114 
CHOICE OF TREES AND SHRUBS FOR CITIES AND RURAL TOWNS, ETC. 
not to answer in your region, he will do a favor by 
so saying to your horticulturists. 
As soon as the season will permit, I shall send a 
sample of my champagne to your city and let some 
of your editors have a taste of it, even should it 
fare no better than some sent by a German manu¬ 
facturer to one of your French editors, some months 
since. I doubt not he gave it all the credit it mer¬ 
ited. I have full confidence that mine will stand 
the test with the best made in your city, from green 
corn and Newark cider. And when persons have 
become accustomed to the muscadine flavor of the 
Catawba, and we have had two or three years ex¬ 
perience more, we shall compete successfully with 
the best imported. I find some difficulty in pro¬ 
curing bottles. In all the other cities, I can obtain 
them : but you are so near the region where the 
Harrison cider is made, which makes a champagne 
equal to any, except that made from green corn, 
that you have use for all your empty bottles. The 
champagne here, was made one month, and sold 
the next; and its maturity was forced by artificial 
heat. When properly made, it takes 18 months 
from the press before it is fit for use; requires 
deep, cool, dry cellars; and after keeping it as cool 
as possible, the average loss by breakage, before it 
is fit for sale, is from 10 to 15 per cent. This 
causes champagne wine always to be dear in 
France. The price in Paris is about the same as 
in your city. In two years from this time, if ever, 
we shall be able to make it of the best quality. In 
the new wine, as it comes from the press, under the 
management of different vine dressers, there is 100 
per cent, difference in the value of the article. I 
shall select the best only, and spare no expense, as 
profit is not my object. N. Longworth. 
Cincinnati , January , 1848. 
CHOICE OF TREES AND SHRUBS FOR CITIES 
AND RURAL TOWNS. 
I was highly interested with the articles upon 
this subject, which appeared in your last volume ; 
and the beautiful illustrations accompanying them, 
conveyed more information to my mind than ten 
times the same amount of letter print. The 
present style of illustrating descriptions by pic¬ 
tures, is one of the great and good improve¬ 
ments of this improving age. But I beg this 
writer to bear in mind that in many of the rural 
towns of America, I might say nearly all of them, 
the building lots are laid out upon such a pinch-gut 
principle, there is so little room to spare, that fruit 
trees should always be looked to first. In fact, we 
often see some useless shade tree occupying a space 
that might have been occupied by an apple tree that 
would have furnished not only the luxury of good 
fruit, but the same amount of shade; and accord¬ 
ing to my notions of utility, more ornamental than 
that “ great, strong, ugly thing, the Lombardy pop¬ 
lar,” which affords neither food nor good fuel, and 
dead or alive, has no utility. ( a ) I cannot there¬ 
fore, join in the recommendation of this tree, while 
our native forests afford so many others of equal 
beauty of form, and far more cleanly in their hab¬ 
its. If a tall spire-like tree is required to break the 
monotony of the line, there is the larch, the fir, or 
even the white birch, all better trees than that filthy 
worm breeder, the Lombardy poplar. (6) 
| One of the most unaccountable tastes in the world 
to me, is that of the man (and I have seen a thou¬ 
sand such), who can content himself to settle down 
in the middle of a western prairie, without a single 
tree or shrub, either fruiting or ornamental, around 
his dwelling, and sometimes hardly in sight. Such 
men may be honest, but they certainly lack refine¬ 
ment, and lose one of the enjoyments of life. 
In reading the writer’s description of the occiden¬ 
tal plane (button wood or sycamore), remind¬ 
ed me of a remarkable instance of the rapid growth 
of that tree. Mr. Nathan Lord, who lived to near 
the age of ninety, on the banks of the Shetucket 
River, in the town of Franklin, Ct., when he was 
first married, carried four young trees of button 
wood, six miles, on horseback, and set them out 
near his house. While the planter of these trees was 
still a hale old man (I think 84 years old), one 
of them was uprooted in a gale, and he assisted to 
saw off five twelve-foot mill logs, clear of limbs, 
the butt of the largest of which was more than 
four feet in diameter, while the top cut was but a 
trifle smaller, though I cannot remember the exact 
size, or amount of lumber sawed from the tree. 
Few, now, who see the banks of this river lined 
with this kind of tree for miles, are aware that all 
those venerable looking old button woods sprung 
from the four little sprouts transplanted by good 
old Deacon Lord, less than one hundred years ago. 
Solon Robinson. 
Lake Court House , Croim Point , la., ) 
February, 15th, 184&. ^ 
(a) Our correspondent probably is not aware of the 
fact that this tree, in some parts of the country, is 
headed down to the lowermost limbs ; and that a crop 
of excellent oven wood is obtained from the young 
shoots, which are cut and made into faggots in the 
spring of every second or third year. The timber 
of the trunk, too, when sufficiently large and sound, 
has been wrought into articles of household furni¬ 
ture of most exquisite beauty, surpassed by few, if 
any, of those made from our native woods. 
( b ) It might be questioned whether the larch r 
the white birch, or the fir, would serve for contrast¬ 
ing with masses of round-headed trees, of great 
height ; as these trees, when they arrive at their 
full growth, in a great measure, lose the spiral shape 
of their tops, and consequently cannot mend the 
defect in the landscape, which the full-grown Lom¬ 
bardy poplar invariably supplies, whatever may 
be its age or size. 
Comparative Facility of Digestion. —The 
time required for a healthy person to digest boiled 
rice is one hour; sago an hour and forty-five min¬ 
utes ; tapioca and barley two hours; stale bread- 
two hours; new bread three hoursboiled cab¬ 
bage four hours; oysters two and a half hours : 
salmon four hours; Venison chops one and a half 
hours; mutton three hours; beef three hours - T 
roast pork five and a quarter hours; raw eggs two 
hours; soft-boiled eggs eight hours ; and hard boil 
ed eggs three and a half hours.— Dr. Warder. . 
Guano, it is stated, may be advantageously mixed 
with an equal weight of common salt, which, on 
being applied to land, will prove beneficial both to 
the crops and to the soil. 
