1S5 0. 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
333 
early varieties of fruits and vegetables of different 
kinds, must ultimately render the domestic trade in 
these aticles of the greatest importance to producer 
and consumer, and tend to equalize the price of land 
by giving the gardeners and fruit raisers living 25 or 
50 miles from large cities nearly the same advantages 
as those formerly within close proximity. 
Lime lor the Curculio. 
Much attention has been excited the present year 
by a new remedy for the curculio. It was first tried 
by Lawrence Young, of Louisville, Ky., and has 
been repeated by others. It consists simply in cov¬ 
ering the young fruit, as early as danger is apprehend¬ 
ed, with a coating of thin lime wash, considerably 
more diluted than the mixture usually employed in 
whitewashing. It proves quite effectual; but it must 
be repeated after ever sho wer, and even after heavy 
dews, which wash off the lime. For this reason, it 
has proved, in the past wet season, more laborious 
than catching the insects on sheets. A dry season 
would be more favorable for the remedy with lime. 
It is applied by means of a large syringe. 
The Stanwick Nectarine. 
No new fruit has excited so much attention in 
England of late years, as this new variety of the 
nectarine. It was introduced from Syria, and al¬ 
though it has born fruit on the grounds of a single 
individual, the Duke of Northumberland, the speci¬ 
mens disseminated among judges have*received the 
highest praise for excellence and delicious flavor. 
It is about the size of the Elruge, but much paler in 
color. According to Lindley, it is “ exceedingly 
tender, juicy, rich, and sugary, without the slightest 
trace of the flavor of Prussic acid.” 
A great sale of 24 small trees of this variety took 
place at London, near the close of last spring, the 
only trees then in market. They were purchased 
chiefly by some twenty individuals, mostly nursery¬ 
men, for an aggragate sum of over $800, averaging 
more than $30 a tree, and some sold for more than 
$50. Time will determine whether, after a wider 
and longer cultivation, its high character will be 
sustained, and whether it will prove of much value 
in this country. Fine nectarines, it will be remem¬ 
bered, are quite an uncertain result among us, un¬ 
less they have received extraordinary attention. 
Doubtless they who pay a high price for this will en¬ 
deavor to persuade themselves that it is quite as fine as 
its merits will warrant. At the same time that enter¬ 
prise is to be commended, we must not forget that 
nineteen-twentieths of all newly introduced wonders 
among fruits, have ultimately sunk greatly in public 
estimation after rigid trial, or been wholly forgotten. 
This should render us cautious, but not cause us blind¬ 
ly to reject every thing without a fair trial. 
Horticultural Miscellanies. 
Black Knot on the Plum. —Benjamin Hodge, 
of Buffalo, N. Y., who has raised and sold trees for 
the past thirty years, says he has never had this 
malady among his plum trees till the present sea¬ 
son. and that in the instances cited, it was intro¬ 
duced from the East. One case was with two trees 
which came from Boston ; in another instance, twen¬ 
ty trees out of some hundreds received from the eas¬ 
tern part of the State were affected ; and a few trees 
grown from scions received from Massachusetts 
were attacked in the same way. 
The Victoria Regia. —According to Spruce’s 
Voyage up the Amazon, this remarkable plant, 
growing in water, has leaves four feet in diameter, 
which increase to eight feet during the rainy 
season. It is even asserted that some have 
attained twelve feet in diameter. So great is their 
size and so perfect their symmetry, that when turn¬ 
ed up they suggest some strange fabric of cast iron 
just taken from the furnace,* its color and the enor¬ 
mous ribs with which it is strengthened, increasing 
the similarity. At the exhibition of the London 
Horticultural Society last summer, a flower with 
two leaves of this plant were exhibited, the latter 
measuring e^ah. five feet ten inches in diameter. 
Early Second Crop of Grapes. —The Garden¬ 
er’s Chronicle states that at last summer’s exhibi¬ 
tion of the London Horticultural Society, which 
closed the 13th of 7 mo. (July,) “ there was a 
bunch of black Hamburg grapes, 'perfectly colored , 
from Mr. Wilmot, of Isleworth, which formed part 
of a crop ripe upon vines that were loaded with ripe 
fruit last February /” 
Old Forest Trees. —We once counted the rings 
of a large tulip tree at the newly cut stump, in 
Western New-York, which we made out ninety years 
old at the discovery of America by Columbus. This 
tree was 124 feet high. The pines at the west on 
the Pacific coast, which attain such enormous di¬ 
mensions, have in some instances numbered nine 
hundred rings. Such a tree, consequently, would 
have served as a bean-pole in the time of Gengis 
Khan, and was a tall towering forest tree of two 
hundred years during the conquest of Tamerlane. 
Large Orchards. —Dr. Kennicott states in the 
Horticulturist, that eighteen miles above Peoria, 
Ill., Isaac Underhill has five hundred acres in or¬ 
chard. He has in the last two years planted out 
12,000 grafted apple trees, and 7,000 peach trees. 
Pruning. —It is said that the donkey first taught 
the art of pruning the vine,* man being merely an 
imitator, on seeing the effect of cropping the points 
of the young shoots. It is not always the greatest 
wisdom to originate, but to turn to good account 
whatever by thoughtful observation comes within our 
reach. 
Luck with Trees. —We have noticed that cer¬ 
tain men always have much finer peaches, and pears, 
and plums, than most of their neighbors, and are 
called lucky. Their luck consisted, in the first 
place, in doing everything well—taking what their 
neighbors called foolish pains—leaving nothing un¬ 
finished ; and in the second place, in taking good 
care of what they had; that is, giving their trees 
wide, deep and mellow cultivation, applying manure 
where necessary, and especially the liquid manure 
from the chamber and wash tub. Great pains taken, 
whether with fruit trees or with children, scarcely 
ever fail to produce good results. 
Stir the Soil. —The greatest horticulturist, al¬ 
most, of the present day, says, “If I had 1 a calV to 
preach a sermon on gardening, I should take this for 
my text: stir the soil.” 
Hard to suit all. —At the American Congress 
of Fruit Growers, in 1848, a fruit committee of nine 
persons prepared a select list of fruits worthy of 
general cultivation. Although many hundred sorts 
of the pear have borne fruit in this country, all per¬ 
haps pronounced “excellent” by the nurserymen who 
sold them, yet there were only two that the fruit 
committee could unanimously agree upon to recom¬ 
mend, namely, the Seckel and Bartlett. 
Deep Soil and Deep Roots.-— A. J. Downing 
says, “I have seen the roots of strawberries extend 
five feet down into a rich deep soil; and those plants 
bore a crop of fruit five times, and twice as hand¬ 
some and good, as the common oroduct of the soil 
only one foot deep.” 
