THE CULTIVATOR. 
65 
riety of corn upon the cob of any other variety, by the 
process detailed above; and that there is no object 
more worthy the attention of farmers than improve¬ 
ments of this kind. You have only to regulate the 
time of planting each variety, to correspond with the 
time of flowering. I ought to observe, that if you do 
not destroy the tassels of the variety that has the ob¬ 
jectionable grain, the crossing will not be so perfect, 
because the impregnation will be from two males in¬ 
stead of one, and consequently the grains produced 
will be various. The crossing is equally important in 
producing the large late kinds small and early. You 
can get the tall Virginia corn (that is the grain of it) 
upon the early dwarf stalks. Indeed, you may vary it 
almost at pleasure. As you will perceive above, it re¬ 
quires three years to accomplish the object perfectly. 
The first year effects the crossing ; the second year, 
certain characteristics return to their original elements, 
such as the color, and somewhat of the flinty quality ; 
the third year the new variety is produced perfect— 
and will remain so, so long as it shall be kept distinct 
from other varieties. 
Another experiment was combined by me with the 
above, viz.—the first matured ears of good form and 
size were always selected for seed. By this process 
I was able in five years to make my new variety from 
15 to 20 days earlier than the Sioux, or any other va¬ 
riety. I had green corn on my table for some years, 
two weeks earlier than the hotels who obtained early 
corn from Norfolk. I beg to observe, that the Smith’s 
early white has but eight rows, and the Sioux (the 
female parent) twelve ; now to account for this. Af¬ 
ter I had produced the variety, I was still desirous 
of putting it upon a smaller cob ; hence I plante’d it 
with the sugar corn, using the latter as the female.— 
The result was the eight rows. I also once took a 
notion to give it a red cob, and had no difficulty in do¬ 
ing so, by using the red cob sugar corn as the female; 
but I recrossed and got rid of the red cob again, be¬ 
cause it stained the lips and fingers while eating it. 
Excuse this, from an old admirer, 
GIDEON B. SMITH. 
Judge Buel, —Sir,—I commenced raising ruta baga 
turnips last season, and am much pleased with the 
result. In order to ascertain when was the best time 
to sow them, I sowed some the first day of June, some 
the 13th and some the 24th day of June, and found 
that those sowed first were much the best. I would 
recommend to sow as soon as the 25th of May in this 
latitude, 43° 30' north. I prepare my ground by 
ploughing in long manure, and spread fine manure on 
the furrows, and only harrow it in after the ground is 
well harrowed. I drag it with a bush, which com¬ 
pletely pulverizes and mixes two or three inches of 
the surface of the ground. 
I make my bush by boring holes in a stick six in¬ 
ches in diameter, six feet long, with a large auger, 
and fasten in bushes eight feet long, and then lash on 
another stick of sufficient heft across the middle, to 
keep them in place. I would recommend to bush all 
land that is stocked with grass seed for mowing. 
Those that cannot obtain a drill-barrow, may make a 
Ihing like a rake, with a tooth in each end of the head, 
one inch thick, sharp at the point, and mark the 
ground, and sow turnip seed by hand, or any other 
seeds they wish to sow in rows. 
My method of harvesting turnips, is to take a sharp 
hoe and chop off the tops first and gather them into 
heaps, and then dig them with hoes,* which is a more 
expeditious way than to pull them by hand, and then 
cut the tops with a knife. 
My land is a light sandy loam, not naturally good 
wheat land. Last spring I commenced liming my 
wheat ground; I put six bushels of unslaked lime on 
half an acre after the land was ploughed. I put a 
peck in a place, and covered it with earth, and let it 
remain three days, when it was completely slaked, 
and then spread it evenly over the ground, and then 
sowed my wheat and obtained a good crop, and no 
smut. My wheat was sown the 27th day of May ; on 
the same day one of my neighbors sowed one acre 
and a half with the red chaff beardless wheat, and ob¬ 
tained sixty-one bushels from it. 
A. C. HOWARD. 
Thetford Post Mills, March 27th, 1838. 
Brussa Mulberry. 
New- York, Apr ill th, 1838. 
J. Buel, Esq.—Dear Sir,—You will herewith re¬ 
ceive one hundred Brussa mulberry trees, which 
please accept for inspection and for your own appro¬ 
priation. This is an original tree, imported in the 
month of June, 1837, from Smyrna, and were so lona- 
detained in their passage, as to make their growth 
doubtful—but from a quantity, a portion vegetated 
and grew from the root and slip, as you have here- 
* The hoe often cuts and bruises the roots. They should 
be pulled with the hand, and laid in rows; they may then be 
expeditiously topped with a large knife or spade.— C. Cult. 
with. They are, undoubtedly, the real Brussa tree. 
