AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
391 
§qdximmi 
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¬ 
s’ .motive to those engaged in similar pursuits 
with themselves. We arc 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. 
VILLA OF ME, EDWARD A. STEVENS. 
We recently visited this beautiful place. It 
13 i Q Hoboken, opposite Christopher street, New- 
York. The grounds contain about fifty acres, 
and are probably the most valuable of any in 
this country devoted to park, lawn, fruit, and 
garden. This place has a river front of nearly 
halt a mile; and on account of its immediate 
proximity to the city and its high commanding 
situation, it would undoubtedly sell for many 
thousand dollars per acre, by cutting it up into 
lots 25 by 100 feet. 
Under the superintendence of that excellent 
gardener, William Cranston, it is skilfully cul¬ 
tivated and kept in fine order. The park and 
the lawn are well arranged, so as to afford in 
some places the most perfect seclusion, and in 
others, the finest views of the city and harbor. 
In the fore-ground, a short distance from the 
family mansion, are the hot-house graperies and 
plant-houses, well filled with select plants, and 
the most delicious Black Hamburg, White Mus¬ 
cat of Alexandria, Muscat Blanc Hatiff, and 
other choice grapes; while still farthef on in 
the fore-ground, as we descend toward the river, 
is a tastefully-arranged lawn, on which flowers 
are blooming in great variety and profusion. 
Through this flower garden and lawn, winding 
walks and carriage-drives, have been beautifully 
laid out. 
In the extreme rear grounds is a vegetable 
and fruit garden, and on the border of it, is a 
large span-roofed cold grapery, well filled with 
some twenty or more varieties. 
In the fruit arrangement of the place, there is 
a good illustration of the value of dwarf trees; 
particularly the pear, of which there are some 
hundreds, mostly in bearing. Those trees were 
transplanted two years ago when only two 
years old, and this season they furnish no in¬ 
considerable quantity of fruit, of perhaps fifty 
varieties. Some of the trees are already ten feet 
high, and all things considered, we have never 
seen better growth or finer trees of their age. 
If standard trees had been planted in their 
stead, it would have been many years before so 
much could have been produced as is now- 
grown here. 
The dwarf apples are also in bearing, but we 
do not think them so desirable on Doucain 
stocks. The dwarf cherries are really very 
beautiful; and we think they are a great acqui¬ 
sition, where, as in this place, a larger tree 
would too much shade the garden. They bear 
early, are so low as to he protected conveniently 
from birds by mosqueto netting, and are 
easily gathered. The garden vegetables are 
abundant and excellent. We will refer particu¬ 
larly in this connection to only one variety, 
namely, the celery, which is here cultivated in 
great perfection. 
A light soil is chosen, well prepared, and the 
plants set out in beds sunk a few inches only 
below the level of the garden. The beds are 
wide enough to hold four or five rows of the 
celery, uinc or ten inches apart, with plants 
standing the same distance in the rows. It is 
grown, earthed up, and bleached in that order; 
and on the approach of winter, covered up as it 
is, in the form of a potato cone, and the celery 
is dug out, as wanted for use in the winter. 
This is an excellent and simple method, possess¬ 
ing several advantages. In carrying out the 
improvements on the park and lawn, there was, 
during the last year, several large forest trees 
successfully removed ; one in particular we no¬ 
ticed was quite large to be transplanted, it be¬ 
ing a very majestic spreading tree, with a trunk 
from fifteen to eighteen inches in diameter. 
WE ARE LOSING OUR PEACHES. 
Alas ! that it is so, but the indications are 
too plain to be mistaken, we fear. “ Peaches 
are scarce,” is heard from every quarter, and if 
this were all, even did the crop prove an entire 
failure for this year, it would not cause so 
much regret. But the fact is, by far the greater 
part of the peaches on sale in New-York this 
season, bear the unmistakable marks of deterior¬ 
ation. 
One of the first indications of the yellows in 
the peach is a premature ripening, anticipating 
the usual period two to three weeks, the 
peaches are smaller and deficient in flavor, with 
a somewhat astringent taste, the flesh bearing 
the mottled appearance resembling the best 
fatted beef where the lean and fat is well min¬ 
gled. Such peaches abound in our markets this 
season. 
This is not confined to the New-Jersey 
peaches, or those from Delaware; but New- 
Engiand is suffering to an equal extent. We 
passed into a friend’s peach orchard in the in¬ 
terior of Connecticut last week, and found all 
his trees, except some half dozen, past recovery. 
