AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
119 
putting two or three old hen turkeys with 
their broods of young in the infested inclo¬ 
sure. The young turkeys are very fond of 
grasshoppers, and soon become dexterous in 
capturing them, upon which they grow and 
fatten rapidly. I have known an old hen 
with thirteen young ones, the past season, 
when grasshoppers were unusually numer¬ 
ous, that kept a five acre lot well cleared of 
them.—A. C. J. in Poultry Chronicle. 
THE BLACK RASPBERRY. 
I have often wondered why farmers do not 
cultivate a greater variety of fruits in their 
gardens. In addition to what is generally 
cultivated, I would mention the black rasp¬ 
berry—a small fruit, well known in most 
parts of the United States. It grows wild 
by the sides of fences, edges of forests, &c., 
but common as it is, and delicious as is the 
fruit, but few think of cultivating it. H. 
Perry, of Porter, has a fine lot of twenty- 
five or thirty bushes, which for the past 
three seasons have yielded a good supply for 
his own table, some for his friends and 
neighbors, and also to dry for future use, 
and richly paying for the little trouble they 
cost. He took them from the forest and 
other places, in the fall of the year, and 
planted them in his garden. This, any one 
will see, is attended with no expense, and 
very little trouble. It may be done in the 
spring. They may be set along the sides of 
fences, as this situation appears to be the 
most natural for them. Give the black rasp¬ 
berry a trial, and you will not regret it.—J. 
Sibley, “Wilson, N. Y., March, 1855.— Rural 
New-Yorker. 
To the above we can add that we have 
cultivated the wild black, or, more properly, 
deep purple raspberry, these twenty years or 
more. To our taste it is superior to the 
Antwerp, Fastolf, or any other foreign va¬ 
riety, being more juicy and spicy. It has 
the further advantage of being more hardy, 
it endures the drouth better, and is a more 
certain yielder. Added to this the size of 
the berry increases with cultivation. The 
only objection we have to it is, that it throws 
up more suckers than the foreign kinds ; but 
this may be guarded against, perhaps, by 
planting canes with all the eyes cut off below 
the ground. 
We have often noticed in the fields a larg¬ 
er kind of red raspberry—nearly as large 
as the Antwerp and of higher flavor. 
These are well worthy of being transplanted 
to the garden; and might, like the New-Ro- 
chelle blackberry, become highly popular. 
We have seen thousands of these scattered 
among the smaller red raspberries in our 
wanderings among the hilly parts of Herki¬ 
mer, Otsego, and other southern counties of 
this State. 
Restoration to Health of a Decayed 
Holly. —Some years ago a beautiful, old, 
spreading holly tree showed signs of decay. 
It grew in a cultivated field; the roots of the 
couch-grass, which were in the field, were 
collected, and instead of carting them to an 
out-of-the way corner, they were spread in 
large quantities under the holly tree ; the 
fresh soil attached to the roots of the grass, 
and the decomposition of the roots themselves 
have greatly benefitted the holly, which is 
now in a healthy condition. It will thus be 
seen that the years of many a favorite tree 
may often be prolonged by very simple 
means. p. jy[_ 
AN APRIL VIOLET. 
Pale Flower that by this stone 
Sweetenest the air alone ; 
While round thee falls the snow 
And the rude wind doth blow ; 
What thought doth make thee pine 1 
Pale Flower, can I divine 1 
Say, does this trouble thee, 
That all things fickle be 1 
The wind that buffets so 
Was kind an hour ago ; 
The sun a cloud doth hide 
Cheered thee at morning tide. 
The busy pleasuring bee 
Sought thee for company; 
The little sparrows near, 
Sang thee their ballads clear; 
The maples, on thy head 
Their fragrant blessing shed. 
Because the storm made dumb 
The wild bees’ booming hum ; 
Because for shivering 
The sparrows can not sing ; 
Is this the reason why 
Thou look’st so wofully 1 
To-morrow’s clear eyed sun 
Will cheer thee, pallid one ; 
To-morrow will bring back 
The wild bee on his track, 
Bursting thy cloister dim 
With his wild roystering. 
Can’st thou not wait the morrow 
That rids thee of thy sorrow; 
Art thou too desolate 
To smile at any fate 1 
Then there is naught for thee 
But death’s deliveiy. Clarence Cook. 
THE BASIN OF THE ATLANTIC OCEAN. 
The basin of the Atlantic Ocean is a long 
trough, separating the old world from the 
new, and extending probabably from pole to 
pole. This ocean furrow was probably 
scored into the crust of our planet by the 
Almighty hand, that the waters which he 
called seas, might be gathered together so as 
to let the dry land appear and fit the earth 
for the habitation of man. From the top of 
Chimborazo to the bottom of the Atlantic, at 
the deepest place yet reached by the plum¬ 
met in the Northern Atlantic, the distance in 
a vertical line is nine miles. Could the wat¬ 
ers of the Atlantic be drawn off so as to ex¬ 
pose this great sea-gash, which separates 
continents, and extends from the Arctic to 
the Antarctic, it would present a scene the 
most rugged, grand and imposing. 
