ers.

Farmers' Gardens.

As soon as the blossoms fully expand, flowering shrubs, and grape and other vines. the plants may be removed to the conserva- That ever potent argument of expense, and tory or green-house, where they will continue the ready excuse of poverty, cannot be to produce a succession of flowers for a long urged against these decorations of the time.-Gardener's Chronicle. farmer's home. A man may be too poor to erect a costly cottage, but no one is too poor to cultivate a bed of flowers, to plant shrubbery around his humble dwelling, or to train a vine to relieve its bare exterior. A beauty unattained by any triumph of art, is thus in the reach of the most obscure. Nature waits to provide, "without money and without price," the ornaments of a cultivated field, and pleasure of a cultivated mind.

EVERY farmer may, if he will, have a garden, not a patch of onions here, of beets there, of cabbages somewhere else, interspersed with bean-poles and potatos, but a veritable garden, a cultivated place.

A farm that has not a plot of ground adapted to the purposes of a garden, had better be abandoned at once. There is no good reason why the real luxuries that spring from the soil, under the culture of the practical gardener, should be confined to the lands of the gentleman of leisure. They belong as legitimately to the sturdy, hard-working farmer, and indeed more so; for he who labors most actively, should reap the richest harvest. All that serves to make life more desirable, that tends to the improvement of the soil, the mind, and the heart, is not beneath the attention of We cannot conceive of a more fit place to commence the careful cultivation of a farm than the garden. It would soon be evident that the greater care bestowed on the soil, the greater its product; and so a system of culture would by degrees be adopted, till the whole farm should become a fruitful field.

man.

Contrast for one moment, the cottage and the lawn, with the rude dwelling and its ill-kept grounds-compare the beauty and fragrance of flowers, with the unsightly weed and its rank odor-mark the difference between the luxuriant green of shrubbery, and the vacancy of barren yards, and then decide whether an hour of time can be better spent than in effecting such a change.

The past few years have wrought a manifest improvement in matters of rural taste, but as yet its evidences are confined to cottages and farm houses, scattered here and there, like oases in the wild desert. It will be seen, however, that as agriculture advances, and system takes the place of confusion, all these things will receive the attention that they so richly deserve.Albany Cultivator.

State Chemists.

THE following article from the Express at Amherst, Massachusetts, is indorsed in part by Professor Mapes, who says, in confirmation-"We could quote more than one hundred cases where the profits have been near

In the cultivation of a garden, can be noted on a small scale all the phenomena of growth, and from data there gathered, one can advance successfully from the tilling of narrow beds to that of broad acres. The knowledge necessary to success in gardening, is rather the result of experience, than of fixed rules. There is requisite a taste for the art, close observation, and a modicum of practical skill; give these, and ly or quite doubled, and the value of the common sense will supply the deficit. We would not by any means, profess to teach gardening "in six easy lessons," but we assert that any one so disposed can make a beginning.

There are certain adjuncts to a garden, which a majority of farmers who take the trouble to cultivate a few esculent roots seem to think altogether too trifling to merit heir attention. Such are beds of flowers,

land permanently increased, by the judicious application of such manures as analyses prove to be required by the soil." And further adds" Our legislators continue to amuse their constituents with pretended attempts at establishing Agricultural Bureaus, etc. A few years more, and their constituents will render the establishment of such bu

tion of here and there a couple of rows,

reaus the leading question in selecting their Professor Norton advised, with the exceprepresentatives, both to state legislatures and to Congress.

The farmers of this state should demand of the government a Chemical Laboratory, and the employment of a chemist to analyze their soils. If the laboratory should be connected with a farm school, it would be all the better. The school, if well conducted, would be a great good to the whole community, and not merely to one interest. But the laboratory should be established, at all events. The chemist should be a young man, one who was a profound chemist at twenty, who has been enthusiastic in that science ever since, and is now not more than twenty-five or thirty years old. He should be furnished with every requisite for the most searching investigation of soils; and he should be a working man, willing to work three hundred days in a year at least, an enthusiast in his profession, one who with Liebig's zeal, and with the advantage of discoveries already made, would go further in his researches than Liebig or any of the older chemists have time of life enough left to go. He should investigate soils for farmers, report the deficiencies to them, and explain to them the cheapest mode of supplying those deficiencies. The result would be, that in ten years the farms of Massachusetts could be kept in high fertility with half the expense now required to keep them in only a tolerably productive condition. Proofs that such a result might be reasonably anticipated are abundant. One fact only will be given here, and others will be reserved for future occasions. Mr. William P. Dickinson, of Hadley, had a field of eight acres thoroughly grown over with moss, almost as thick and matted as the wool on the back of

