SEED-TiME AW© HARVEST. 
© 
simpler process of raising cabbage plants, 
by sowing the seed in the cold frames. 
This is done here usually about February 
15 to March 1, in a warm and sheltered 
place. I saw one of my neighbors have a 
fine lot grown in that w^ay last year. He 
had taken a crop of lettuce out of his 
frames about Feb. 15. dug and raked the 
ground, and sowed his cabbage seed in 
rows about five inches apart, so as to give 
about 1,500 plants under each 3x6 sash. He 
matted carefully up, giving ventilation to 
the sashes whenever the weather would 
permit, and about April 1 he had fine 
plants, fit to plant in open ground right 
from where they were sown, not quite so 
good, of course, as if they had been trans¬ 
planted, but still much better than the or¬ 
dinary hot-bed plants, which are generally 
too much drawn and too tender to stand 
cold weather until quite late in the season. 
—Peter Henderson. 
Growing Plants for Exhibition. 
Whether the largest vegetables should 
receive the prizes at exhibitions, we much 
doubt. An English seedsman advertises a 
new pea as “a capital exhibition pea,” and 
we learn that it has larger pods with larger 
peas and more of them, than any other 
variety. Productiveness, so important to 
the market gardener, and quality so impor¬ 
tant in the home garden, are disregarded; 
if a pea produce a few enormous pods, it at 
once takes high rank as an “exhibition 
pea.” An English gardener, who has been 
remarkably successful in carrying off the 
prizes for onions, gives in a recent “Garden¬ 
er’s Chronicle” his method with exhibition 
onions. The ground receives a heavy 
dressing of well-rotted manure in Novem¬ 
ber, it being dug in, and the surface left 
rough until early in January, when a good 
dressing of soot is applied on the surface. 
Early in February the beds are raked, etc., 
and the seed sown. When the seedings 
are well established, they are thinned to 
nine inches apart, and the surface of the 
soil is covered with spent mushroom-bed 
manure. Afterwards, the onions are treat¬ 
ed to pigeons’ dung, and a commercial 
fertilizer. That this treatment should yield 
bulbs weighing from one pound six ounces 
to one pound twelve ounces, is not sur¬ 
prising. but in what way it improves the 
general crop of onions, we are unable to 
see. Thinning onions to nine inches apart, 
would not p*y for any other purpose save 
for exhibition. We doubt if horticulture 
is greatly promoted by this course.— Ameri¬ 
can Agriculturist. 
Use What You Have. 
Trying to walk with one foot in the grave 
does not help us to get along. Lift up 
your head and heart, your hands and feet, 
your all, and do what you can; making 
yourself as useful as possible. Neither 
bread and raiment, nor religion, are found 
in the grave. 
Fretting about things that cannot be 
changed is like going to law and spending 
money in hand on debts that is known can¬ 
not be recovered. The best that can be 
done with such debts is to let the*n be a 
warning against any more of them; and 
the best use of past follies and errors is to 
let them teach us to be more wise now. 
A VALENTINE. 
A Valentine! Ah, can it be 
That some one has addressed to me 
These lines so sweet and tender? 
Name or initial is not set 
Upon the page, and yet—and yet 
I think I know the sender. 
What though the writing be disguised, 
And many a little trick devised 
To aid the fond deception; 
St. Valentine provides the key 
That spoils the little mystery 
The moment of reception. 
We may be right, we may be wrong; 
For lack of confirmation strong 
W T e give the rein to fancy, 
And let her wander at her will, 
And her bright destiny fulfill 
In fields of necromancy. 
And Valentines would lose their charm 
If they at once could doubt disarm 
Ere yet the seal was broken; 
And so the deeper the disguise, 
The more delightful the surprise, 
And sweeter is the token. 
Economy is like warm clothes; as these create no 
heat but preserve it, so economy produces no money 
but it saves it. 
