1S54. 
THE CULTIVATOR, 
185 
if practicable, be large enough to contain wood. If a 
good well of water and pump could be added, it would 
be a great improvement. In some places conveniences 
for washing will be important. 
The windows are placed on the two opposite sides— 
this arrangement lights a schoql-room to the best ad¬ 
vantage, and prevents that confusion of light where 
windows are on three sides. 
For children who are compelled to sit several hours 
during a day, (which 
is sufficiently irk¬ 
some and unnatural, 
to say the best,) ea¬ 
sy and comfortable 
seats should be pro- 
_ vided. Sitting long 
is harder for children 
than for adults; but few of the latter would be willing 
to sit so long, even for one day, to say nothing of re¬ 
p-eating it for months. 
Fig. 2 represents the simplest mode of making seats 
and desks, yet has an important improvement, by giv¬ 
ing a slope to the back of the seats. Fig. 3 represents 
a more finished desk, which may be adopted for larger 
pupils—the seats and desks being separate, there is 
less interference with those sitting behind. Each desk 
has two chairs, consisting of round plank fastened to a 
cast-iron support, strongly screwed to the floor. The 
backs are made of three slats, screwed to the seat and 
fastened into a cross top piece. We have already giv¬ 
en the dimensions of these. They are becoming com¬ 
monly used. The desk lids should always open above 
as none can be kept neat without. 
A seat runs round the room on three'sides next the 
walls, not commonly, but 
sometimes needed. The 
other seats connected with 
the desks, are sufficient, in 
the plan, for 52 pupils, and 
may be increased or dimin¬ 
ished without altering the 
general arrangement. A 
house 24 by 28 feet will 
contain the accommodations here represented, and if 
built one story high with arched ceiling , with vertical 
boarding and battens, need not cost more than our cor¬ 
respondent’s estimate. It should have something of a 
tasteful exterior, for to children, lessons in neatness, 
taste, &c., are quite as important, even in an economi¬ 
cal and practical point of view, as chemistry and alge¬ 
bra. The accompanying figure represents the mode of 
building we have recommended, presenting a handsome 
exterior, and a tasteful architecture, of the simplest 
Italian cast. For a house built of brick, and of a 
more costly character, the engraving at the head of 
this article represents a handsome specimen, the wings 
serving for recitation rooms. 
§2F“ The great leading and most essential requisite 
in a school-room, we have not mentioned. This is, to 
place the seats fronting towards the north , so that 
the outline maps may be suspended on the north side 
of the room,—and that first impressions of north and 
south may be correct. Unless a child sees a map for 
the first time placed in the right position, every thing 
will be turned round through all the rest of his life: 
The writer of this article would be willing to give two 
hundred dollars to-day, if he could have had his first 
impressions correct in this particular. 
Winter Apples and Pears. 
Eds. Country Cent. —In a late number of your 
journal, it is stated that for winter, the Rhode Island 
Greening and the Baldwin are unquestionably the two 
best market apples in America. This is probably true 
for the climate and soil of New England and parts of 
New York, but the Baldwin is not a good winter ap¬ 
ple inthis neighborhood. We live near the Seneca 
Lake, which never freezes, and hence our season is 
about two weeks earlier than many places twenty or 
thirty miles distant. This is probably one reason for 
the failure in part, of the Baldwin, which grows very 
large and fair, but ripens too soon. The winds of the 
early autumn cause large portions of them to fall from 
the trees, and they soon decay. To test their keeping 
qualities, we have carefully picked the remainder from 
the trees, but have rarely succeeded in keeping any 
beyond the first of January. This has been our expe¬ 
rience with the Baldwin for three years. A friend liv¬ 
ing a few miles distant says he has had a similar ex¬ 
perience with it. My brother, who resides in Tazewel 
county, near the center of the State of Illinois, has 
discarded it, and grafted his Baldwin trees with other 
fruit. 
The Rhode Island Greening, Esopus Spitzenburgh, 
Swaar, Northern Spy, Tompkins County Winter King, 
and Talman Sweeting, we prize the highest, out of 
some twenty, of the most popular kinds of winter ap¬ 
ples which we have growing. The two first are the 
most greedily bought, because their good qualities 
are well known. 
W'hy are not winter pears cultivated more for mar¬ 
ket 'l Assuredly they might be rendered very profit¬ 
able. We spent several days in New-York and Alba¬ 
ny about the first of March, without seeing a winter 
pear offered in market. We think that if good winter 
pears had then been offered in the New-York market, 
they could have been readily sold for one shilling each. 
A Flushing nurseryman told me that he had often seen 
the Bartlett pears sold in the fall, for ten and twelve 
cents each, at retail, and at six cents each by the quan¬ 
tity. Yours truly. S. B. Buckley. West Dresden , 
N. Y, April 19, 1854. 
