MERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
71 
for one or two years, but will ultimately 
fail. 
Pears for cultivation on quince stocks : 
Rostiezer, Beurre d’Anjou, Beurre Diel: 
Duchess d’Angouleme, White Doyenne,, 
Louise Bonne de Jersey, Fig d’Alencon, 
Uurbaniste, Easter Beurre, Glout Mofceau, 
Pound, Calttilac, Vicar of Winkfield, Na¬ 
poleon, Beurre d’Amalis, Beurre d’Aremberg, 
Soldat Labourer, Beurre Laugeleir, Long 
Green of Cox, Nouveau Poiteau, and St. 
Michael Archange. The list was adopted by 
the society. 
WELLINGTONIA GIGANTEA. 
BY EDWARD SPEARS. 
In the Illustrated London News of Februa¬ 
ry 11 last—a copy of which is inclosed—you 
will find an excellent botanical description, 
accompanied with an engraving, of the cele¬ 
brated Arbor Vitae of San Antonio Creek, in 
the County of Calaveras, California. 
The gentleman who gives the scientific 
biography of this wonder of living vegetation, 
was well known to me during his residence 
in this country, and it is no flattery to say, 
a more competent person could not be found 
to delineate its physical features. Beside 
extensive journeys through nearly every 
portion of Oregon and California, Mr. Lobb 
is preeminently fitted to form a correct judg¬ 
ment, from a thorough acquaintance with the 
order of one-bearing trees—having traversed 
the Cordilleras of South America, from the 
equator to near the Straits of Magellan : 
these countries, with North-west America, 
affording the most magnificient specimens 
and varieties of this class of plants. Mr. 
Lobb is not only an experienced and diligent 
collector, but his taste has constantly led him 
to take the greatest interest in the Conifera, 
and his accuracy and care, I can say from 
personal knowledge, it is almost impossible 
to exceed. 
The description by this gentleman, of our 
celebrated tree, was made to the Gardiners' 
Chronicle, prior to the 11th February; Mr. 
Lobb having sent living specimens of the 
youthful brothers of the Calaveras giant, with 
a quantity of the seeds, to London, for the 
examination of the scientific, and for the 
purpose of propagating the species, in Eng¬ 
land. The man of the Chronicle thereon di¬ 
lates and exfoliates to that degree, that to 
any other but a lover of trees and flowers 
and running brooks, it would be thought ex¬ 
pedient to confine him within the square of a 
soda-water bottle crate; but, finally, you 
conclude it would be wiser to sew him up in 
a straight jacket, for, after a most inviting 
and delightful description of the tree, he wor¬ 
ries his brains into a vortex of names and 
quandaries, and finally falls from his excur¬ 
sive flights and hights into the domains of 
Nature’s history, to proposing as a name for 
our Arbor Vitcc, or if you please, in Spanish 
Arboldzo Grandissima— what do you think 1 
what name could you possibly exercise your 
jealous California guessinft at, by which you 
would arrive at a satisfactory solution of the 
enigma! Give it up, for I am impatient to 
let you know. He suggests and accords the 
name of a soldier—a son of Mars—lately 
clothed in a Field Marshal’s dress in the ar¬ 
my of Britain, and called Arthur Wellesley, 
whilom Duke of Wellington, commander of 
her military forces till he grew gray with 
service, and then quietly laid down his life at 
the finality of his corporeal existence, amid 
the benedictions of his countrymen, for stick- 
, ing to them and by them through thick and 
thin. He says it ought to be called the 
“Wellingtonia gigantea,” and then goes onto 
call it so, and actually describes it as such ; 
thus making the first assumption of a name, 
which, with most European and English read¬ 
ers, will cleave to it, unless we enter our 
vigilant and vigorous protest. And, in the 
name of California, I shall assume to do so ; 
for a morepreposterous piece of cockneyfied 
nonsense never filtered through the brain 
down into the fingers through the ink of the 
pen of any denizen of the commercial Baby¬ 
lon of the modern world. 
Without detracting one iota from the claims 
and character of the great Duke of Welling¬ 
ton, who was all his life a very monument of 
plain, sagacious, practical good sense—let us 
ask what right his admiring countrymen in 
the botanical or military line have for flying 
off to California to fasten his fame and glory 
to the most wonderful specimen of living, 
spreading presence of the great Creative 
Author of all things, who planted this vege¬ 
table pyramid as a memento of his handi¬ 
work, when the Sierra Nevada was lifted 
from the volcanic centers of our planet, and 
emerged, with its snow-crested peaks, from 
a primeval ocean, which laved its bases! 
And the beneficient Father of bountiful crea¬ 
tion, 3,000 or 5,000 years ago, planted with 
His own paternal hand in a silent valley of 
our California, on the side of the eternal 
hills, this sign of his love to that portion of 
the family of his children who should reside 
for all mundane time in this partition of the 
earth’s extremeties, after passing through 
centuries of wadings in human blood, and 
petrified in their souls in the servilities of 
religious faiths and fanatical bigotries—yes, 
after, 6,000 or 60,000 years of experience, to 
arrive at the shores of the Ocean of Tran¬ 
quility, and they and their children sit them 
down with pleasant and grateful thoughts 
under its wavy foliage and spreading branch¬ 
es—realizing the typical comparison of the 
all-embracing wings of Nature’s Universal 
Parent. Or, if left as a monument to men, 
to testify of the truth of the Chronicles of the 
Democratic Theocracy of the Jews, who, 
like true cosmopolites, have scattered from 
the cradles of humanity in the Asiatic Pal¬ 
estine, at that point of their history when 
Joshua, their first leader after Moses, wea¬ 
ried with the slaughter of the Amorites—“And 
Joshua said, in the sight of all the hosts of 
Israel, ‘ Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, 
and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.’ 
