198 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
§artinrltural Jlqjarfmeitt 
To Horticulturists. — Our weekly issue of 
so large a journal, gives us ample room to devote 
to the different departments of cultivation, and 
we have commenced with this volume, to allot a 
separate space to Horticulture. We have secured 
additional efficient aid in its conduction, and we 
invite horticulturists generally, to send in their 
contributions on all subjects interesting and in¬ 
structive to those engaged in similar pursuits 
with themselves. We are receiving the leading 
foreign and domestic horticultural journals, and 
shall be abundantly able to bring promptly be¬ 
fore our readers all that transpires, which may 
be new and useful. 
HORTICULTURAL EXHIBITION OF THE RHODE 
ISLAND HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
The above exhibition will take place at Cen¬ 
tral Hall, in Providence, on Tuesday, the 20th 
inst., commencing at 2 o’clock P. M., and con¬ 
tinuing open through the day and evening of 
Wednesday. The show will embrace Fruits, 
Flowers, Early Vegetables, and New Butter in 
lumps. We learn that extensive preparations 
are being made, and that an unusual display is 
expected, especially of Roses and Strawberries, 
as the time of holding the show was particularly 
selected in reference to these. The convenient 
daily access from this city by steamboat, will 
make it a pleasant trip for our amateurs to visit 
Providence at that time. Persons can leave 
here Tuesday P. M., after business hours, have 
a pleasant summer evening sail on the Sound, 
visit the show during the day, Wednesday, and 
at night return here in time for business on 
Thursday morning. If not too much occupied 
otherwise, we shall endeaver to visit and report 
this show. 
ASPARAGUS BEDS. 
Although late in the season, it is not too 
late to repair the early neglect of your beds for 
service another year. Passing a garden the 
other day with which we had been a dozen 
years familiar, and knowing it to have a fine 
productive Asparagus bed when occupied by its 
former proprietor, we saw the good house-keeper 
of the place threading her way carefully over 
the bed, striving to glean up a mess for the 
coming dinner. Our curiosity was somewhat 
excited to look at it, for we had known it when 
in full production of the largest and finest 
plants. We did so, but what a contrast. It 
was almost as hard as the road itself. The soil, 
a stiff loam, but naturally rich, and overrun 
with compact grass roots, the shoots from which 
had been hoed off for the spring, but not packed 
up, and a few scurvy, little, penny-royal look¬ 
ing sprouts, hardly as large as goose quills, scat¬ 
tered here and there over it. 
“Dear me, my good woman, why don’t you 
clean up, fork up, and dress heavily with old-rot- 
ten-barn-yard-manure, cover over with beach 
sand, and then throw half a barrel of salt, dirty or 
clean, as you can get it, on to this poor neg¬ 
lected bed of Asparagus ? Then, in a fort¬ 
night, you can cut shoots as large as your fore 
finger, and next year as large as your thumb!” 
“Well, I want to know ! I spoke to Squire 
Doeless about it the other day, and told him 
the Sparry-grass bed was all runnin’ out, and 
that sumthin’ ought to be done about it. But 
he said, ‘never mind, it isn’t the right sort. I’m 
goin’ to get some of Bizzy’s, the market gar¬ 
dener’s kind—the giant sort.’ He has promised 
to put down a bed for me in the fall, and says 
it shan’t cost me more than twenty dollars for 
enough to keep my family through the Sparry- 
grass season. Why, railly, do you spose this 
bed can be made to grow as good shoots every 
day, with the dressin’ you talk on?” 
“ Certainly I do. Go up to my garden, and 
look at my bed. I set it out fifteen years ago, 
with a parcel of little stray roots that I picked 
up in the neighborhood. All the preparation I 
gave the ground was, to make it as good as if I 
was going to sow parsneps on it. Since that, I 
have cut off the tops every fall, and laid them 
over the bed to keep it warm. As soon as the 
frost is out in the spring, I spread a good coat 
of old stable manure, together with old lime and 
ashes, if I can conveniently get them, and fork 
them in as deeply as a common garden or ma¬ 
nure fork will do it; and if the ground is very 
weedy, I occasionally sow salt over it, so that it 
looks as if a light snow storm had come upon it. 
And don’t we have Asparagus at our house! 
Send up to-morrow morning, and you shall have 
a mess that will make your mouth water. 
Shoots as large as your thumb, and crisp as an 
icicle! Every other morning I cut enough from 
that bed, not over twenty-four feet square, be¬ 
sides my family use, to bring me a dollar at the 
hotel, up street. That Asparagus bed is the 
best piece of property I own, for the money it 
cost.” 
