190 
REVIEW OF THE APRIL NUMBER OF THE AGRICULTURIST. 
REVIEW OF THE APRIL HUMBER OF THE 
AGRICULTURIST. 
Manuring Orchards. —Whether this is advisa¬ 
ble, or not, depends entirely upon the natural 
soil and situation. ®Tees that are forced when 
young are always Tender and short-lived. I 
agree”with the writer entirely in the advice to 
lay the orchard down in grass, and give the 
trees a low top. Many persons are continually 
pruning trees so as to carry up a “ round head ” 
high in the air. I would sooner cut off that 
head, and compel the lower limbs to form the 
fruit branches. The advice to use ashes, &c., 
for orchard manures, I approve of; but not 
whitewash. Take my advice, and you never 
will whitewash a fruit tree. Use strong ley of 
wood ashes, and you will get all the advantages, 
and none of the injuries of whitewash. 
Juvenile Vagrancy and Crime—Their Remedy .— 
If you have “full confidence in our ability to re¬ 
generate the world,” it is more than I have; and 
unless a speedy remedy is found for the evils of 
this dreadful disease of vagrancy, we shall soon 
be past regenerating ourselves. I admire the 
philanthropy of the heart that dictated the plan 
of redemption detailed in the article under con¬ 
sideration ; but I am constrained to say, that it 
can better be carried into effect in the state of 
Utopia, than in the state of New York. I hope 
no one will be tempted into so wild a scheme as 
to spend his money to buy a farm to reclaim 
these vagrants upon, by the system detailed in 
this article. [But it has been done in France, 
good sir; then why not in the United States'? 
We have more faith than you seem to profess, 
in this matter. Give us “your own plan, certain, 
speedy, and Christian, in five words.”— Eds.] I 
would sooner think of reclaiming a swamp, by 
“ moral suasion” to the bull frogs to eat up the 
mud, and thereby give me a dry soil to cultivate. 
New Mode of Ventilation. —“ Very important if 
true,” might have been added. The insertion 
of the elbow pipe in the chimney may answer a 
good purpose in assisting the draft of the chim¬ 
ney. Those having smoky ones may do well to 
try it, it looks reasonable. So does the plan of 
ventilating a room, if the air current will set 
outward instead of inward, which I think will 
depend much upon the rarity of that in the 
room, as compared with that outside. Impor¬ 
tant as it may be to greenhouses, I hope no one 
will be green enough to incur great expense in 
this new mode of ventilation until he has proved 
it is not itself rather green. 
Qualities of Lime , <$fc. —Notwithstanding I was 
much interested in reading this generally good 
article, I was disappointed that no opinion was 
given on the question stated—“Which is the 
most useful for the field, oystershell or mineral 
lime?” And also, “Is not magnesian lime al¬ 
ways injurious ?” [Both questions are answered 
in the whole article, to the very careful read¬ 
er.— Eds.] The merely giving the constitu¬ 
ents of limestone and shells, does not answer 
the question, to common minds. By some, it is 
stoutly contended that shell lime is superior to 
any other; yet why should it be superior to lime 
made from stone, composed of almost the same 
1 substances as the shells ? If the shells were 
ground into powder, as is now practised in some 
parts of the country, the result from the use 
would be different. Lime burned from magnesian 
limestone is considered by many persons vastly 
superior to any other; while others contend for 
exactly the contrary effect. Both are in some 
measure true. It is owing to different qualities 
of soil. 
“ Lime is a direct food for plants.” This is a 
rock that has wrecked many a tyro in its use. 
Believing it to be a direct food for plants, they 
have given them no other; and depending upon 
the lime alone, has injured instead of benefiting 
their land. Lime must have dead vegetable mat¬ 
ter to work upon, or it will use up the living plants. 
“ The effect of lime is not perceptible in the 
soil the first season it is applied.” What ? Not 
when wheat crops have been more than doub¬ 
led by one dressing of fifty bushels to the acre, 
sowed and harrowed in with the wheat? If 
“ not perceptible in the soil,” it is in the crop. 
[Lime may, under a few peculiar circumstances 
be decidedly beneficial the first year, but that is 
a result seldom perceived. By sowing early in 
fall, with wheat, its effect may be felt the fol¬ 
lowing year before the wheat is matured. —Eds.] 
Combined Wire and Picket Fence. —It strikes 
me that this is a very excellent invention. If it 
can be made in ten-foot pannels, with hooks at 
the ends to attach them together, so as to set it 
up zig-zag, without posts, or only supported by 
stakes driven in the ground, it will make a very 
good kind of hurdle fence, lighter and easier 
moved than the “ ladder fence,” and more dura¬ 
ble, I should think. But for this, the base board 
must be dispensed with, and if it were not for 
the heathenish American custom of letting those 
filthy brutes, the hogs, run in the streets, it 
might always be dispensed with. It is some 
consolation to think that no fully-civilised hu¬ 
man being will suffer his hogs to run at large, 
and as the world becomes civilised, this heathen¬ 
ish custom will cease to exist. 
Removal of Slaughter Houses from Cities .— 
“When shall we have this reform so much and 
so long needed?” Not s6 long as we havd lead¬ 
ing politicians pandering to the base passions 
of butchers, and all their dependants who have 
a vote to give to sustain such politicians in pow¬ 
er ; and who cry out whenever such a reform is 
spoken of, that it is the rich trying to oppress 
the poor by driving them from the city, under 
the pretence that slaughter houses are unhealthy, 
when, in fact, it is nothing but an effort of these 
“ purse-proud aristocrats,” to get them out of 
the city, so as to get rid of that class of people 
that are more offensive to their noses than the 
smell of putrid blood and stinking offal. Slaugh¬ 
ter houses, distilleries, tanneries soap factories, 
and some other city nuisances belong to by¬ 
gone ages, and it is an evidence of a great want 
of refinement in any city, to permit them to ex¬ 
ist within their limits in this railroad-moving, 
and cholera-breeding age. So hit ’em again, 
and I will lend you a hand with my harpoon 
whenever you are likely to be run down. 
The Potato Curculio. —Here is a most valuable 
