19 G 
WISCONSIN STATE AQRICULTUItAL SOCIETY. 
Of all the varieties of foliage plants, the Gesneria is the most ex¬ 
quisite; it is a bulb, and must be entirely dried off; leave in the 
pot where grown; keep dry and from the mice; by the first of Au¬ 
gust, they plainly speak for themselves; their rest is ended and 
they are ready to begin their lovely mission again; replant in peaty 
earth, give but little vvater until their leaves are well grown; keep 
shaded from the strong sunlight. Ferns, the poetry of flowers, 
flowers without blossoms: take them from the fern case and plant 
in peaty or woods-earth in like position with the Begonias; by the 
last of August, rearrange in the fernery; it is impossible to keep 
them doing well in the house during the heated term; darkness is 
necessary in our rooms to exclude heat and flies, under such cir¬ 
cumstances plant life must fail. Of the varieties mentioned, the 
most will be found in any choice collection, and like a family of 
children cannot all be reared or governed quite alike. Through the 
interchange of plans and experience, may we all go from this hive, 
laden with the gathered honey. “ Tears even, like the rain drops, 
have oftentimes fallen to the ground and come up in flowers.” 
SECOND HARVESTS. 
BY MRS. M. B. CULVER, MADISON. 
“ One harvest from tliy fields, 
Homeward brought the oxen strong; 
A second crop thine acres yield, 
Which I gather in a song.” 
The harvest which the oxen brought home was the spoils rescued 
from Nature who had first to be subdued. When cut down in one 
spot, she sprang up in other places and in a hundred different forms 
equipped for battle. When wild nature’s enemy, the farmer, slept, 
or w’as absent, her ragged troops rose triumphant and waved defi¬ 
ance from every square foot of soil, and never could man have put 
to rout these vagabond old generals, ragweed, mullein, burdock and 
thistle, with their legions of followers, had he not allied himself 
with nature’s nobler species, the honest grains and hardy, humble 
grasses, who, as the great naturalist says, “ are its irresistible valor 
