AU6. 6 
5U 
THE 
NEW-YORKER. 
can have the sweetest and most cbeerfuU 
homes. 
* * 
In the London Garden an an jst speaks of 
the Lombardy Poplar thus : ■' The repetnion of 
straight line is what you want. 1 tbii-'c. too, 
for an avenue or for a line of trees by water, 
the Lombardy is not easily bea en.” Perhaps 
not, but of all the homely, 'ungraceful and un¬ 
inviting trees styled “ornamental,” I think 
this one of the most objectionable. 1 had a 
run through the State of Maine some weeks 
ago, and saw many old trees of this poplar 
about the farm bouses and roadsides along the 
Androscoggin Valley, and mostly all were in a 
more or less dilapidated condition. .It added 
neither beauty nnr character to the lai -Iscape, 
shade nor ornament to the homestead, nor by 
its wood was it useful in any way. No one 
t poke of it in love or sympathy. One farmer 
“guessed ” that ns it grew so tall and slim, a 
1 ile of them might be raised upon an acre for 
j nip-wood, and in that way be worth sorne- 
i! ing. . jBon. 
■-- 
N. J. NOTES ON TP EES AND B RRIES. 
TnE Aquilegia 11 xmied very nicely; some 
of ibe flowers arc ciitelarge and finely shaded 
in color; about lia’f of the plants gave double 
flOW ‘IT. 
T ; e Japan M pie, Polymorphum, was killed 
to tie enow Ine. The plant was about five 
fee; high and was killed to fifteen inches of 
ib ■ giound. The Double White Daulziacre- 
u ta is also killed in the suae main cr. 
The Japan Retinosporas of the following 
varieties passed the Winter unharme 1:— 
Auiea is now tipped wi h its golden new 
growth, and is a ihmg of beauty. Argentea 
is of slower growth, yet equally beautiful, 
showing silver foliage. Leploclada, dense 
in growth, pyramidal and clothed in beau¬ 
tiful green. Obtus-a is hardy, of straggling 
growth and rather a nice tree ; itlo kslike the 
Arbor-vi a. Squarrosa isof rapid giowth, up¬ 
right, and very niee, of Pght-gteeu col or—a 
pretty tree. Anrea and Argentea turn ' reen 
in the Fall and Winter. [The Aurea doe not 
with us. Eds ] 
The Thujopsis borealis, Douglas and Nerd- 
mann’a Firs should be more common. The 
Spanish Chestnut is not hardy according to 
my experience. Of 5200 bitimII trees all are gone 
and of some bought last Spriug there is o) ly 
one tree that is not killed to the snow. 
Strawberries were very nice this y ar. 
Among the newer berries Miner’s Prolifi ; is 
truly a gt eat cropper of fine berries; size 1 rge, 
and moderately firm; 11 wor deficient—th : last 
being the weak point of ibis berry othei Wise 
among the best. Glendale and Conti i ^ntal 
did not do well for me—not productive Cum¬ 
berland Triumph, Sharpless and Kentu :ky are 
among the best. Great American is fine, when 
the ground is rich. D trand’a Beauty is fine 
for hills, making very few runners. It is pro¬ 
ductive and high-flavored. 
Peaches are an entire failnre here; the trees 
were considerably inj ired by Winter; but 
they are looking unusually well atpre&ent. 
Pears are looking well. Bartlett gives a 
good show for fruit. 
Apples of the Smith’s Cider varie‘ y present 
a fair prospect for fruit—not muc else. 
