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JVotis and Gleanings• 
Early Rose Potatoes —We do not know 
that we shall in our day see as good a potato as 
the EaGy Rose was in its palmy days. It has 
been the subject of more universal praise than 
any other potato ever offered to growers. It was 
first raised from the seed of the “Garnet Chili,” 
by Albert Bresee, of Hortonville, Vermont. As 
to the prices paid for the earliest specimens of 
this potato we have no authentic record, but we 
do know that in the spring of 1868 D. S. Heffron, 
of Utica, N. Y., sold to the Messrs. Conover, of 
New Jersey, 153 11-13 bushels of Early Rose po¬ 
tatoes for the round sum of $10,000 or at the rate 
of $65 per bushel. The latter firm sold to an¬ 
other grower at the same time 125 bushels at 
$80 per bushel, or $220 per barrel of 2| bushels. 
In smaller quantities the Early Rose was sold at 
prices yet higher than these. Mr. Bresee receiv¬ 
ed in 1868 for single tubers of the variety known 
as “Bresee’s King of the Earlies” $50 each. The 
sudd«-n increase of the product of single tnbers is 
thus accomplished: By employing a propagating 
house, cutting the shoots from a single potato, 
taking off cuttings as soon as the plants are six 
inches high, which latter are potted and plunged 
into a border with bottom heat, and in turn 
yielding other cuttings, increasing in geometric 
ratio, there have been secured in a single season 
many thousands of plants from a single tuber. 
A Correspondent of the country gentle¬ 
man in writing about the country from Harris¬ 
burg to Philadelphia in Pennsylvania says:— 
Here one may see as good farming as can be 
found in America. The barns are large and 
fine; the buildings are all neat and tidy and are 
usually painted; and on many farms the fences 
even are whitewashed, and give a wonderful 
effect of neatness and finish to the farms and to 
the entire landscape. The cattle are sleek and 
the sheep are fat and flourishing. The roadsides 
and fence rows are clear of briers and brambles 
and brush and no Canada thistles or wild mus¬ 
tard, or ox-eye daisies or cockles dare show their 
heads. The men that farm it so always have 
good crops. Good land helps to make good 
farmiug no doubt, but good farming in time 
makes good land even out of poor, and always 
improves it. 
In New Jersey, eastern New York and Con¬ 
necticut the style of farming has been entirely 
revolutionized within a few years. The vicinity 
to the large cities, Philadelphia, New York, 
Brooklyn, Newark, etc, has made fruit and 
truck farming more profitable. Wheat and wool 
are little raised, and the grist mills and woolen 
mills along the Hudson river are going to de¬ 
cay, even where there is good water power, and 
the hill streams once more go tumbling down to 
the Hudson iu free and rollicking cascades. 
Even raising hay for New York is less common 
than a few years ago. The deep river makes 
cheap barge transportation in summer, it is true, 
but that is just when farmers lack the time to 
ship hay. And in winter when navigation is 
closed, freights, I am told are as low on hay from 
competing points in Illinois as from non-compet¬ 
ing points but a hundred miles from New York, 
and as cheap on flour from Minneapolis as from 
Rochester. This has helped change large farm¬ 
ing into small farming of perishable vegetables 
and fruits, and so the large farms are being di¬ 
vided up into small truck and berry patches, and 
hundreds of bushels of berries and other fruits 
go each week from single small shipp'ng stations 
all about New York. Large farms are at a dis¬ 
count. W. I. C.; Ironton, Ohio. 
A correspondent of Vick’s Magazine says: 
There are very few people not fond of lettuce in 
the early spring. Having removed from the city, 
where early lettuce could be bought at the mar¬ 
kets, I was much at a loss for this refreshing 
salad plant—at least, until quite warm weather. 
Knowing it to be quite hardy, I, last autumn 
sowed some seed in a warm, dry spot, and in a 
week or two the plants were up. Before hard 
frost I placed around my little patch some 
boards—to be particular, an old door frame—and 
over this some loose boards, covering about 
two-thirds of the space, so that there was about 
one-third nncovered for light, and air. It was 
where it got the best of the sun, sloping south¬ 
east, and it was a surprise to find how early I 
had young lettuce from this rude bed. Of course, 
this will be of no benefit to those who have hot¬ 
beds and other conveniences for forcing vegeta¬ 
bles. But to many of your readers I think the 
knowledge may be useful. 
William H. Vanderbilt receives four 
times per annum a check for $176,000 interest on 
the United States bonds he ho’ds (enough to 
keep a man from want,) and yet it is but a tithe 
of his enormous wealth. It is certain that he is 
the ri< hest man now living, and it is probable 
that he is worth more than any two men who ever 
lived (if Gould, perhaps, be excepted,) the most 
of it made within the past twenty-five years 
He is believed to own more than $100,()00,000 of 
railroad securities, besides his goverment bonds 
paying him $704,000 per annum. 