As the consigners had no knowledge whether or not 
it would be a favorite tree with us, for this cause the 
best, that even at the time they arrived here, no in¬ 
formation was communicated to the public that the 
Brussa tree was of a superior kind, nor not, indeed, 
until you brought it forward through the valuable co¬ 
lumns of your paper. It is no doubt one of the most 
valuable that has ever been introduced; and to satis¬ 
fy the minds of the wavering, your opinion would, if 
communicated through your next journal, decide the 
matter, and silence the doubts and impressions that 
are exerted to be made on those who are desirous 
of purchasing, by the gentlemen of Flushing, who 
have not the tree. I have this invoice of trees to 
sell, and have about ten thousand or more; and al¬ 
though I intend to go on propagating, still I must 
close the whole invoice, they belonging to the owners 
residing in Smyrna. Yours, 
NICHOLAS HAIGHT. 
EXTRACTS. 
Science of Gardening. 
The extracts which we shall give under this head, 
are from the “ Alphabet of Scientific Gardening, by 
Prof. Rennie, of King’s College.” They are as ap¬ 
plicable to farming as to gardening. They eluci¬ 
date the great principles which govern in vegetable 
economy; and although they may seem abstruse 
to some, they nevertheless furnish. valuable data, 
which all may profitably recur to; and we commend 
them particularly to the notice of the young, who 
aspire to usefulness, or eminence in the arts of ru¬ 
ral labor.— Cond. Cult. 
ARTS AND SCIENCE. 
“The arts,” says Sir John Herschel, “ cannot he per¬ 
fected till their whole processes are laid open, and their 
language simplified and rendered universally intelligi¬ 
ble. Art is the application of knowledge to a practical 
end. If the knowledge be merely accumulated experi¬ 
ence, the art is empirical ; but if it be experience rea¬ 
soned upon and brought under general principles, it as¬ 
sumes a higher character, and becomes a scientific art. 
In the progress of mankind from barbarism to civilized 
life, the arts necessarily precede science. Applications 
come later: the arts continue slowly progressive, but 
their realm remains separated from that of science by a 
wide gulf, which can only be passed by a powerful 
spring. They form their own language, and their own 
conventions, which none but artists can understand.— 
The whole tendency of empirical art is to bury itself in 
technicalities, and to place its pride in particular short 
cuts and mysteries, known only to adepts; to surprise 
and astonish by results, but conceal processes. The cha¬ 
racter of science is the direct contrary. It delights to 
lay itself open to inquiry; and is not satisfied with its 
conclusions, till it can make the road to them broad and 
beaten: and in its application it preserves the same cha¬ 
racter ; its whole aim being to strip away all technical 
mystery, to illuminate every dark recess, and to gain 
free access to all processes, with a view to improve them 
on rational principles. It would seem that a union of 
two qualities almost opposite to each other—a going 
forth of the thoughts in two directions, and a sudden 
transfer of ideas from a remote station in one, to an 
equally distant one in the other—are required to state 
the first idea of applying science.” 
the word gardening. 
The chief difference between “ Gardening”* and 
Farming appears to exist in extent. The surface tilled 
being more extended, and the crops produced being of¬ 
ten more coarse and hardy in farming, the operations 
require less minuteness and refinement, which, indeed, 
would seldom yield the farmer an adequate return for 
the money laid out. Whereas in gardening, the most 
refined and minute processes are frequently indispensa¬ 
ble, in proportion to the delicacy of the plants which 
are reared, more particularly with respect to artificial 
shelter and artificial climate. Gardening, then, is a sort 
of refined farming upon a limited scale. 
By “Scientific” Gardening, I mean the rearing of 
garden plants of every kind, useful and ornamental— 
kitchen vegetables, roots, fruits, and flowers, according 
to principles capable of being demonstrated by experi¬ 
ment or inference. What may, on the other hand, be 
called routine gardening, is founded not upon such prin¬ 
ciples, but upon vague and uncertain experience. 
Nobody, I think would be so fool-hardy as to questiort 
the high value of experience; but mere experience, 
without the aid of science—I mean experience without 
accurate investigation of causes and effects, and without 
sound reasoning from observed facts—is just as apt to 
mislead as it is to direct aright, and often, I believe, 
much more so. Science again without experience will 
equally mislead. 
The value of scientific knowledge in gardening being 
thus indisputable, it will be important to render it easi¬ 
ly attainable, by putting the facts upon which itrests in 
as plain a manner and in as short a space as I can. For 
this purpose, it will he most advantageous to consider, 
first, what it is that nourishes garden crops, that is, the 
* Technically, Horticulture, from the Latin Hortus, a gar¬ 
den, and Cultura, tillage ; a pedantic term, of no use whate¬ 
ver in the English language. 
food which garden plants require; and then, upon what 
scientific principles this food can be best supplied by the 
gardener in his daily operations. He might, indeed, as 
well think of rearing rabbits or canary birds as ol rais¬ 
ing garden crops without food. My subject accordingly 
has two grand divisions—the Food of Plants, and the 
Philosophical Principles of Garden Operations for the 
management of this food. 