I. J. B. 
-e-M- 
Glass.— All who are fond of the compan¬ 
ionship of growing pla r : if. and who have 
some leisure to attend l' their few needs, and 
j;nc to.ace or measure in the occupation, have 
no aid of more service than the Bbelter of 
glass. A little glass room, nr greenhouse, 
gives, of course, the greatest advantages, but 
a mere sash or hand-glass or a fruit jar in¬ 
verted—or, better, bottomless aud covered 
when necessary by a broken pane—is often the 
means of saving plar. ts that would otherwise 
perish, or at least lose their beauty. The 
glass, while admitth light, incloses an artifi¬ 
cial atmosphere alw ys somewhat warmer 
than the exterior a r, and usually moist 
from retaining the vape r evaporated from the 
leaves or the Boil. Bat the heat may become 
exceesive, and the air may become so dry that 
the leaves will bim\ or be eaUn up by the 
red spider; so any one undertaking to use 
glass, must be on nand daily, especially when 
vegetation is yom g and tender in the Spring, to 
change the shading or the ventilation with the 
changing influerces of sun and wild. Many 
plants, including grapes, will endure greatheat 
if the air is moist enough to prevent the leaves 
from scorching : others require, at least while 
young, to have the glass shaded during the 
heated term. Lettuce which is brought for¬ 
ward in quantities under glass, requires both 
vapor and screen when the sun shines out 
strongly. When upper and lower ventilation 
is given at each times, the air that enters ab¬ 
sorbs vapor as it warms, and carries it out a6 
it leaves by the upper openings. This is apt 
to make the inclosed atmosphere burningly 
dry, and mu6t be counteracted by occasional 
syringing, or by reducing the ventilalive air¬ 
flow unless the plants require hardening, when 
the flow is essential. 
A cave or cellar, fronted with glass towards 
the east or south, is the best provision for 
sheltering half-hardy plants, shrubs, roots etc. 
in our climate. The door-way should enter on 
a level from an area on which the plants can 
be placed or planted out when the weather be¬ 
comes genial, and from which they can easily 
be taken in, in September or later. w. 
■ - » 
Smalt Fruits. 
The Cuthbert Raspbekkt.— The Rural 
asserts, on page 480, “ that the Cuthbert is at 
once the highest flavored, largest and most 
prolific and hardy variety of red raspberry 
known. As to the latter quality it may be so, 
but in regard to “ flavor,” I have never found 
anything equal to the Herstine; and in size it 
is as large as any. The only objections I know 
to it for general cultivation are that the ber¬ 
ries are too soft for shipping any considerable 
distance, and the canes require to be buried in 
Autumn to preserve them from being winter- 
killed. 
The Manchester Strawberry. —I am of 
opinion it required just such a cool, wet season 
as the past May and June were, to grow this 
berry satisfactorily in a sandy soil as is repre¬ 
sented. In an ordinary or very dry season, I 
doubt whether it will do better on such ground 
than the Wilson and several other varieties. 
These latter have borne infinitely better with 
me on a very light soil this seasou than they 
ever did before. A. B. Allen. 
-♦♦♦- 
Gooseberries. 
Mr. Peck sacrificed his half dozen goose¬ 
berry bushes as more of a plague than profit, as 
told in a late Rural p. 473. Here on the con¬ 
trary, eveiybody seeks to plant some, Down¬ 
ing’s and Smith’s and Houghton being the fa¬ 
vorites. It has been suddenly and generally 
found out how piquantly delightful a sauce thty 
make while quite green and thin skinned, 
when we are tired of rhubarb, and before straw¬ 
berries come. They are the easiest of things 
to keep, too, in jars or bottles. At that stage 
they have nothing of that har6h, unpallatable 
acidity of skin which sugar fails to mollify, 
that makes them barely tolerable when 
ripe. g. ' 
A BacliHlIdlug Thorn Tree. 
Mb. Y. Wheeleb of the Unadilla Valley, 
N. Y., grafted a thorn bush several years ago 
with a nice pear cion. The tree grew finely 
and one y ear produced quite a crop of most 
luscious pears. The effort exhausted the bet¬ 
ter nature of the tree, however, for it never 
bore another pear. Instead, huge thorns 
came out here and there upon the branches, 
aud at last Mr. S. grafted it again with apples. 
I shall watch the refractory tree with interest 
for further developments. e. j. r. 
