832 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
Oct. 
condition fit for immediate use. It is this foresight 
that has rendered the course easy to many a success¬ 
ful aspirant, and the want of it the ruin of half the 
plants propagated. For plants will not generally 
thrive in any compost, however carefully attended 
to, unless some attention is paid to their natural 
wants and habits. Plants in pots are in an artifi¬ 
cial position, and require a proportionate amount of 
care in cultivation.” 
The Curculio—the opinions of Doctors. 
Where any evil is extensive, and its remedy diffi¬ 
cult, we are always sure to have plenty of prescrip¬ 
tions. Nothing exemplifies this truth more striking¬ 
ly than the efforts to get rid of the Curculio. We 
have at least a dozen remedies on record, nearly all 
of which have proved in a greater or less degree 
effectual, as for example jarring them down on 
sheets; paving beneath the trees; syringing the 
forming fruit with lime wash; pounding the earth 
beneath the trees and sweeping up the fallen fruit; 
confining pigs and geese; repelling by fermenting 
manure and other offensive odors; saturating the 
ground with salt; squirting over the trees tobacco- 
water or brine; decoying into wide mouthed vials; 
throwing them up to the frost, &c. Our object at 
present, is not to go into a discussion of the merits 
of the various modes, but to give the opinions of 
a few men of extensive experience, now that the 
season for these depredators has past, and before 
the commencement of another. 
C. M. Hovey, of Boston, for 15years past editor 
of the Magazine of Horticulture, says, 11 It can¬ 
not be denied, that thus far, of all the plans sug¬ 
gested for limiting their ravages, not one can claim 
so much merit as that of shaking them from the 
trees daily , during the whole period, when they 
make their attacks upon the fruit. All the bar¬ 
barous plans for disfiguring a garden, by paving it 
with bricks or stone,—making it a pig pen or 
henery—saturating the soil with guano or salt and 
numberless other modes, too numerous to mention, 
suggested by those who are novices in horticulture, 
are of little or no value, compared with that of 
shaking the trees and catching the ‘ rascals.’ ” 
F. R. Elliott, secretary of the Ohio fruit con¬ 
ventions, of the N. American Pomological conven¬ 
tions, &.c. says, 11 Of the many receipts that have 
been chronicled as certain cures, none with us other 
than the mesmeric manipulation of that veteran 
Pomologist, David Thomas, ‘ stays put,’ that is 
catching them on a spread sheet. Paving, salt, 
sulphur, &,c. are of no avail. Last season I paid a 
penny for every specimen;* this year lean well 
pay in plums.” 
A. J. Downing, in his Horticulturist, known as 
the best magazine on gardening in America, says, 
(( We still think that pigs and poultry are the cheap¬ 
est and most serviceable preventives to the Curculio, 
when the trees can be planted in yards which are 
thoroughly investigated by them. There are doubt¬ 
less cases where, from incomplete arrangements, 
this mode may have failed; but in all instances, 
where thoroughly carried out and preserved in, it 
will be found an efficient and cheap mode. Mean¬ 
while, paving is nicely adapted to the amateur’s 
garden.” 
There can scarcely be a question that a combina¬ 
tion of the preceding remedies, thoroughly applied, 
would be effectual in all cases. 
The Transactions of the Essex Agricultural So¬ 
ciety, Mass., furnish the following from a contribu- 
* The actual cost i3 not a fifth of this. 
tor,* which we have found the best mode of pre¬ 
serving from the curculio new or rare varieties, in 
small quantities for testing:— 
“ Last year I made two bags of old thin muslin, 
and drew them over two limbs about the time the 
fruit set. Within each of these bags I saved a few 
beautiful plums, and not a plum did I save on any 
other part of the tree. Last spring I bought a few 
yards of bonnet lining, and covered the limbs of 
several trees, some when the plums had set and 
others when they were in blossom; for I found the 
enemy had made their appearance while the trees 
were in bloom. Undereach of these, I saved plums, 
apricots and nectarines, upon limbs of twelve differ¬ 
ent trees; and these were the only ones I saved. 
* * One small branch, covered by a bag, measur¬ 
ing six and a half by nine inches, contained twenty- 
one beautiful plums, hanging in one solid cluster. 
Upon another tree, I saved eight Moorpark apricots. 
I am training apricot trees in the form of a fan, to 
make them more convenient to be covered with 
muslin.” 
Market Gardens and Rail Roads. 
Rail roads have had a wonderful influence on the 
production and sale of such articles as are quickly 
perishable. And on nothing has the influence been 
greater, perhaps, than on the market gardens about 
London. Covent Garden market has been famed 
for its remunerative prices of fine things. Accord¬ 
ing to the Gardener’s Chronicle, $300 have been ob¬ 
tained from an acre of cabbages, $500 for an acre of 
rhubarb, $700 for an acre of asparagus, and of 
strawberries. Single forced cucumbers have sold 
for $2, melons for $5, forced strawberries at half a 
dollar an ounce, and grapes $6 per pound. These 
prices are high, but the expenses are enormous. 
Fitch, of Fulham, (who has sold nine cart loads of 
vegetables in one day by nine o’clock in the morning) 
has paid out for the use of 100 acres of land, manure 
and all expenses, nearly twenty thousand dollars a 
year. 
But fresh market gardens have sprung up all along 
the lines of railways, and made a fearful change 
upon the old gardeners. Land in the country is not 
a sixth part of the price it is near the city, and rail¬ 
way conveyance is cheap. Many families in London 
now receive the produce of their own country gar¬ 
dens. Railroads and steamboats have effected still 
another change. French vegetables and fruits are 
brought into London before the usual time for the 
English markets, having an earlier climate in their 
favor. The London gardeners possess a decided 
advantage in climate over the northern counties, and 
large quantities are consequently sent north. In 
short, the old and limited bounds of trade are broken 
up, and a general distribution both of profits and 
consumption made throughout the kingdom. 
A similar result is taking place in this country. 
If our territory is wider, the greater difference in 
latitude will give the north the benefit of southern 
productions all the earlier. The Early Tillotson 
peach ripens in southern Virginia more than a month 
sooner than in New-York. A more general cultiva¬ 
tion of this variety there would supply New-York 
city with an .abundance of excellent peaches before 
mid-summer. This peach ripens at Vicksburg and 
Natchez within a fortnight of the first day of sum¬ 
mer, and the more central portions of the Union 
might he supplied much earlier than from their own 
raising. Increased facilities for transportation, the 
growth of cities, and a greatly extended culture of 
*As copied by Hovey’s Mag. 
