CUCUMBERS. 
159 
about pruning! Did not their fathers know 
how to prune? Can you learn them anything 
about the business to which they were raised ? 
These same people will contend with you that 
a tree will grow as many bushels of little apples 
as it will big ones, and that a bushel of apples 
is a bushel of apples, any way you can fix it, 
and therefore, what’s the use trying to raise 
them great overgrown things? Be assured my 
worthy friend, we have got a good deal of prun¬ 
ing to do before we shall get this crab-apple 
breed of bipeds to plant or prune good fruit 
trees, and plenty of them. 
Ivy on Buildings .—A new idea, but a very ra¬ 
tional one, that such a coating of foliage should 
protect instead of injure a building. But could 
not grape vines be trained upon buildings, and 
while protecting them from the weather, give 
the inmates abundance of fruit? 
Connecticut Farming .—Glad to hear one of 
my fellow citizens commending a paper that 
some others have found fault with, for showing 
up some of the dark spots of farming in the 
land of steady habits, where so many steadily 
pursue the same old track, their steady fathers 
did before them. 
Preparation of Bones for Manure .—Whenever 
you can get the steam up in the minds of peo¬ 
ple high enough to make them think of the val¬ 
ue of the bones they now throw away, you may 
perhaps get them to think a little further about 
the mode of preparing them for manure. 
To the one in ten thousand who have already 
begun to think of the enormous waste of one of 
the best fertilisers in the world, this article will 
be of great value, because steaming bones is a 
process that any farmer can carry on to good 
advantage, at little cost—grinding them can only 
be done in large establishments. But the first 
process toward preparing bones for manure, is 
like the direction of Mrs. Glass to cook a fish— 
first catch it. So of bones—first save them. 
Madder will never be raised to any consider¬ 
able extent in this country while the people con¬ 
tinue mader than monkeys, to leave their homes 
in pursut of some ignis-faiuus fortune in Cali¬ 
fornia or some other land of folly. They never 
will plant a crop that requires three years to 
mature, lest they might sell out and be off be¬ 
fore harvest time. 
What Mind Will Do in Agriculture. —Well, you 
have told what one mind has done. How many 
of Mr. Delafieid’s neighbors have done likewise ? 
That is, put into exercise for the benefit of their 
fellow creatures any of the faculties of mind 
with which nature has endowed them. 
Protection of Sheep against Dogs. —Mr. Speaker! 
I move to amend that petition. Is it not written 
that “ every dog shall have his day ?”—evidently 
a misprint, and therefore let day be stricken out, 
and sheep substituted. Then every dog will 
have his sheep, and that will be the end of them. 
The writer says truly, that two species of ani¬ 
mals cannot exist in the same neighborhood, and 
as I say, too, we cannot get rid of the dogs, let 
us give up the sheep, and save ourselves all 
further trouble and vexation about the matter. 
As for mutton, everybody knows, who has ever 
dined, as I have, with the great Chang Fou 
Chong, in China, that no dish ever equalled that 
of a roasted puppy stuffed with onions— for those 
that like it! It is sheer nonsense to keep sheep 
for the wool, since we have so many woolly 
heads we might shear. Whoever in this dog¬ 
matical age of the world undertakes to save his 
wool by crying down the dogs, is barking up the 
wrong tree. The people won’t have it so. Not 
that they love their mutton less, but that they 
love their puppies more than they do the public 
welfare. 
Horse Shoeing. —There is more good sense in 
this little paragraph than half the horse shoers 
in this country ever thought of. I commend it 
to their attention. 
Ladies’ Department. —The selections for this 
page are uncommonly good this month. Ladies, 
turn back and read again the articles on Rye 
Flour, Dress of English Women, Brown Bread 
vs. White, and Habits of Jenny Lind. What an 
admirable woman this is. The first of singers, 
generously beneficent, kind and good, strictly 
neat and temperate in all things, and takes plenty 
of exercise in the open air ! I wish the women of 
America could be persuaded to imitate her hab¬ 
its, as detailed in your little paragraph. My 
daughters have done so for years. Our women 
seem to be afraid of exercise, especially in the 
open air. Want of this, with thin dress, light 
shoes, and tight lacing, is the great cause of their 
degeneracy. They are fast becoming mere par¬ 
lor furniture; and gaudy, poor, and very fragile 
even at that. Reviewer. 
--- 
Cucumbers may be grown to advantage in 
small piles, say two or three bushels of well- 
rotted manure laid upon grass land. Keep the 
grass short, and pluck out such weeds as may 
start, and water if needed, which is all the cul¬ 
tivation required. 
The Most Effectual Way to Preserve Ap¬ 
ples.— Lock them up in a dry cellar and hide 
the key. 