-♦♦♦- 
Sawdust Mulching fob Strawberries — 
A few weeks ago the Rural requested 
any of its readers who had mulched their 
strawberries with sawdust to report the re¬ 
sult for publication. I mulched a part of 
mine with sawdust ihis year, and X am satis¬ 
fied it Is worthless for that purpose. It takes 
a long time to dry and the berries are badly 
rotted by lying in it. The Cuthbert Rasp¬ 
berry was uninjured last Winter except a 
little at the tips. The Rural seeds are doing 
nicely, especially the flower seeds. 
Factory Point, Vt. “Waliacb." 
-- 
A well-known horticulturist remarked (ous 
that there is a greater variety of fine specimens 
of evergreen and deciduous trees and shrubs 
in Prospect Park, of Brooklyn, L. I., N. Y., 
than in anv other one place in this country.... 
Jfitlii Crop, 
THE CULTURE OF CORN. 
Mr. H. Stewnrl'H Reply lo Dr. J. B. Lawen, of 
Rolhamated. 
When I complied with the request of the 
Secretary of the New Jersey Slate Board of 
Agriculture to give him my views upon the 
culture of corn for publication in the an¬ 
nual report of the Board, I little expected that 
IIAND-BLANTEU WITH PISTON-FEEDER FIG. 875 
it would bring me into conflict with the world- 
renowned agricultural chemist and experi¬ 
menter, Dr. J. B. Lawes. Bat that 1 feel some 
confidence in the truth of my viewsand perceive 
from my point of view that they do not con¬ 
flict very much, if at all, with those of Dr. 
Lawes, and that he may, perhaps, miss some 
important element in this question through 
want of familiarity with this especially Ameri¬ 
can crop under its special characteristics in 
American fields, and under some special con¬ 
ditions, I should scarcely care to dis¬ 
cuss this question under the certain dis¬ 
advantages which Dr. Lawes's greatly supe¬ 
rior position throws upon me. I would take 
this opportunity of acknowledging very grate¬ 
fully the obligations under which, in common 
with the many American admirers and stu¬ 
dents of the Doctor, 1 have been placed for the 
fund of information derived from his elaborate 
experiments and his life’s work. We can 
never too highly appreciate the services he has 
conferred upon American agriculture, and I 
am not without some hope that perhaps we, in 
America, may some lay be able to add some¬ 
thing to the great mass of information which 
has been gathered up at Rothamsted, through 
our investigations here, under somewhat dif- 
erent circumstances of climate, soil and crops. 
On careful study of Dr. Lawes’s communica¬ 
tion [see Rural Nkw-Yorkkr of July 3] I must 
confess that I fail to 6ee any serious point of 
difference between his views and mine in re¬ 
gard to this question. I don’t wish to discuua 
it in regard to wheat, because I have not given 
so much attention to wheat growing as to corn 
growing, and confess that, so far as regards 
the former crop, I have not yet been able to 
produce it here so cheaply as I could buy the 
Western grain; and I doubt very much if we 
Eastern farmers can compete, in wheat produc¬ 
tion with the West any better than the English 
farmers can. But I would like to say that I do 
not think it depends altogether upon the sup¬ 
ply of nitrogen in the Boil; that it is not so 
much a question of fertility as of cheapness of 
culture. Here in the East our lauds cost too 
much, and our farms are not large enough for 
the ubc of the labor saving implements and 
machines, so that the cost of a crop of 40 
bushelB of wheat per acre even is not repaid 
by the price fixed by the cost of the smaller 
crop of 18or 30 bushels grown in Minneeotaor 
Dakota. The very same difficulty exists in 
England as regards this crop. But with regard 
to corn this difficulty is greatly lessened. 
Corn cannot be grown and harvested as 
cheaply as wheat, in the West. The 
Western com must be cut and shocked and 
husked by hand, and at the same cost as in 
the East, so that the relative disability of the 
Eastern farmer is not so great as in the case of 
wheat. It is, therefore, wholly a question of 
fertility with corn, while the element of labor 
enters into the question as regards wheat to 
the greater detriment of the Eastern American 
and the English farmer. Then, if the cost of 
the artificial fertilizer required to produce a 
bushel of corn in New Jersey is less than the 
freight on it from Chicago, I hope to be able 
to compete successfully with the Iowa and Illi¬ 
nois farmer in growing corn. It rests wholly 
on this point, and in my paper referred to by 
Dr. Lawes, I made this my chief point. 