FOOD OF GARDEN PLANTS. 
It is obvious that a cabbage, a pine apple, or a prim¬ 
rose, can no more live without a due supply of food, than 
a rabbit or a canary bird; hut animals must moreover 
have a peculiar kind of food; the rabbit, greens and 
oats; and the canary, rape, millet, or other small seeds; 
while in the case of plants, which are fixed to a spot, 
and cannot travel about to select their food, such differ¬ 
ences, when they do exist, are not often of practical im¬ 
portance, the food of all plants being nearly, so far as it 
is known, very similar in kind. 
The principal difference in most garden plants com¬ 
pared with others, is their greater delicacy; and hence 
so far as practice ip concerned, their food must require, 
if I may use the term, more delicate and refined cook¬ 
ing and management. This will appear as we proceed, 
in the several branches into which it will be advanta¬ 
geous to divide our subject, beginning with what may 
be termed Garden Chemistry, meaning thereby a detail 
of the chemical elements which enter into the food of 
garden plants. 
GARDEN CHEMISTRY. 
Passing over, for the present, the food on which 
young plants are nourished at their first germinating 
from seed, which is as different, as we shall afterwards 
see, as the milk diet of our own infancy is from beef 
and bread, let us consider the food requisite for plants 
after they have exhausted the milky pulp contained in 
the seed lobes and seed leaves. 
After young animals are weaned, they are nourished 
upon either vegetable or animal substances, or a mix¬ 
ture of both, together with water for drink, that is, a 
solvent to dissolve the more solid matters. These have 
to undergo the process of digestion in the stomach, where 
the heat is uniformly ninety-eight degrees, and the mix¬ 
ture of the various substances effected by the motion of 
the stomach, which is similar to that of an earth-worm.* 
On the pulpymassf thus produced in the stomach pass¬ 
ing onwards towards the chyle-gut,j: it is mixed with a 
portion of bile which separates it into two portions, one 
useless,§ that passes off through the bowels, and ano¬ 
ther useful,|| which is taken up by the mouths of innu¬ 
merable small tribes^ that open on the inner surface of 
the intestines, and after all these small tubes unite into 
a single large one,** they discharge this useful portion 
into the blood. Such, in brief, are the first processes by 
which animals are nourished with food. 
Plants, on the other hand, having no stomach, like 
animals, for the digestion of food, and not being capa¬ 
ble of travelling from the spot where they are planted, 
(except very partially by extending their roots) must de¬ 
pend altogether on what they can meet with there. 
We find, accordingly, in the surface earth, or soil 
where the roots of plants are, that processes are always 
going on very similar to digestion in the animal stomach; 
I mean that portions of animal and vegetable substances 
in the soil are dissolved (I might in one sense say di¬ 
gested) and mixed with the water and air diffused 
through the soil. 
In this point of view, the whole of the soil where a 
plant is rooted, may be considered as similar to the mass 
produced in the animal stomach by the first process of 
digestion, and consisting of two portions, one useful and 
the other useless. The soil would thence appear to per¬ 
form an office similar to that of the animal stomach, in 
preparing the food of plants—the process, independent 
of other circumstances, going on more slowly from defi¬ 
ciency of heat in the soil, which, in this climate at least, 
is, on an average, far below ninety-eight degrees, which 
is the heat of the animal stomach. 
The only thing in the soil that appears similar to the 
motions of the bowels of animals, by which the digested 
food is brought to the mouths of the little tubes, to be 
forwarded to the blood, is the motionff of the water, or 
moisture in which the useful portion of the vegetable 
and animal substances are dissolved, a motion quite in¬ 
dispensable, as we shall afterwards see. The water be¬ 
ing then diffused through the soil, a portion of it must 
offer itself to the tips of the root fibres, or rootlets, 
where are suckerslt somewhat similar to those on the 
inner surface of the animal intestines. 
It being of the first importance to ascertain of what 
materials the useful portion of the substances thus dis¬ 
solved in water consist, many experiments have been 
made for that purpose; but the great difficulty of the 
subject has caused much diversity of opinion among 
those who have engaged in the inquiry. As it would, 
I think, he unprofitable, if not injurious, to distract 
the beginner with conflicting views here, which he can 
examine at leisure in larger works, I shall confine my¬ 
self to what is least disputed and most generally adopt¬ 
ed. 
* Technically, Peristaltic, or Vermicular motion. 
1 Technically, Chyme. 
1 In Latin, Duodenum. 
§ In Latin, Fceces, or Excrementa. 
|| Technically, Chyle. 
IT Technically, Lacteals. 
** Technically, the Thoracic Duct. 
H Technically, Percolation. 
It Technically, Spongelets , in Latin, Spongiola. 