“Why, why , why! Then I’ll give Squire 
Doeless no peace till he gets this bed of ours 
fixed up; for if he’d spend one quarter the time 
this very week in doing it, as you say, instead 
of talkin’ his foolish politics with these street 
idlers, we could have all we want, and pay for 
the children’s summer schoolin’ besides.” 
And so we left the good woman. But we fear 
the bed is not yet forked, and that the fine mess 
we sent the “ Squire” was the last he will know 
of the “giant” asparagus, till he meets it again 
from some other garden than his own. 
SOUTHERN NEW-YORK. 
We left Elmira on the very bright morning of 
the 1st of June inst., at an early hour, by the 
New-York and Erie Railroad en route for New- 
York, and we have rarely enjoyed any trip so 
much. 
The whole country was completely clothed in 
her robe of the freshest green—new, unsoiled, 
and spring-like. Even the wild mountain 
scenery through which we passed, was en¬ 
livened by the greatest profusion of wild flow¬ 
ers, among which the gay wild honey-suckle, 
and pure white but showy blossom of the Dog¬ 
wood, predominated. 
We are more than ever convinced that the 
southern tier of counties in this State through 
which the Erie railroad passes, is capable of 
very great agricultural advancement. It is evi¬ 
dently making marked progress. Very much 
of the arable land is finely located, and of the 
most genial temperament. We saw many a fair 
acre, just such as we would select to raise the 
Christiana and Hunter Melon, the Burr’s New 
Pine and McAvoy’s Superior Strawberry, the 
Holly Crown and Norton’s Melon Apple, the 
the Bartlett and Virgalieu Pear, and George the 
Fourth and Crawford’s Melocoton Peach. And 
yet these delicious and profitable products are 
very generally neglected. Now and then a man 
and a place is the exception. Very much of 
this land, particularly their side hills, are admi¬ 
rably adapted to the production of fruit, which 
will yield a treble profit on their soil, to the 
present productions. 
The whole country is worthy of far more at¬ 
tention and far better cultivation than it has yet 
received. They need to plow decidedly deeper, 
and in many places sub-soil. 
The crops generally l&ok well. Wheat and 
grass promise abundance, while many fine fields 
of corn are fairly up and struggling through 
the near approach to frost. The farmers, how¬ 
ever, anticipate a good corn crop. One old man 
said, one of his largest and best matured corn 
crops was planted one year on the 20th of 
June. 
The earliest gardens we have any where 
seen this spring were, at Narrowsburgh. The 
ladies have taken hold of this department at 
that place, for we counted in passing, eight wo¬ 
men hard at work in five very handsomely-laid- 
out little gardens. 
We could but notice the numerous attractive 
situations for country-seats at almost every 
turn of the road. If persons in selecting such 
a residence wish fine society, churches, and 
schools we would refer them to Middletown, 
Delaware, Binghampton, Elmira and 0 wego. The 
latter place is the one that has so charmed the 
Rev. Dr. Cox, late of Brooklyn. Binghampton, 
however, we think cannot be second in attract¬ 
ions to any other. If persons wish more retire¬ 
ment, let them look at Oatsville, Narrowsburgh, 
Mast Hope, &c. Mast Hope is in a delightfully 
secluded spot, on the south bank of the Dela¬ 
ware, in Pensylvania, four hours’ ride from New- 
York on the R. R., and fifteen miles from Hones- 
dale, Pa. A very large and fine-looking hotel 
or public boarding-house, has recently been 
opened here, just off from the R. R. depot, 
while in front of it, the banks of the Delaware 
are lined with a belt of very handsome pines, 
Trout abound in all the brooks in the vicinity, 
and in the fall deer are abundant. 
We wondered very much in passing, that so 
large arrangements are now making among the 
fashionables of New-York city to trip away to 
the White Mountains this summer, when scenery 
as varied, wild and romantic, if not as grand, is 
within four or six hours’ pleasant ride of the city, 
and which they can at any time enjoy without 
the fatigue and dust of traveling longer jour¬ 
neys. 
On leaving Jersey City eight miles distant, at 
Boiling Spring, fine lands and beautiful situations 
can be had for two hundred dollars per acre. A 
little farther on, it is half that price, and before 
you are aware of it—an hour or two later—you 
will find the best of land, with large crops, on 
the newly-tilled virgin soil, for thirty to fifty 
dollars per acre—land, which, with intelligent 
cultivation, can readily be made to pay a fair in¬ 
come on $200 or more per acre. 
Justice compels us to add one word to what 
we said in a former number respecting this road. 
It is pleasant to travel on a road, where on the 
part of all the officers and employees, from the 