which were cultivated as he would have cultivated the whole if he had not been otherwise advised. The result is a crop of corn, now in the field, equal to perhaps twenty bushels to the acre, where cultivated in the old way, and very nearly fifty, where cultivated as Mr. Norton advised. This, I know all might have been, and yet there be no increase of profit, for the extra corn and fodder (both more than doubled) might have cost more than they are worth. But it was not so in this case. Mr. Dickinson, after keeping an exact account of the expense, gives it as his deliberate opinion, that the increased profit, in consequence of Mr. Norton's advice, is at least fifty dollars this year; and besides this, he has better hopes for that land hereafter, and has, moreover several fields of similar land adjoining that, to which Mr. Norton's prescription will apply. He values the advice much higher than its cost.

Mr. Norton is called from a most useful and too hard-working life, to his reward; and there are few Mr. Nortons left. I do not therefore advise farmers to be in haste to send their soils out of the state to be analyzed; but I do advise them most earnestly to demand and to have a working chemist of their own, who will enable them, by telling them just what to apply, to keep their lands in a high state of productiveness, at far less expense than they could without such advice. Millions can be saved to the state in the economy of manuring, and millions gained in the increase of crops, and as all will be benefited, all should share the expense.

Now we in Ohio may suppose we have tried a state chemist-and feel that we have We did a sheep that will give a ten pound fleece. little to show for it. It is not so. The land of course must have been exceed- appoint such an officer, but at the same time ingly unpromising for any crop. He pro- crushed him with the laborious duties of corcured an analysis of it by the late Professor responding secretary of the Board of AgriNorton, and was told that it was deficient in two or three ingredients which could be culture, and withheld the means and applicheaply supplied. For this analysis and a ances absolutely necessary to the expected long letter, advising him how to supply the analyses. It has been the fashion with some deficiencies in the cheapest possible manner, periodicals to decry chemistry and chemical he paid ten dollars, and was laughed at, as analyses. Cheap ones are indeed of very commonly happens when a man ventures a step out of the beaten track. He plowed little value, but, like everything else, if worth that field and treated it in every respect as doing it is worth doing well.-ED.

The Vineyard.

VINEYARD CALENDAR FOR FEBRUARY.

Ir is proposed to furnish a series of brief low as possible; cut it back to two or three memoranda upon this subject during the current year for the sake of refreshing the memory of the reader. The articles of last year were pretty full, but the subject is not yet exhausted. A brief synopsis of what has been already furnished is all that it is now proposed to repeat, but upon some topics it may be considered advisable to enlarge somewhat.

SCUPPERNONG VINEYARD.

in stormy weather. Good, sound wood, with short joints, is to be selected and cut into lengths of eighteen to twenty-two inches. When it is convenient, a small piece of the old wood is left on the base of each cutting, as such are considered most likely to grow. They are now to be tied up neatly in bundles of two hundred and fifty each, and then placed in a cool cellar.

A better plan, however, is to dig a trench, set the bundles vertically, close together, and cover with the earth that had been thrown out. The greatest care should always be taken to prevent the cuttings from becoming dry. The trimmings should be gathered into the cellar from day to day and occasionally sprinkled with a watering pot.

Scuppernong Vineyard.

IN the Southern Cultivator is found a series of articles on vineyards, by the celebrated S. Weller, of Brinkleyville, North Carolina, who is always referred to as the exponent of the Scuppernong culture. Let

