THE CULTIVATOR. 
Insect Repellers—Sulphur and Mercury. 
Our readers have no doubt often heard of the 
use of sulphur in repelling insects from trees, the 
application being made by plugging,” and the 
sulphur being diffused through the sap, and ren¬ 
dering the leaves offensive to insect depredators. 
The use of quicksilver has been similarly recom¬ 
mended. The question appears never to have 
been asked whether either of these substances is 
soluble in water, and capable of being carried by 
the sap through the tree, and it has been taken 
for granted by many that if so diffused, these sub¬ 
stances would certainly repel insects. No doubt 
the operation of boring and pounding in plugs 
would sometimes tend to drive away such intrud¬ 
ers, but this is all that can be said in its favor. 
At a late conversational meeting of the Massachu¬ 
setts Horticultural Society, Dr. Wight stated, 
that three years ago he bored a hole into an ap¬ 
ple tree, poured in quicksilver, and plugged the 
hole tight. One year after, he opened the hole 
and found the quicksilver (as a matter of course) 
in the same state and in the same quantity as when 
put in; it had not undergone the least change what¬ 
ever. In an other tree he bored a similar hole, and 
inserted roll brimstone; a year afterwards it was 
opened with the same result as the other experiment 
—not the least change had taken place—the sulphur 
remained as when put in. The truth is, no other 
result could have taken place 
Destroying Black Ants. 
u My yard and flower garden are much infested 
with black ants, to the destruction of some roots 
and some shrubbery. I am unable to drive them 
away by any method I can devise or learn of 
others. If you can direct me. you will confer a 
favor. S. M. B. Hannibal , N T . Y., May, 1853.” 
Not having been much troubled with black ants, 
we can only recommend the trial of the following: 
With a smooth crowbar, pierce the ground with 
several holes where the ants are most abundant; 
into these they will fall and be unable to get out. 
In sandy or gravelly soil, it may be difficult to 
form smooth holes, except immediately after a 
heavy rain, or artificial flooding—on clayey soils 
it will be very easy. A few quarts of hot water, 
poured into the holes, will make short work with 
the prisoners. Cheap tin vessels, six inches in 
height, and the size of eave-trough conduc¬ 
tors, or perhaps wide-mouthed vials, set into 
holes thus made, could be more perfect traps, and 
some inviting substance, as molasses or sugar, 
would doubtless assist in decoying them. The 
European horticultural journals state that the 
tomato plant is very offensive to them, and that 
if the surplus plants which grow in most gardens 
are pulled up and laid in the vicinity of places in¬ 
fested, the ants will soon retreat. Whether all 
the different species would be similarly influ¬ 
enced, is another question. 
Cayuga Horticultural Society. 
President— H. T. Dickson. 
Yice-Presidents—P. R. Freeoff, George E. 
Barber, John Morse, Oliver W. Wheeler. 
Cor. Sec.—Horace T. Cook. 
Rec. Sec.—S. S. Graves. 
Treasurer—John S. Clary. 
Clean Cultivation of Trees. 
The importance of a deep, mellow soil for young 
trees, kept clean by constant cultivation, is well 
understood by skilful fruit-raisers, and should 
be fully appreciated by all, and acted upon at the 
present season of rapid growth. 
Some years sipce, T. G. Yeomans, of Walworth, 
N. Y., well known as a v6ry successful culturist, 
informed us that his young standard trees', which 
stood among his smaller trees in his nursery, 
where they were subjected to continual cultiva¬ 
tion, and where the young nursery trees made hut 
little draught on the soil, made twice the growth 
of those in a field of beets, which were kept hoed 
well through the early part of the season only, 
and which, precisely like a large growth of weeds, 
drew freely on the soil. A similar statement is 
made in the Genesee Farmer, of an experiment in 
sowing carrots between the rows of young apple 
trees. The rows of trees were 3^ feet apart, and 
a single row of carrots was sowed between them. 
Although they were all kept clean during the 
summer, yet other trees of the same age and 
treatment, without carrots, made twice the 
growth. 
The owners of orchards, in their great anxiety 
to get something in the shape of annual crops from 
the land, often lose ten times as much in the value 
of fruit. A certain farmer (rather uncertain, 
however, in this instance,) would not sacrifice five 
dollars worth of pasturage by plowing up and 
leaving hare the ground of his'orchard, although 
it already atforded him fifty dollars per acre in 
crops, and would have paid him over one hundred 
per acre in better fruit and more of it, if he had 
only kept it mellow by plowing and liarrowing. 
The finest market peach orchard we ever saw, in 
full bearing with very large and delicious fruit, 
was kept as mellow as an ash-heap the season 
through, and no crop allowed to grow upon the 
soil, which the proprietor found by far the best 
and most economical mode of management . 
The Narrowed Gardens in Cities 
A great deal of skill may generally be exercised 
in making the best use of such materials as hap¬ 
pen to he placed in our hands. Spending a few 
days with a friend in one of bur large cities, we 
were struck with the great variety of vegetable 
growth which had been introduced into a space of 
25 by 30 feet of ground. It-was entered from 
under the back porch, which was ten feet square; 
the space between the eaves of this porch and its 
floor, on one side, was covered with the scarlet 
trumpet honeysuckle on a simple trellis; from the 
front roof, projected a trellis-work drooping roof, 
five feet wide, on which a Catawba grape-vine was 
handsomely trained,—the whole presenting much 
of the character of a country arbor. The ground 
was surrounded by a flower border, and this was 
separated from an inner flower border, by a walk 
passing round the whole. In these two borders 
we counted nearly an hundred and fifty different 
species or varieties of ornamental plants, a con¬ 
siderable portion in bloom, and a part of them 
were so trained as to cover the garden walls with 
verdure. The hack offices were covered with one 
or two fruit trees by fan training, and with a sin¬ 
gle Boursalt rose spread over a surface of ten feet 
in width and twelve in height, and on which we 
estimated the number of about 800 roses in bloom 
