326 
AMERICAN AGRICU’LTURISl'i. 
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HOVEY’S MAGAZINE FOE JANUARY. 
The editor devotes a large number of 
pages to the review of the past year. The 
great destruction of dwarf pears which oc¬ 
curred in Western New-York, and in Maine, 
did not affect the gardens of Massachusetts. 
The same may be said of Connecticut, 
where we have heard no complaints of the 
dwarf pears, and where pear blight' of any 
kind is little known. Horticultural science 
is making great progress, and trees now 
planted receive such judicious attention and 
abundant nutriment, that the fruit is much 
fairer and of finer quality, and commands, 
in some instances, quadruple the price of or¬ 
dinary specimens. This, no doubt, is the 
secret of making orchards profitable. No 
man should add another tree to his collec¬ 
tion until he has done his best by those al¬ 
ready planted. Every young tree well 
planted wants, at least, fifty cents’ worth of 
manure and labor bestowed upon it annually 
for several years after planting; and capital 
is much better spent in this way than in pro¬ 
curing more trees, to die of neglect. 
The new hybrid grapes are noticed—the 
inevitable Concord, of course—and one very 
important suggestion is made, which ama¬ 
teurs will do well to remember, that the past 
dry season, when even the Catawba ripened 
well in many parts of the State, was not a 
fair one to test the value of these new can¬ 
didates for popular favor. There is hardly 
a doubt., however, that the horticulturists 
about Boston have some half dozen new 
grapes that are destined to make a noise in 
the world. Let all amateurs arm themselves 
with the quinine of caution, and look out for 
an unprecedented^ “ grape fever.” That 
healthful tonic, taken in season, will save a 
good deal of blood letting, and the V’s and 
X’s may lie quietly in their pocket-books. 
Mr. Simpson, of Saxonville, has raised 
two crops of grapes in fifteen months, an 
achievement hitherto unprecedented this 
side of the waters. Mr. Matthews, of Co¬ 
shocton, Ohio, has submitted a curculio reme¬ 
dy to the committees of several horticultu¬ 
ral societies. It is suspected that the public 
do not place much confidence in this new 
discovery, his previous one having severely 
disappointed them. What that first discov¬ 
ery was we are not informed. 
Some of the new flowers added to our 
lists last year, are duly noticed. It is stated 
that florists are now so far masters of the 
art of producing new varieties that we are 
no longer dependent upon importations from 
abroad. Our climate is far more favorable 
to the production of seed than that of Great 
Britain, and with the same attention which 
the English cultivators have given to the 
subject, we may enrich our collections to 
any desirable extent. 
In arboriculture it is thought that the pop¬ 
ular taste is in advance of the state of cul¬ 
tivation, and that the selling of many of the 
desirable sorts must be greatly hindered 
from lack of support in the nurseries. Cau¬ 
tion is recommended in pronouncing the 
new evergreens hardy; last winter having 
proved fatal to several varieties. A severe 
frost on the 24th April, in England, injured 
or destroyed quite a number. In the record 
of that event, in the Gardener’s Chronicle, it 
is stated that the native locality of a tree is 
no test of its hardiness; for while some, 
which came from latitudes of which there 
could be no doubt of their hardiness, were 
sadly injured ; others, supposed to be tender, 
have proved to be tough as an oak. Every 
thing from the north of China, and from 
Japan is likely to prove hardy, and therefore 
as valuable here as in those countries. 
There is a very excellent “ Plea for Birds,” 
by Wilson Flagg, on the ground of their 
utility to agriculture. He makes five classes 
of insects, and as many of birds, acting as 
natural checks upon the increase of insects. 
The swallows are the natural enemies of 
the swarming insects, living almost entirely 
upon them, taking their food upon the wing. 
The common martin devours great quantities 
of wasps, beetles, and goldsmiths. A sin¬ 
gle bird will devour five thousand butterflies 
in a week. The moral of this is that the 
husbandman should cultivate the society of 
swallows and martins about his land and 
out-buildings. 
The sparrows and wrens feed upon the 
crawling insects which lurk within the buds, 
foliage, and flowers of plants. The wrens 
are pugnacious, and a little box in a cherry 
tree will soon be appropriated by them, and 
they will drive away other birds that feed 
upon the fruit, a hint that cherry growers 
should remember this spring and act upon. 
The thrushes, robins, blue birds, jays, and 
crows, prey upon butterflies, grass-hoppers, 
crickets, locusts, and the larger beetles. A 
single family of jays will consume 20,000 of 
these in a season of three months. 