And the sun stood still and the moon stayed, 
and hasted not to go down about a whole 
day.” And at this great concurrence of 
human passions, when the mechanism of the 
universe of the Living God was arrested for a 
space of time, as assertod in the most ancient 
collection of historical and literary docu¬ 
ments, we may imagine our Californian 
Arborial Methusaleh was planted to mark a 
momentous epoch in the cycles of wordly 
events. 
Now, I say, hath not Wellington’s name 
been stuck by Englishmen to boots, shoes, 
dogs, cats, carts, horses, carriages, to streets, 
towns, cities, rivers, ships, counties, to pu¬ 
ling infants, regiments of red-coated soldiers, 
inns of rest for man and beast, to every con¬ 
ceivable thing under the sun, so as to weary 
and disgust the mind of independent man, 
born of the forest and prairies, with the very 
sound of his title ! Then, why seek to fas¬ 
ten it on the magnificient specimen ofnature’s 
handiwork, placed in a far-off valley in the 
bosom of the snowy mountains of the North¬ 
ern Pacific, where its roots were laved with 
the waters from the primeval snows of our 
Cordillera ; for 6,000 years depositing their 
flakes of gold at its roote, to attract men from 
every clime to come and rest under its benefi¬ 
cent pyramidal pile of leafy and bounteous 
refreshing green foliage of shade. 
The heart of every Californian ought to 
rise up indignant at this assumption of a 
stranger, and in a still greater degree at the 
American savage who dared, with his barba¬ 
rous ax, in open day, to slay this mighty 
giant of our mountains, built by the hand of 
God in the virginal youth of California, when 
the foundations of the eternal hills were laid 
by His majesty and omnipotence. 
If Californians or botanists wish to bestow 
the name of a human being on this majestic 
plant, there are sufficient names in the histo¬ 
ry of our State and country far more appli¬ 
cable and proper than those fagged out of 
old Europe. 
But the tree, I conceive, ought not to bear 
the name of a human being. It is God’s tree. 
His gift to the children of California, to re¬ 
pose under its cooling shade in the heat of 
the noonday sun, and rest their wearied bod¬ 
ies from exhausting labor. Therefore Cali¬ 
fornians ought to baptize this primary won¬ 
der of botanical science, and not Atlantic or 
European strangers. Alex. S. Taylor. 
[California Farmer. 
Preservation op Grapes. —A traveler who 
lived at St. Petersburg during the winter 
season, states that he ate there, the freshest 
and most beautiful grapes he had ever seen. 
To preserve them they should be cut before 
being entirely ripe. Do not handle the ber¬ 
ries ; reject all damaged ones ; then lay the 
grapes in a stone jar holding about thirty 
gallons. The mouth should be narrow, 
the grapes should not touch each other. 
Fill the spaces between them with millet. 
Cover closely with a stone cover well fitted 
and cemented. Over this paste a thick pa¬ 
per, and let it be hermetically sealed so as 
to entirely exclude the air. In this tight, 
jar the grapes ripen fully, and acquire a 
flavor seldom attained by any other method, 
and are preserved for two years in the best 
condition. [Boston Cultivator. 
Gas Tar in Horticulture. —A discovery, 
which is likely to be of great advantage to 
agriculture,has just been reported to the Agri¬ 
cultural Society at Clermont (Oise). A gar¬ 
dener, whose frames and hot-house required 
painting, decided on making them black, as 
likely to attract the heat better, and from a 
principle of economy he made use of gas tar 
instead of paint. The work was performed 
during the winter, and on the approach of 
spring the gardener was suprised to find that 
all the spiders and insects which usually in¬ 
fested his hot-house had disappeared, and 
also that a vine, which for the last two years 
had so fallen off that he had intended to re¬ 
place it by another, had acquired fresh force 
and vigor, and gave every sign of producing 
a large crop of grapes. He afterwards used 
the same substance to the posts and trellis- 
works which supported the trees in the open 
air, and met with the same result, all the 
caterpillars and other insects completely dis¬ 
appearing. It is said that similar experi¬ 
ments have been made in some of the vine¬ 
yards of the Gironde with similar results. 
[Galignani’s Messenger. 
The Butterfly Plant. —The National In¬ 
telligencer says that a specimen of the singu¬ 
lar and beautiful Butterfly Plant is now in 
bloom at the National green-house in Wash¬ 
ington. The blossoms are very large and 
yellow, with reddish brown spots, and are 
moved to and fro with every breath of air, 
so as to resemble very much the gaudy in¬ 
sect from which it derives its name. The 
plant was brought from the Island of St. 
Thomas in the U. S. frigate Raritan. 
Pickles. —An excellent way to make 
pickles that will keep a year or more is— 
drop them into boiling hot water, but not 
boil them ; let them stay ten minutes, wipe 
them dry, and drop into cold spiced vinegar, 
and they will not need to be put into salt 
and water. The above is my wife’s rule 
which she has proved to be a good one. R| 
