] 
VIII. FRUIT. 
SOD. Fruit, strickly speaking, is the pist ilium 
arrived .at maturity. 
S^iG. When the calyx adheres to the pistillum, 
and grows with it to maturity, the fruit is call- 
ed inferior ; as the Apple. 
211. But when the pistillum alone ripens, 
there being no adhesion to it on the part of the 
calyx, the Iruit is called superior; as the Peach. 
212. The fruit is, therelore, in common lan- 
guage, the flower, or some part of it, arrived at 
its most complete state of existence; and, con- 
sequently, is itself a portion of the stunted 
branch. (153.) 
213. The nature of its connection with the 
stem is therefore the same as that of the branch- 
es with each other, or leaves with their stem. 
214. A superior fruit, consisting only of one, 
or of a small number of metamorphosed leaves, 
it has little or no power of forming a commu- 
nication with the earth and of feeding itself, as 
real branches have. (89.) 
215. It has also very little adhesion to its 
branch; so that but slight causes are sufficient 
to detach it from the plant, especially at an ear- 
ly age, when all its parts are tender. 
216. Hence the difficulty ol causing peaches 
and the like to stone, or to pass over that age, in 
which the vascular bundles that join them to the 
branch become woody, and secure them to their 
place. 
217. For the same reason they are fed almost 
entirely by other parts, upon secreted matter 
which they attract to themselves, elaborate, and 
store up in the cavities of their tissue. 
218. The office of feeding such fruit is per- 
formed by young branches which transmit nu- 
triment t'l It through the bark. (69.) 
219. But as young branches can only trans- 
mit nutriment downwards, it follows that unless 
a fruit is formed on a part of a branch below a 
leal-bud, it must perish, 
220. Unless there is some active vegetation 
in the stem above the branch on which it grows; 
when it may possibly live and feed upon secre- 
tions attracted by it from the main stem. 
221. But inferior fruit, consisting at least of 
the calyx in addition to the pistillum, has a much 
more powerful communication with the branch ; 
each division of its calyx having at least one 
bundle of vascular and fibrous tissue, passing 
from it into the branch, and acting a.s a slay 
upon the centre to prevent its breaking off. 
222. Such fruit may be supposed much more 
capable of esfablishicg a means of attracting 
secretions from a distance ; and consequently, is 
less liable to perish from want of a supplyoflood. 
223. It is therefore not so important that an 
inferior fruit should be furnished with growing 
branches above it. 
224. Fruit is exclusively fed by the secretions 
prepared lor it by other parts; it is therefore af- 
fected by nearly the same circumstances as 
flowers. 
225. It will be large in proportion to the 
quantity of food the stem can supply to it; and 
small in proportion to the inability of the stem 
to nourish it. 
226. For this reason, when trees are weak 
they should be allowed to bear very little, if any 
fruit; because a crop of fruit can only lend to 
increase their debility. 
227. And in all cases each fruit should be so 
far separated from all others as not to be robbed 
of its food by those in its vicinity. 
228. We find that nature has herself in some 
measure provided against injury to plants by 
excessive fecundity, in giving them a power of 
throwing off flowers, the Iruit of which cannot 
be supported. 
229. The flavor of fruit depends upon the ex- 
istence of certain secretions, especially of acid 
and sugar; flavor will, consequently, be re- 
gulated by the circumstances under which fruit 
is ripened. 
230. The ripening of fruit i.s the conversion 
of acid and other substances into sugar. 
231. As the latter substance cannot be obtain* 
ed at all in the dark, is less abundant in fruit 
ripened in diffused light, and most abundant in 
fruit exposed to the direct rays of the sun, the 
conversion of matter into sugar occurs i:nder 
the same circumstances as the decomposition of 
carbonic acid. (141 and 279.) 
232. Therelore, if Iruit be produced in situa- 
tions much exposed to the sun, its sweetness 
will be augmented. 
233. And in proportion as it is deprived of 
the sun’s direct rays that quality will diminish. 
234. So that a fruit which when exposed to 
the sun is sweet, when grown where no direct 
light will reach it, will be acid ; as Pears, cher- 
ries, &c. 
235. Hence acidity may be corrected by ex- 
posure to light; and excessive sweetness, or in- 
sipidity, by removal from light. 
236. It is the property of succulent fruits 
which are acid when wild, to acquire sweetness 
when cultivated, losing a part ol their acid. 
237. This probably arises from the augmen- 
tation of the cellular tissue, which possibly has 
a greater pow’er than woody vascular tissue of 
assisting in the formation of sugar. 
238. As a certain quantity of acid is essential 
to render fruit agreeable to the palate, and as it 
is the property of cultivated fruits to add to their 
saccharine matter, but not to form more acid 
than when wild, it follows that in selecting wild 
fruits for domestication, those which are acid 
should be preferred, and those which are sweet 
or insipid rejected; 
239. Unless recourse is had to hybridism; 
when a wild insipid fruit may be po.ssibly im- 
proved, (204,) or may be the means of improv- 
ing something else. 
240. It is very much upon such considera- 
tions as the foregoing that the rules of training 
must depend. 
IX. SEED. 
241. The seed is the ovulum arrived at per- 
fection. 
242 It consists of an integument enclosing 
an embryo wffiich is the rudiment of a future 
plant. 
243. The seed is nourished by the same means 
as the fruit; and, like it, will be more or less 
perfectly formed, according to the abundance of 
its nutriment. 
244. The plant developed from the embryo in 
the seed, will be in all essential particulars like 
its parent specie.'^; 
245. Unless its nature has been changed by 
hybridi'ing. (204.) 
246. But although it will certainly, under or- 
dinary circumstances, reproduce its species, it 
will by no means uniformly reproduce the par- 
ticular variety by which it was home. 
247. So that seeds are not the proper means 
of propagating varieties. 
248. Nevertheless, in annual or biennial 
plants, no means can be emploved for propaga- 
ting a variety, except the seeds ; and I'et the va- 
riety is preserved. 
249. This is accomplished solely by the great 
care of the cultivator, and happens thus. 
250. Although a seed will not absolutely pro- 
pagate the individual, yet as a seed will partake 
more of the nature of its actual parent than of 
any thing else, its progeny may be expected, as 
really happens, to resemble the variety fiom 
which It spruns, more than any other variety of 
its species. 
251. Provided its purity have not been con- 
taminated by the intermixture ol other varieties. 
252. Bv a careful eradication of all the vari- 
eties from the neighborhood ol that Irorn which 
seed is to be saved, by taking care that none but 
the most genuine forms of a variety are pre- 
served, as seed-plants: and by compelling by 
transplaBtation a plant to expend all its accu- 
mulated sap in the nourishment of its .seeds, in- 
stead of in the superabundant production of fo- 
liage, a crop of seed may be procured, the plants 
produced by which will, in great measure, have 
the peculiar propertie.s of the parent variety. 