My experience in this respect has been lim¬ 
ited to a few years, during which I have been 
growing corn repeatedly with artificial ma¬ 
nures. I am not in a position to say Mow much 
nitrogen is naturally contained in my soil, 
which is poor and had been badly farmed by 
former owners, but I suspect it is very little. 
The nearest approach to a knowledge in this 
respect is the fact that on part of a field plant¬ 
ed with com and left without any manure or 
fertilizer, the crop produced did not bear one 
sound ear; there were some small stalks and 
poor nubbins, but, not one good ear on a strip 
four rods wide through the field. This field (two 
acres), manured wiih 600 pounds of the Mapea’ 
Com Manure (containing 23£ pounds of nitro¬ 
gen) per acre, gave me 98 bushels of shelled 
corn, containing about 8S pounds of nitrogen, 
per acre. A plot of one-sixth of an acre in 
another field, manured in precisely the same 
manner, gave 35 bushels and 8 pounds of 
shelled corn, equivalent to 150 6-7 bushels per 
acre. Here was presented a serious problem, 
and one upon which, it may be easily per¬ 
ceived, depends a most important sequence 
for the Eastern farmers, who are confronted 
with a harrasaing, if not ruinous, competition 
with Western farmers. This, with some re¬ 
peated crops, not grown experimenlally, but 
in ordinary farm work, make up the sura of 
my personal experience. 
With this there are many similar experiences 
of others, reference to which may, perhaps, go 
no farther than the crops grown on the Rural 
Farm, a large number of experiments collated 
by Piofessor Atwater, aud several competitive 
crops grown by farmers and farmers' boys. 
These all showed a large product grown with 
totally inadequate nitrogenous manuring, and 
some of them showed a seriously injurious ef¬ 
fect from au excess of nitrogenous manures. 
Now there seems to be but one explanation for 
these facts, and that is that corn is able to 
avail itself of a supply of nitrogen from some 
occult source when :it is sufficiently provided 
with potash and phosphoric ucid. What this 
source is I do not attempt now to queetiou. 
The corn gets the nitrogen, that seems certain, 
and I infer, fiom Dr. Lawes’s communication 
in the Rural Nkw-Vorkbr of July 3, that he 
and I do not differ in the least as regards this 
bare fact. For he says, “ The only manner in 
which such a result, viz., that a quarter of a 
pound of nitrogen in manure will produce a 
pound of it in corn, might possibly be arrived 
at, would be by the continuous growth of corn 
by means (1) of a mineral in auure alone, and 
(2) by the same manure combined with salts of 
ammonia, if this were done with very great 
care and for a sufficiently long period." Fur¬ 
ther he says, “ more nitrogen would be recov¬ 
ered by the corn than by the wheat.” 
Now if I have said any more than what this 
purports to mean, and Dr. Lawes will allow 
me, I will withdraw all beyond that, and rest 
my case upon it. That includes every point 1 
wish to make, for the whole sum of my argu¬ 
ment is that the Eastern farmer, by the per¬ 
fectly right employment of a quarter of a 
pound of nitrogen, can recover one pound of 
it In his corn crop, If be will only give enough 
potash and phosphoric acid. In discussing 
the question of thecultureof corn in my paper 
I considered it solely lo its practical bearings, 
and did not give much attention to its relative 
character as compared with clover. But If the 
above admission of Dr. Lawes is correctly 
quoted, it certainly seems that it must also be 
admitted that “corn should not be placed on 
the list of grain crops which require to be Bap- 
plied with a surplus of nitrogen, but, rather, 
classed with clover and the leguminous crops 
which yield larger quantities of nitrogen in 
their product but require an Inconsiderable 
supply-” And why not ? Consider the season 
