ALL1A NO. 4 STRAWBERRY. From Nature. Fig. 309. 
Vol. XLYI. No. 1960, 
NEW YORK, AUGUST 20, 1887. 
PRICE FIVE CENTS 
$2.00 PER YEAR. 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, tn the year 1887, by the Rtnui Nkw-Yobkkb, in the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 
experiment $vouiuG of the f£tu*al 
gfew-^Jotker. 
The Alley Strawberry: Champion of Eng¬ 
land Pea; about moles; spraying nozzles; 
the Cyclone and Improved Cyclone. 
alley no. 4. 
The new strawberry, Alley No. 4, was re¬ 
rain the berries would prove firmer and of a 
higher quality. The flower is imperfect. 
CHAMPION OF ENGLAND PEA. 
W hy is the Champion of Englaud Pea so 
generally cultivated rather than the lower- 
growing and more prolific varieties like 
Stratagem, Telephone. Prince of Wales, York¬ 
shire Hero, etc? This question was asked by 
the R. N.-Y. several weeks ago and is answered 
by Mr. Bruggerbof, the acting member of 
Thor burn & C'o., of New York. He says that 
it is true that the Champion is not a great 
-bearer, and for garden culture the vines grow 
from five to six feet high. But it is the stand¬ 
having a decent lawn or flower bed of any 
kind. It was not uncommon to find both 
lawns and beds a net-work of tunnels, a work 
performed by the moles in a few hours—an 
incredibly short time. We assumed that there 
must be hundreds of them, and as all sorts of 
poisons and contrivances to catch them did 
not seem to lessen their destructive work, we 
were obliged to accept them as a pest that 
could not be conquered, and to repair their 
damages as soon as might be and as best we 
could. 
But we have since found by the use of effec¬ 
tive traps that their numbers were greatly 
severing use of the Hales Trap, which is sold 
by most seedsmen, no one need long be 
troubled with moles. A little experience is 
required to get the complete hang of the de¬ 
vice, but. this acquired, the trap may be set in 
half a minute so that a mole cannot pass 
under it without being caught. 
ADDITIONAL GRAPE NOTES. 
Elvira and Transparent bear fair crops of 
small berries free of rot. Pearl bears a heavy 
crop without rot. The leaves are large and 
thick. 1 aitb bears a small crop with some 
rot. The above are Jacob Rommel’s seedlings. 
ceived and planted August 'In of last year, 
from the originator, H. H. Alley, of Hilton, 
New Jersey. The vines arc strong-growing 
and healthy. The size of the berries aver¬ 
ages large, the shape is, as shown in the en¬ 
graving 1 ig. 309, roundish. The colons scar¬ 
let, the tlesh red, quality fair—a little too acid; 
not very firm. A striking peculiarity is that 
all the berries of a stem average large iuul 
ripeu nearly at the same time. We found 19 
good-sized berries to astern, nearly all of which 
were ripe or ripening. The season is medium. 
It is not improbable that in a season of less 
ard of quality. Knight’s Dwarf White and 
Knight's Dwarf Green were the first of the 
wriukled peas. Then came Champion of 
England followed by Hairs’s Dwarf Mammoth 
Wrinkled Marrow. The exquisite quality of 
the Champion and its tender skin still insure 
it a place in all gardens. In field culture the 
vines grow from three to four feet high ac¬ 
cording to fertility. 
ABOUT MOLES. 
In our early experience here, moles were so 
troublesome that at times we despaired of ever 
exa £6 er ated and that a single mole may in a 
short time do the work of what seems to be 
dozens. Here we find a portion of the lawn, 
or paths, or borders tunneled in every direc¬ 
tion. A trap is set and a single mole caught. 
The raised grass or soil is pressed back and in 
most cases it remains so. Sometimes two 
moles are caught in the same run—rarely 
more. 
Our older readers will remember the 
Rural’s illustration of the first effective 
spring-trap invented. But it was cumber¬ 
some, hard to set aud costly. With the per- 
Delaware is entirely free of rot or; mildew. 
This soil aud climate seem to suit it exactly. 
A MONSTROUS GRAPE. 
A frieud, whose name and address we re¬ 
gret to have lost, sent us. last year, a bunch 
of grapes from an Aguwutn seedling, of 
which the engraving, Fig 312 (see next page), 
is a portrait ihere seem to be four grapes 
grown together. Adhesion of the ovaries of 
fruits as they grow is common enough. We 
often see flowers with two sets of organs, or 
“twin,” apples, plums and the like, and our 
