1847. 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
61 
better when done so late, and very rarely so good.— 
Plums usually pass the most rapid season of growth in 
July; hence they must be budded early; cherries often 
pass that period early, but not invariably; hence the 
practice must correspond. Peaches may be usually 
budded considerably later; because being the native of a 
warmer climate, tneir growth continues longer, and is 
more rapid than that of most other fruit trees. 
But as a general rule, caution is needed, in budding 
too early. Unless the buds are well matured, they will 
be likely to fail. Apple buds, early in July, inserted in 
•very thrifty stocks nearly all failed—they had not be¬ 
come sufficiently matured,—the young wood from which 
they were taken was soft, and soon shrivelled. In one 
season, cherry buds, set the middle of July, nearly all 
lived and grew; in another, set at the same time, they 
nearly all failed from a want of maturity, while those 
set two weeks later did finely. It very rarely happens 
that peach buds are sufficiently matured before the early 
part of August. 
With regard to starting the growth of buds the same 
year they are inserted, I have never found any advan¬ 
tage from it, and often considerable loss. I started 
peach and apricot buds, by keeping down the stock, and 
in some cases they grew more than a foot. But they 
never matured the wood; and in every case without ex¬ 
ception, they were wholly destroyed by the winter. 
The shoots themselves were not only destroyed, but the 
poisoned or fermented sap resulting from their death, 
ran down to the roots of the stock; and the whole tree 
perished. Pears and apples were not thus destroyed ; 
but I have repeatedly found that the small growth they 
made had an effect to stunt them, and by the end of the 
second year, they were no larger than those of one year’s 
growth from the bud in spring, and not so straight and 
thrifty. Perhaps others may be more successful; I 
merely state these as the results of numerous experi¬ 
ments. 
I ought to have stated one fact, derived from consid¬ 
erable experience, that in setting buds quite early, be¬ 
fore the wood has fully hardened, a great benefit results 
from cutting off plenty of wood from the shoot, with the 
bud:—the practice of English writers on this point, of 
removing the small piece of wood, being highly detri¬ 
mental. V. W. 
; Western New-York, Nov. 1846. 
RAISING YOUNG QUINCE TREES. 
An intelligent cultivator of fruit has very successfully 
adopted the following practice for raising quince trees 
in the nursery. Instead of planting the cuttings of the 
desired variety into the soil, as by the usual method, he 
inserts each cutting as a graft into an apple root, pre¬ 
cisely as in common root-grafting. The cuttings com¬ 
mence growing rapidly at once, deriving as they do a 
full supply of nourishment from the root of the apple ; 
and afterwards throwing out roots of their own, as they 
always do very freely , the apple root separates and dies, 
while the quince continues to flourish on its own roots. 
This is found to afford very handsome and thrifty young 
trees, and with much greater certainty than if raised 
simply by cuttings in the soil. 
The same cultivator picked the past season two bar¬ 
rels of quinces from a single tree. This tree is eighteen 
-years old, and one foot in diameter near the ground. As 
with all the other trees in the orchard, the soil around 
it has been kept rich and constantly cultivated. T. 
Corn Oil. —It was stated at the New-York Far¬ 
mers’ Club, last winter, that a light-housC on Lake 
Erie had used oil made from corn, for burning; and that 
about sixteen gallons of oil had been obtained from a 
hundred bushels of corn. 
GRAFTING GRAPE VINES. 
In the Cultivator for the present month I perceive a 
notice of i: a correspondent of the Ohio Cultivator ,” who 
has succeeded in grafting foreign grape vines upon new¬ 
ly transplanted Isabella vines. It strikes me as a very 
remarkable coincidence that the person alluded to should 
not only have grafted the same number of vines in pre¬ 
cisely the same way that I did, but should have de¬ 
scribed the operation in the very words which I made 
use of in a letter to you, which was published on page 
237 of the last volume of your paper. 
Is not such a ‘ freak of nature’ worthy of observation? 
H. W. S. C. 
Oat lands, Burlington, N. J., Jan. 4, 1847. 
Cranberries.—James N. Lovell gives the Barn¬ 
stable Co. (Mass.) Agricultural Society a statement of 
his mode of cultivating cranberries. He says that in 
1834 he set out cranberry-vines on what had been a 
cedar-swamp, covered over with beach sand. They 
have done well, and the average yield the past season 
was a bushel and a half to the square rod—or at the 
rate of 240 bushels per acre. He kept the lot flooded 
with water till about the 15th of April each year. For 
gathering, he gives from one-fourth to one-sixth, ac¬ 
cording to the abundance of the fruit. He gets two 
dollars per bushel, the mode of measuring being to give 
nine half pecks, struck measure, for one bushel. He 
speaks of a worm which has sometimes attacked his 
vines, and to destroy which he recommends sowing on 
them salt or ashes, about the middle of July, while wet 
with dew, at the rate of a bushel to forty rods, or four 
bushels to the acre. 
THE POTATO NOT A NATIVE OF VIRGINIA. 
Some years ago, I bad an opportunity to read Ge¬ 
rard’s Herbal, (edition of 1633,) and was aware of his 
assertion, before I saw the extract relative to the po¬ 
tato, in the last Cultivator, that he had u received roots 
hereof from Virginia.” Probably he believed so; but 
very improbable that he did so. He has neither named 
the person from whom, nor the year in which, he re¬ 
ceived them,—things scarcely to be omitted, if they had 
been brought to him directly from that country. 
At a time when newspapers were not published to 
correct the idle rumors of the day, it is not surprising 
that the native country of the potato, should be mista¬ 
ken; and however eminent Gerard was as a herbalist, 
his ignorance in some other matters, was very remarka¬ 
ble. In his account of the African Marigold, ( Tagetes 
erecta,)- —well known to have come originally from 
Mexico,—he says, u They grow everywhere almost in 
Africke of themselves, from whence we first had them, and 
that was when Charles the fifth, Emperor of Rome[!~\ 
made a famous conquest of Tunis.” 
The author of the article on the Potato in the Libra¬ 
ry of Entertaining Knowledge, evidently mistook u the 
Wild Potato.” ( Apios tuberosa,) for the common pota¬ 
to, ( Solanum tuberosum.) This would not have been 
the case, if Heriot had also described the common pota¬ 
to; and his not doing so, proves conclusively tome that 
the early settlers never found it there. Neither have 
any of our botanists. David Thomas. 
Greatfield , 12 mo. 20, 1846. 
Rice at Rome. —The attempts made the past sea¬ 
son to cultivate rice at Rome, have fully succeeded, and 
a company has been formed for growing rice on the 
extensive flats of that country. An attempt is also 
about to be made to introduce its culture on the Delta 
of the Rhone, where there are about 50,000 acres capa¬ 
ble of being flooded and turned into rice fields. 
The amount of tea consumed by the people of the 
United States is 18,000,000 pounds annually. 