The very ribs of the solid earth, with the 
foundations of the sea, would be brought to 
light, and we should have presented to us, at 
one view, in the empty cradle of the ocean, 
a thousand fearful wrecks, with that dread¬ 
ful array of dead men's sculls, great anchors, 
heaps of pearl and inestimable stones, which, 
in the poets eye, lie scattered in the bottom 
of the sea, making it hideous with sights of 
ugly death. The deepest part of the Atlan¬ 
tic is probably somewhere between the Ber¬ 
mudas and the Grand Banks. The waters 
of the Gulf of Mexico are held in a basin 
about a mile deep in the deepest part. There 
is at the bottom of the sea, between Cape 
May and Newfoundland and Cape Clear in 
Ireland, a remarkable steppe, which is al¬ 
ready known as telegraphic plateau. A 
company is now engaged in the project of a 
submarine telegraph across the Atlantic. It 
is proposed to carry the wire across this 
plateau from the eastern shores of New¬ 
foundland to the western shores of Ireland. 
The great circle distance between these two 
shore lines is 1,600 miles, and the sea along 
this route is probably nowhere more than 
10,000 feet deep.— Prof. Maury. 
THE VALUE OF A GARDEN. 
But I hold that any farmer, who is worthy 
of the name, will prepare a small plot of 
ground for wife and daughters, and that he 
will, out of love to them, make it all they 
can wish or desire. It is these little things 
that make home pleasant and happy ; and it 
has been the lack of these that has driven 
many a loving heart out into the world and 
away from a sterile, barren home. Give the 
wife and daughters a place to plant, tend, and 
rear their flowers ; help them, if needs be, 
although it may take an hour sometimes 
that it is hard to spare, and you will a thou¬ 
sand times bless God tor so ordering your 
mind that you did it. What husband or 
father, rugged though his nature may be, 
does not fondly linger around a home made 
so bright and cheerful by the fairy hands of 
his wife or daughters, scattering, as it were, 
in his way, the beauties of their little plot 1 
What son or brother ever forgets his home 
who has found his room daily perfumed with 
the flowers which have been raised by the 
hand of a fond mother or gentle loving sis¬ 
ters, and placed there through the prompt¬ 
ings of their own dear affectionate heart t 
What daughter ever forgets the home where 
she has cultivated her little garden, and year 
after year been so happy in the blossoms 
which have been borne upon the plants she 
has watered and tended with such patient 
care I Parents, brothers, sisters, the dear 
old home, all—all come back to her, though 
years may have passed away, in the scent or 
bloom of every flower. The family is seldom 
unhappy, whose dwelling is surrounded with 
shade trees, and whose garden is gay with 
cultivated plants. Do not, then, I beseech 
you, forget the little flower garden.— Mr 
Peters's Address. 
Water Melon Juice. —A correspondent ot 
the Prairie Farmer presents the following 
method of using water-melons : 
I endeavor every year to raise a good wa¬ 
ter-melon patch. They are a healthy and 
delightful fruit, I think. I cultivate the icing 
variety ; plant early in May, and again to¬ 
wards the close of the month, so that they 
may come in succession. When they com¬ 
mence ripening, we commence cutting, and 
use them freely during the hot weather. 
When the weather becomes cool in Septem¬ 
ber, we haul a quantity of them to the house, 
split them open, with a spoon scrape out the 
pulps into a cullender, and strain the water 
into vessels. We boil it in an iron vessel 
into syrup, then put in apples or peaches, 
like making apple butter, and boil slowly 
until the fruit is well eoocked, then spice to 
taste, and you have something most people 
will prefer to apple butter or any kind of 
preserves. Or the syrup may be boiled 
without fruit, down to molasses, which will 
be found to be as fine as the best sugar-house 
molasses. We have made of a fall as much 
as ten gallons of the apple butter, if I may 
so call it, and molasses, which has kept in a 
fine condition until May. 
Origin of Potato Oats. —We have to re¬ 
cord the death of Mr. Daniel Jackson, of 
Greenhill, Arkleby, Cumberland, at the ad¬ 
vanced age of 94. He was a considerable 
landed proprietor in the county, and up¬ 
wards of half a century since purchased some 
potatoes which were supposed to have come 
from abroad. When they came up, among 
them a few heads of corn appeared, resem¬ 
bling the common oats, then generally grown 
in this county, but larger and differing in ap¬ 
pearance from the common sorts. The 
seed was carefully preserved, and in a few 
years sufficient was produced to offer it for 
sale. From the circumstance of its having 
been found originally among these potatoes, 
it was called potato-oats.— Mark-Lane Ex. 