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this difficulty alone_will more or less prevent a full crop. From the very start of suffered to train downward, but scaffolding the outspreading branches, none should be ever kept before them in anticipation of their growth and extension. Above I speak of a complete Scuppernong vineyard in the best bearing state. But some parts of my vineyard are complete, and some not so; but as to the latter, the vines extend over fruit and other trees, and are then not so prolific, or each is some interruption or impernong vine is more apt to injure the tree pediment to the other. Though the Scupthan the tree the vine. But if either kill the other the Scuppernong gets the victory. Yet, as one striking instance of both doing well, I select the case of two of these vines planted in the edge of the garden of a near neighbor, some fifteen years since. They were trained from the garden upon oaktrees in the door yard some distance. They spread over the trees some hundreds of feet in various directions, and bear or have borne to make two barrels of wine annually, on the trees enough grapes for years past besides abundance of fruit for family use during the two months of their continuous ripening, or from the middle of August till the first of November. This, though, falls considerably short of the single vine in him describe the result of his labors :Tyrrell county below, or in the native reA complete Scuppernong vineyard ex-gion of the Scuppernong, that produces, hibits to the eye, at a horizontal view, a continuous canopy, or a sheet of vine branches so dense in time of leaves as to be almost impervious to the sight. To one underneath the canopy, and looking upward in fruit time, the berries, as thick as hops, and He then proceeds to describe his canopies as large as musket balls, appear hanging in or level trellising, which is done in a very clusters of three to nine or ten, and sometimes more. But the most beautiful sight, diffuse manner and may be condensed as as to fruit, is to look down from an eleva- follows. The grapes being planted thirty tion above. To the lover of grape fruit, feet apart, posts are set fifteen feet apart the clusters glittering in the sun in green each way, when the vines have reached and light yellow, according to maturity, amidst the foliage, is a very cheering, invit- eight feet in hight; upon the tops of these ing, appearance. Underneath the canopies, posts poles are laid from one to the next, (six, eight, or ten feet high,) viewed hori- and across these other lighter poles are zontally, nothing should be seen but main laid. All the sticks should be deprived of stems of the vines, and the posts to support their bark. By way of making a more perthe scaffolding. Here lies the secret of sure and prolific bearing. For, if any branches are suffered to hang down and impede the free circulation of air beneath the canopies,

besides eating fruit for the family and neighbors, five barrels of wine annually, on scaffolding of near a quarter of an acre, such as before described. But the last named cases are somewhat extraordinary.

manent arrangement, he proposes erecting stone pillars thirty or forty feet apart, and the intervening posts are set upon a flat

stone to keep them from the ground to avoid of wine per acre. Iron pillars are also sugrotting. This expense he considers nothing gested; and the diffused method of trainwhen he is producing two thousand gallons |ing is considered necessary for this grape.

Transactions.

THE CINCINNATI HORTICULTURAL INTERESTING specimens of fruits have been

SOCIETY.

Flower Committee-W. Cox, Sr., J. Dunlap, R. Davies.

Fruit Committee-S. M. Carter, M. McWilliams. A. H. Ernst.

Council-S. M.. Carter, A. Worthington, presented upon the tables of this association Wm. Orange, J. P. Foote, M. McWilliams, from week to week, and have elicited use- M. Kelly, D. McAvoy. ful and interesting discussions upon their characters and other qualities; affording a fine opportunity for all who choose to embrace the opportunity, to study pomology, so far at least as to be able to purchase a barrel of good apples or to plant an orchard judiciously. The latter is no small consideration, when we consider that few men plant a second orchard, and that a majority of our predecessors have planted a preponderance of inferior fruit.

Vegetable Committee--A. Worthington, G. Sleath, Henry Ives.

Financial Secretary-Henry Ives.

Ohio State Board of Agriculture. THIS important executive body, to whom The committee appointed to prepare a the farmers of our state have intrusted the suitable memorial to the State Board of guarding and guiding of the great interests Agriculture, to procure through the legis- of the community, has just held a very lature a change in the law, that should recognize and admit delegates from horticultural societies, reported a petition, which was intrusted to a deputation to present at the meeting of the board on the 11th ult. On their return, they reported the courteous reception by that body of themselves and their petition; which, however, was not acted upon by the board in a manner at all satisfactory to the members of this society, inasmuch as it was not considered best to ask for the desired change in the law.

The time for holding the Autumnal Fair has excited a good deal of discussion, and has finally been fixed upon the third week of September, 22d to 25th, or perhaps longer, as it is proposed to use a tent upon some vacant lot in the city.

On the first of the year the following officers were elected :

President-S. Mosher.

laborious session. Sundry matters of unfinished business were disposed of; but the chief work was the reconstruction of the premium lists, in which great care was exercised, and active endeavors were made to render the schedule acceptable to the competitors. This is always a very nice matter to effect, owing to the varied interests involved and included under the broad shield of an agricultural society, which, in truth, necessarily embraces almost every department of productive labor that is pursued within our borders. The success of these great and noble efforts remains to be seen, and must be proved by time; certainly the devoted men who have been earnestly laboring in the cause of the producers, richly deserve the thanks of their fellow-citizens, whom they are gratuitously serving. If any one be disposed to cavil at the result, let him try his hand in adjusting a schedule to suit

Vice-Presidents-G. Graham, R. Bucha- the limited and more uniform wants of his