183 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
when they can as readily make their own 
purchases on the line of the same railroad. 
Improver. I beg your pardon ; this is the 
nearest land to the city that can be bought 
in this way. Besides, you see I have left 
lots for a church and a public square. 
Editor. A public square ! Why, truly, it 
is a square ; but it is not large enough to 
pasture a single cow, much less to serve as 
a healthful promenade for a closely packed 
public. You should have left acres instead 
of feet, laid it out tastefully, and planted it 
with a great variety of the best and most 
beautiful trees. 
Improver. Ah yes ! "you don t catch me 
paying out cash for such things as those ! I 
have enough to do to persuade people of the 
advantages I offer. I have an office in town 
for this purpose, and advertise in all the 
papers. 
Editor. Advantages ! You mean to say, 
you design to take advantage of your pur¬ 
chasers ! Now, this is all wrong. Shall I 
tell you what you ought to do ? It is not too 
late, and if you will follow my advice, you 
may dispense with your office in town, and 
the people will come to you. 
Improver. Ah ! I wish you could bring 
that about. 
Editor. Nothing easier. There is an ap¬ 
preciation of beauty underlying all the rough 
natures and busy merchants, which, if once 
awakened, is sure to respond to a good lead¬ 
ership. The ladies, too ! Why surely you 
can have few advocates for your plans among 
those best portions of the creation. And, 
without the ladies’ approbation, depend upon 
it, you can accomplish nothing. What you 
want is, first, to burn your map ; get a sur¬ 
veyor and a landscape gardener (a real one, 
I mean) to lay out your farms according to 
some well-established principles. Don’t think 
of levelling that knoll! It would be prepos¬ 
terous. 
Improver. Excuse me ! how should we 
fill up that ravine 1 
Editor. There is no occasion to fill up 
that ravine ; to do so you would be obliged 
to throw an arch over the whole of that beau¬ 
tiful stream of water, and bury one of your 
best resources for beautiful results. You 
must build a strong, sound dam, and create 
a lake. 
Improver. A lake ! O dear ! who would 
ever buy water lots 1 
Editor. Keep them, then, yourself, and 
agree, when you have disposed of one hun¬ 
dred lots, to present the lake to the residents. 
Place suitable trees around it ; border with 
shrubbery and an intricate walk ; place, if 
you find it will answer, a small island in your 
lake; plant a rustic bridge to it, and fill it 
with the choicest shrubs and flowers. Let 
every purchaser have aley to the whole, and 
my word for it, you will get more for your 
whole plot, if your other improvements cor¬ 
respond, than for your abominable city lots, 
with the old arrangement of alleys in the 
rear. 
Improver. And pray, what would be the 
other corresponding improvements? I be- 
to comprehend you. 
Editor. Nothing more palpable. Plant 
out your boundaries judiciously, say with 
Norway firs, to be kept down, after a few 
years, by cutting oft' the leaders ; make a 
properly curved drive through the place, 
which shall approach in its gentle sweeps 
every acre or half-acre of the park! Yes, a 
park, for the residence of reasonable human 
beings, who have enough of city when they 
are obliged to go to it for shopping. Let 
every plot be in itself a rural home, so con¬ 
trived that its owner can pluck his own fruit, 
keep his own pony phaeton, if he pleases, and 
look out of his windows without seeing brick 
houses. 
Improver. I never thought of this. I will 
make a little calculation, and see if it will 
pay. 
Editor. It will surely pay, and you will 
be remembered as one of the choice spirits 
of your age, instead of being —nobody ! 
OUT A FRUIT TREK 
[The following article we transfer from 
the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Mail— 
not to endorse all its statements, but because 
it furnishes several valuable suggestions.— 
Ed.] 
