SOILS AND TM.EIU MANAGEMENT., 
(which is the receptacle for pollen) was to he left 
on nine hills, and the tops or male parts of the 
Cora cut off before flowering, and the top left on 
the tenth hill only, the writer believes there would 
be on the nine hills cobs mainly, without corn. 
I must admit one fact which has a hearing on 
the position that the pollen, on different natural 
plants, does not readily fecundate other plants; I 
refer to the grafted trees, the seeds of which are 
understood to give different varieties. I have no 
facts to the contrary, but may it not be, that the 
sap of the natural stock of the grafted fruit does 
enter into the kernels or seed 1 It does not affect 
the pulp, which is certainly remarkable, but does 
it follow that the stock does not affect the kernel ? 
It is supposed that the pollen of other trees, 
causes the, consequence referred to, yet I have not 
known the fact well established, that the kernels 
of grafted trees (though entirely separate from 
others) gave the same fruit! The locality where 
I write has only good grafted apples, pears, and 
peaches, growing for miles around it. Ought not, 
therefore, the seed of these grafted trees to give at 
least, as good fruit as the trees around them, if 
they are impregnated by the adjacent trees, as 
supposed ? The fact is they give wretched fruit— 
hog peaches, and poor apples. The cherry ap¬ 
pears to give the original fruit of the country, now 
almost extinct, a small black cherry. 
But to return to the strawberry. The writer 
set out a large bed several years since, of the black 
roseberry, strawberry seedlings, (purple would be 
a better name,) every plant came up, and bore 
alike. Now (I do not know the circumstances of 
the locality whence the seed came, being Europe¬ 
an) the same circumstances or results would not 
arise from our peach, apple, or pear ; nor would 
such have been the result if strawberries were 
easily fecundated by other neighboring plants. I 
find too, that the Alpine strawberry is frequently 
propagated for its fruit by seed instead of runners. 
This would not be if the seedlings did not grow 
the Alpine strawberry. 
The habitude of the camelia has some bearing 
on our subject. It has been made to turn the sta¬ 
mens, and pistils, and all the sexual parts into 
flowers; yet occasionally the double camelia is 
true to nature, and will bear its fruit or seed. So 
too of the pirns japonica , a flowering shrub, only 
cultivated as such, yet the writer has a plant with 
a dozen or two of fruit on it—a great crop for the 
large strawberry, if on the same ground. 
The writer has a tomato bed, the plants of 
which are all now (July) seven feet high, with 
little fruit, but of large size, not ripe. They are 
growing on the plot where the removed raspber¬ 
ries grew. He believes the excess of cultivation 
has been playing the mischief with their stamens 
and pistils. Remedy —plant next year on a drier 
and less luxuriant spot. Proof.—-A part of the 
seven feet high seedlings were planted in a dry 
soil, and now have a good crop on them. 
For Mr. Hovey’s consolation, I beg to mention 
that a friend of "the writer’s, on a virgin and thin 
soil, coarse gravel, not over four or five inches, 
raised, he informs me, the present season, on a 
patch of 20 feet by 30, five bushels of Hovey straw- 
20 ? 
berries, and was much pleased with their yield; 
no other strawberry near them. 
Mahon, a gardener of high authority, directs, in 
making a strawberry-bed, that the first runners, or 
those nearest the old plant, be selected as most 
likely to give fruit. There is much to support this 
opinion, and.perhaps the planting the end runners 
may have made the plants in many cases sterile. 
This theory of Mr. Long-worth, here combatted, 
is not new, for one English gardener-, (Mr. Keen,) 
as early as 1809,- supposed the Hautboy strawberry 
was diacian —male and female. But Professor 
Lindley, who is very high authority, says, “ In 
cultivating the Hautboy strawberry-plants, from 
bad collections, produce male or Sterile plants, as 
gardeners call them, and many are of opinion that 
these males are necessary in their beds to fertilize 
the others, the consequence is that these beds 
prove more fertile in leaves than in fruit-—that 
their sterility comes from the males ., as they always 
produced a superabundance of runners.” 
Mr. Editor, I must apologise for this long artb 
cle, for I claim neither extensive experience nor 
botanical science, but I have thought the princi¬ 
ples put forth in the horticultural periodicals inju¬ 
rious, and have given my views in a very desultory 
manner, not so much for any value in themselves, 
as from the hope that they will elicit more able 
pens, and more experience in a very interesting 
department of our markets and gardens. 
S. S. 
For the American Agriculturist. 
SOILS AND THEIR MANAGEMENT. 
Buffalo , September 4 tk, 1843. 
Soils are distinguished by a variety of names, 
indicative of their character and peculiarities. 
Thus we have clay or argillaceous soils; sandy 
soils, calcareous soils, containing an abundance of 
lime; and peaty soils, in which decayed vegetable 
matter exists in a peculiar state to the exclusion 
of almost every other substance. These form the 
extremes of soils, and wherever they are found un¬ 
mixed to any extent with other ingredients, they 
are universally barren. Happily for the human 
race, they exist in this condition, only to a very 
limited extent in comparison with the whole sur¬ 
face of the earth. 
It is one of the first objects of the agriculturist, 
so to modify and temper the soil he tills, that it 
will be suited to the production of the various arti¬ 
cles he wishes to cultivate. There is very little 
land, comparatively, in the United States, that re¬ 
quires to be improved by the addition of large 
quantities of other soils; yet when it occurs in 
farms subject to cultivation, a careful consideration 
of our interest will induce a modification with 
such substances as are best fitted to produce this 
object. Very strong clay should be dressed with 
a quantity of sand; and sandy soils should be 
made more adhesive by the addition of clay; while 
peat soils should be thoroughly drained, and the 
surface covered thickly with sand or gravel. As¬ 
tonishing effects have been produced by simply 
