I860.] 
51 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
Transplanting Forest Trees—Trees for 
Prairies. 
To the Editor of the American Agriculturist: 
I am about laying out grounds for a home upon 
the prairie and I wish to ask a few questions upon 
the selection of trees to set around the buildings, 
how far apart to plant them, and how they shall 
be set. 
We have abundance of hard and soft maples, 
elm, linden, cotton-wood, poplar, burr-oak, black 
walnut and butternut. Now which of these shall 
I select to plant about my house. J. F. Stock. 
Hlue Earth Co., Min. Ter. 
Remarks. — It would be an easier matter to re¬ 
commend a selection if we knew the extent of 
land laid off for ornamental purposes, size and 
position of buildings, etc. If there is sufficient 
room, it might be well to plant a few of each kind 
named, with perhaps the exception of the poplar 
which is not generally admired. The hard maple 
makes a fine tree, and if the grounds be large, a 
small sugar grove might he planted for both or¬ 
nament and profit. So too we would plant freely 
of the black walnut, a stately wide spreading, 
and quick growing tree, valuable for its fruit. A 
few evergreens of some sort should by all means 
be planted to afford a contrast in Winter and serve 
as a screen or hedge against severe blasts. Set 
evergreens and low growing trees or shrubs near 
the house, with the tall growing deciduous sorts 
at a distance. We have often sefcn one dense 
mass of trees so encircling the house that scarce¬ 
ly a single ray of sunlight could reach it to dry 
np the moisture after a rain. A little sunshine is 
desirable. 
Persons often set their trees quite thickly at 
first, and as they crowd upon each other, remove 
the least valuable. The objection to this is that 
the really desirable trees are crowded and grow 
slowly, also that few persons have the courage to 
cut out the surplus when once growing finely. 
Set the trees as early as practicable in Spring. 
Select trees from the outskirts of the forest, take 
them up with as many roots as possible, head 
back the leading shoots to induce side branches, 
and plant in a wide, moderately deep hole, and 
there will be little danger of failure, unless the 
season prove very dry, in which case a mulch or 
coating of straw, leaves, or tan bark will be ser¬ 
viceable. 
Two Kinds of American Mountain Ash. 
It does not seem to be generally known that 
there are two sorts of Mountain Ash indigenous, 
to this State. One kind, which is the true Sorfots 
Americana, has its flowers in an upright corymb, 
but the weight of the fruit at length reverses it, 
and makes it pendant. The berries are of an 
orange scarlet color. This variety abounds in 
the neighborhood of Pultneyville, and doubtless 
in other parts of this State. 
The other species, Sorlms microcarpa, has 
smaller flowers and fruit, and the corymb remains 
erect. The fruit is scarlet. It grows in con¬ 
siderable numbers among the rocks at Little 
Falls, on the Mohawk river. Both sorts are 
worth planting. 
_o { —— Wm3 C — t 
Grafting Knives. 
A. T. Northup of Oisego Co., N. Y., sends 
the drawing of a grafting knife, of which fig. 1 
is an engraving, and asks if there is a better 
form. This form will answer tolerably well. It 
is made wholly of iron, except that the knife or 
chisel portion seen at /; is sometimes of steel, 
wmch is preferable. The cutting edge is hol¬ 
lowed so as to cut upon the ouier portions of the 
branch before splitting the center. The wedge, 
iv, is used to hold the split open while inserting 
the cions, and the hook, It, is convenient for hang¬ 
ing the implement upon a limb of the tree. The 
objections are that, to have a sufficiently strong 
tool, with a thick back to the knife portion, the 
blade is too obtuse, splitting the limb in advance 
of cutting; and there is no guard to regulate the 
depth of split. We prefer the knife shown at fig.2., 
in which a thin steel blade is riveted to an iron 
back, having a wooden handle at one end, and a 
wedge at the other. This makes a smooth, clean 
cut for the cions, the frame back preventing it 
from entering too far. If it is desirable to hang 
it up, a hook can be screwed into or otherwise at¬ 
tached to the end of the handle. In fig. 2, the 
wedge portion is rather close to the knife or chisel. 
In fig. 3 is still another form, much used in 
some parts of the country. The iron or steel 
blade is curved upon its edge, and terminates 
with a wedge It is quite convenient, and can be 
hung up by the wedge portion, which is a little 
bent. As in lig. 1, the hack has to be so thick to 
give sufficient strength, as to make a rather blunt 
edge, with no guard to prevent splitting too far. 
Kinging the Grape. 