Examples almost without number may be 
given, where single trees have yielded from 
five to ten dollars a year in fruit, and many 
instances in which twenty or thirty dollars 
have been obtained. If one tree of the 
Rhode Island Greening will afford forty 
bushels of fruit, at a quarter of a dollar per 
bushel, which has often occurred, forty such 
trees on an acre would yield a crop worth 
four hundred dollars. But, taking one-quar¬ 
ter of this amount as a low average for all 
seasons, and with imperfect cultivation, one 
hundred dollars will be equal to the interest 
on fifteen hundred per acre. Now, this esti¬ 
mate is based upon the price of good winter 
apples for the past thirty years,in one of out¬ 
most productive districts ; let a similar esti¬ 
mate be made with fruits rarer and of a more 
delicate character. Apricots, and the finer 
varieties of the plum, are often sold for three 
to six dollars per bushel; the best early 
peaches from one to three dollars; and pears 
from hardy and productive trees, two to five 
bushels per tree, with good management, is 
a frequent crop; and on large pear trees five 
times the quantity. An acquaintance re¬ 
ceived eight dollars for a crop grown on two 
fine young cherry trees, and twenty-four dol¬ 
lars from four young peach trees, of only six 
years’ growth from the bud. In Western 
New-York, single trees of the Doyenne or 
Virgalieu pear have often afforded a return 
of twenty dollars or more, after being sent 
hundreds of miles to market. An acre of 
such trees, well managed, would far exceed 
in profit a five hundred acre farm. 
But the anxious inquiry is suggested, 
“ Will not our markets be surfeited with 
fruit? This will depend on the judgment 
and discretion of cultivators. With the ex¬ 
ception of the peaches of Philadelphia and 
the strawberries of Cincinnati, a great defi¬ 
ciency is felt in all our large cities. Of these 
two fruits, large plantations are brought ra¬ 
pidly into bearing. The fruit, when ripe, 
quickly perishes, and cannot be kept a week; 
yet thousands of acres in peach trees, bend¬ 
ing under their heavy crops, are needed for 
the consumption of the one city, and broad, 
fifty-acre fields, redden with enormous pro¬ 
ducts, send many hundred bushels of straw¬ 
berries daily into the other. If, instead of 
keeping but three days, sorts were now ad¬ 
ded three months, many times the amount 
would be needed. But the market would not 
be confined to large cities. Railroads and 
steamboats would open new channels of dis¬ 
tribution throughout the country for in¬ 
creased supplies. Nor would the business 
stop here. Large portions of the Eastern 
Continent would gladly become purchasers 
as soon as sufficient quantities should create 
facilities for a reasonable supply. Our best 
apples are eagerly bought in London and 
Liverpool, where nine dollars per barrel is 
not an unusual price for the best Newtown 
Pippins. And by being packed in ice, Doy¬ 
enne pears, gathered early in autumn, have 
been safely sent to Jamaica, and strawber¬ 
ries for Barbadoes. The Baldwin apple has 
been furnished in good condition in the East 
Indies, two months after it is entirely gone 
in Boston. 
PREPARATION OP A SEED BED. 
Very much of the success of cultivating 
the earth depends upon this. In garden¬ 
ing operations, it is a matter of vital import¬ 
ance, The seed-bed should be deep, rich, 
and FINE. This last particular is, perhaps, 
more frequently overlooked than the others. 
Oftentimes the ground is planted just as the 
plow or spade leaves it, or only with a slight 
leveling by the hoe. But it should have, in 
addition to this, a very thorough raking with 
a fine-toothed garden-rake. These'rakes are 
very much improved of late years, but their 
teeth still need to be lengthened, so that they 
will remove all the small stones and coarse 
clods to the depth of four or five inches. 
This fine tilth of the soil gives the first root¬ 
lets of the seed a great advantage. They 
meet with no obstruction in pushing their 
way into the earth, and find new food in 
abundance, at every step of their progress. 
The rain and atmosphere benefit plants much 
more for having a free seed-bed.— Ed. 
ONE WAY TO GET EARLY POTATOES. 
A gardener of Newtown, L. I., informs us 
that he gets good crops of early (or late ?) 
potatoes as follows : He prepares the ground 
in the usual manner, adding plenty of ma¬ 
nure. He then selects seed potatoes of good 
size, cuts them lengthwise into four pieces 
each, and plants the pieces eight inches from 
each other, in rows one foot apart. The 
ground is then made level and smooth with 
a roller or otherwise, and a good coating of 
salt hay spread over the whole surface. The 
hay keeps down the weeds, preserves the 
ground moist, and perhaps furnishes some 
nourishment to the growing bulbs. No hoe¬ 
ing or after cultivation is needed—the whole 
is summed up in preparing the ground, plant¬ 
ing, mulching with salt hay, and digging the 
nice early bulbs.— [Ed. 