Where he hoped for one thousand baskets of 
luscious Rare-ripes and Melocotons, he will not 
gather ten. Last year, for the first time, he saw 
with alarm, two or three trees affected as we 
have described; he immediately dug them up 
and removed them from the orchard, but this 
year the trees go by the hundred. North, 
south, east and west, wc hear the same story. 
Is there no help for it? 
How are peaches at the West? and to what 
part of the country can we look for our future 
supplies ? Will our horticultural friends report 
upon the subject? 
A Rich Man Buying Blackberries—Bene¬ 
volence. —A poor woman chaffered half an 
hour in the street on Tuesday morning with a 
rich man—a very rich man—about the price of 
two quarts of blackberries. He did not dispute 
so much about the price as about the measure. 
He lectured the woman earnestly and persever- 
ingly, and, for aught we know to the contrary, 
logically, upon the enormous iniquity she was 
guilty of in selling berries in wine measures. 
He magnanimously sacrificed fifteen minutes in 
attempting to prove to her that she had as good 
a right to sell him potatoes or corn from tin 
quart measures as blackberries, and to convince 
her that it was her duty to use only wooden 
measures for such purposes. A crowd gathered, 
and at the close of the lecture it was proposed 
and voted to make up to the injured buyer the 
difference in his favor in two quarts of black¬ 
berries. A nice calculation showed that he was 
entitled to three-quarters of a cent, and it was 
generously collected by the officers of the meet¬ 
ing and tendered to the poor man, whose pro¬ 
perty is worth only about $400,000. So there 
is some true benevolence and public spirit in 
this world yet !—Albany Express. 
ON THE GROWTH OF WINTER CUCUMBERS, 
In order to cut cucumbers from November to 
February, nothing more is required than a com¬ 
mon pit of ordinary construction, with a heat¬ 
ing apparatus of some description. From a 
pit heated with a flue of the simplest kind, I 
have had cucumbers as plentiful and as fine in 
January as in June. 
The chief difficulty which people experience 
in the growth of cucumbers in winter arises, 
in my opinion, from one cause—and that is, 
they generally sow the seed too late; they 
rarely sow before August, and oftentimes not 
till late iu that month; then, if the weather in 
September and October be cold and cloudy, it 
it impossible for the plants to acquire heaUh, 
vigor and strength to carry them through the 
winter. 
Were a person, who intended to exhibit Pe¬ 
largoniums at any of the shows in May, to be¬ 
gin by cutting back his specimens in August, 
his chances of success would be about equal to 
those of the cucumber grower who sows his 
seed in August, and expects to have plenty of 
fruit at Christmas. 
I will briefly describe the method I adopt, 
and which has always been attended with uni¬ 
form success. I always sow the seed any time 
from the 1st to the 15th of July, but never 
later than the 15th; in about a month’s time 
after, they are fit for planting out. The soil I 
use is turfy loam, with some decomposed dung, 
if the loam be very turfy; but if not, I use a 
good portion of leaf-mold instead of the dung. 
The plants are not stopped until they reach 
two parts of the way up the trellis. I employ 
no artificial heat of any description during Au¬ 
gust and September; and if the weather be 
fine during October, I use none until towards 
the end of the month. I supply the plants 
liberally with water when they require it; and 
when the weather is at all favorable, I give an 
abundance of air; by this treatment the plants 
attain an extraordinary degree of strength and 
vigor by the end of October. 
I then begin to use a little fire heat, but I 
still continue to give air whenever the state of 
weather will permit. By these means, and by 
proper attention to the stopping and the regu¬ 
lating of the shoots, I succeed in having as good 
cucumbers during November, December and 
January, as in any other three months of the 
year. 
As the season is now at hand for commenc¬ 
ing, I can recommend the above method as the 
result of practice; and if strictly adhered to, 
it will be attended with astonishing success.— 
M. Saul, in Turner's London Florist. 
Advantage in Salt Water Bathing.—A 
correspondent of the Salem Register says : It 
is well know, among the medical profession, 
that persons who are in the frequent habit of 
salt water bathing are seldom if ever attacked 
with cholera, or diseases incident to warm 
weather or a relaxation of the physical powers 
of the body. It is said, also, that persons who 
use a great deal of salt with their food are less 
likely to be attacked by cholera than others. 
Mean spirits under disappointment, like small 
beer in a thunder storm, always turn sour, 