To the Editor of the American Agricuturist: 
I have been a cultivator of grapes for twenty 
seven years, and during the past three years I 
have practiced ringing some of my vines. The 
result is, that it produces very large, watery, acid 
fruit. I have raised bunches that were estimated 
to weigh one pound each, but they were not fit 
to eat. It is said that they ripen earlier for this 
process, but I think it is a mistake. They only 
color a few days sooner, and never ripen at all. 
I have never found one bunch fit to eat, although 
one year I took the premium at our county fair 
for these sour, overgrown grapes, and that too 
when there were good, sweet, ripe, delicious 
clusters lying by the side of mine. I have never 
been troubled with mildew or blight, and have 
never failed to grow a good crop of grapes. 
Monroe Co., N. Y. E. Ferguson. 
Remarks.— These experiments of ringing the 
vine coincide very nearly with our own trials, as 
detailed on page 367, of last volume (Dec. No ). 
A writer in a late number of the (English) 
Gardeners' Chronicle, practiced it upon his Black 
Hamburghs, which made them show earlier signs 
of ripening, and they were of increased size, but 
failed to color, which he considered a fatal ob¬ 
jection to the experiment.— Ed ] 
.—-—- - - . . — 
liaising Grapes from Seed. 
This is easily done. The seeds designed for 
sowing should not he allowed to become dry and 
hard (as they will if put away like other seeds in 
papers or boxes); if they become very dry, they 
will seldom vegetate. The proper way is to save 
them at the time of eating the fruit, and mix 
them at once in sand or other earth, to keep them 
moderately moist until the following Spring, when 
they should he sowed in drills like apple or other 
fruit seeds. As to the choice of seeds for sow¬ 
ing, there are different opinions. The celebrated 
pomologist, Van Mons, held that seeds from new 
varieties of fruit were much more likely to pro¬ 
duce improved sorts than seeds from old varie¬ 
ties. For instance, seeds of the Delaware or Re¬ 
becca grape (being, as it is supposed of compar¬ 
atively recent origin) would be more likely to pro¬ 
duce superior seedlings than those from lhe Isa¬ 
bella or Catawba, which are considerably older. 
Others hold that it matters little what seeds are 
sown ; and, as a ground for their opinion, they 
refer to the many excellent seedling fruits of all 
sorts springing np by chance in various parts of 
the country. 
Whatever seeds are planted, there is no cer¬ 
tainty of getting improved varieties There is a 
strong tendency in all plants to revert to the orig¬ 
inal wild type. Of a hundred grape seeds sown, 
doubtless ninety-nine of the plants will not be 
worth raising. In order to determine which of 
the seedlings promise best, Mr. Longwoiih, the 
Grape-King of the West, has somewhere given 
this rule : “ Where the stem is hairy, I throw 
them aside without waiting to see them fruit. 
The less white on the under side of the leaf, 
the better the promise.” Another fruit-grower 
of note, goes so far as to say that allihc plants 
which come up the first year after sowing are 
nearly worthless, and may as well he thrown 
away at first as not. Those which spring up the 
second year, he saves. The first year plants he 
considers to have an excess of wood-making 
force, and to be wild and coarse in every re¬ 
spect. The second year plants being slow to 
start, have less of mere vegetable force, and 
have a nicer organization, which will show it¬ 
self in finer fruit. 
Yet after all, this is a very uncertain way of 
propagating new sorts. To make surer and quick¬ 
er work of it, we should resort to hybridization— 
i.e., to the cross-breeding of different sorts. A 
half-dozen carefully hybridized seeds will be more 
likely to furnish a superior new grape than many 
hundreds of chance gathered seeds. As the young 
seedlings are more likely to partake of the consti¬ 
tution of the female parent, than of the male, it, is 
best to take a good, hardy, native grape and cross 
it with a fine foreign variety. For example : to 
get a new black grape, we might impregnate the 
pistils of the Concord or Logan, with pollen from 
the Black Hamburgh. To get a new red grape, 
we might fertilize the pistils of the Diana or Del¬ 
aware, with the pollen of the Rose Chasselas. 
To get a new white grape, we might cross the 
Rebecca or Golden Clinton with the Golden Chas¬ 
selas. Plants raised from seeds so hybridized, 
will be likely to inherit the hardiness and early 
ripening qualities of the native plant, together with 
more or less of the fine flavor of the exotic. ‘ 
There is, however, one practical difficulty to be 
provided against. The foreign varieties being al¬ 
most necessarily grown under glass, will natural¬ 
ly blossom earlier than the natives in the open 
air: therefore, the natives to be experimented 
on should he brought into the grapery in pots, that 
both may blossom at the same time, and the work 