The woodpeckers are armed with a stout, 
long bill to penetrate the wood of trees, 
where the borers have deposited their larvae. 
They live almost entirely upon these worms. 
For the insects which come abroad only 
during the night, nature has provided a check 
in the nocturnal birds, of the whippoorwill 
tribe, and the little barn owl, which take 
their food upon the wing. 
How wonderful is this provision of Provi¬ 
dence for the restraint of the depredators 
that live upon the labors of man; and how 
careful should we be not to dispute that 
beneficial law of compensation by which all 
things are preserved in their just relations 
and proportions. 
Spare the lives of the birds, and put the 
laws in force against the vagrant boys and 
city loafers, who steal into the country to 
murder innocent robins under the hallucina¬ 
tion that they are woodcocks. 
The editor devotes a brief article to the 
Deutzia gracilis, one of the most promising 
of the new shrubs. It is a small, slender 
growing shrub, inhabiting the damp valleys 
and lofty mountains of Japan, where it is 
said to grow five or six feet high. The main 
branches are covered with lateral branchlets, 
producing at the ends graceful racemes of 
snow white flowers. It is of the easiest cul¬ 
tivation ; growing in any good light soil, not 
too wet in winter. It flowers in June, and 
remains in bloom a long while. 
Plants in rooms are recommended as puri¬ 
fiers of the atmosphere, their leaves giving 
off abundantly the oxygen we need for respir¬ 
ation, and absorbing the carbonic acid gas, 
which is thrown off from the lungs. The 
only precaution needed is to remove from 
sleeping rooms plants while flowering. 
It is noticed as a curious fact in regard to 
tulips and kindred plants, that the bulb re¬ 
sembles the bud, and contains the embryo 
flowers. By cautiously removing the con¬ 
centric rings jof the tulip bulb in the opening, 
you may see the pistil and antlers of the 
future flower, with the naked eye. 
The report of the committee on gardens, 
of Massachusett’s Horticultural Society, is 
highly interesting. Mr. Austin, of Dorches¬ 
ter, has on one acre and a half, upwards of 
600 trees, 500 of which are dwarf pears. 
The trees were loaded with fine specimens 
of fruit. How much of the useful and the 
beautiful can be had in a small garden. 
PRUNING BLACK, RED, AND WHITE CURRANTS. 
THE BLACK CURRANT. 
Next to the gooseberry, this may be con¬ 
sidered the most important of bush fruits. 
In this part of the country, the cottagers 
make much profit of them, the climate being 
peculiarly suitable. Black currants, dam¬ 
sons, and apples, are here {Cheshire) the 
chief objects of the cottage gardener’s care 
and by means of each or all of these he not 
unfrequently pays his rent. 
When we take into consideration that 
Cheshire is noted for cheese, and for the 
above-named fruits, we may very naturally 
reflect if there be any identity in the natural 
habits of these things ; whether as to the 
atmosphere or the soil. Such a thought has 
often struck me, and its full consideration, I 
think, leads us to a great fact. Whatever 
part the soil may play in these results, wheth¬ 
er it possess any special character or no, 
there can be no question that the atmosphere 
plays, at least, one equally important part. 
I certainly never lived in our eastern coun¬ 
ties, but from what I have gleaned concern¬ 
ing them, I infer that the average amount of 
air-moisture in Cheshire and Lancashire, as 
compared with most of t hose counties on the 
borders of the German Ocean, must be much 
greater. And what about air moisture 1—ad¬ 
mitting that you are tolerably correct—our 
scrutineers naturally ask ; and I am obliged 
to them for putting the question. It is, I 
think, doubtless owing in the main to this, 
that Cheshire owes most of its fame for 
cheese ; by means of a liberal amount of it 
their pastures grow in a more continuous 
way. Damsons, which are so liable to the 
depredations of the red spider, are here bet¬ 
ter enabled to whitstand its attacks, and as 
for our present subject, the black currant, 
why everybody knows that it loves both 
air-moisture and root-moisture. 
The apple, too, under the influences of a 
dry atmosphere, long continued, is very apt 
to be infested with a host of insect enemies, 
and the fruit in consequence, is lean, and 
comparatively worthless. Such considera¬ 
tions as these serve to show the reason why 
certain fruits thrive better in our county, or 
division of the kingdom, than another. Dam¬ 
sons, for instance, are seldom seen in per¬ 
fection near the great metropolis, and, in¬ 
deed, in few of our southern or south-eastern 
"counties. 
The pruning of the black currant is, per¬ 
haps, more simple than most of our bush 
fruit, being, in the main, confined to thinning 
