t lousy, wash them
in a decoction of tobacco.

CRANBERRY.

[Illustration]

This is native in the northern parts of both hemispheres. In England and
on the continents of Europe and Asia, native cranberries are inferior,
in size and quality, to the American. Our own have also been greatly
improved by cultivation. They have become an important article of
commerce, and find a ready sale, at high prices, in all the leading
markets of the country. Their successful cultivation, therefore,
deserves attention, as really as that of other fruits. Mr. B. Eastwood
has written a volume on the subject, which probably contains all the
facts already established, together with many opinions of scientific and
practical cultivators. The work is valuable, but much less so than it
would have been, had the author put into a few pages the important
facts, and left out all speculations and diversities of opinion. The
objection to most of this kind of literature is the intermixture of
facts and valuable suggestions with so much that is not only useless,
but absolutely pernicious, by the confusion it creates. We think the
following directions for the cultivation of the cranberry are complete,
according to our present knowledge:--

_Soil._--It is universally agreed that _beach sand_ is the best. Not
from the beach of the ocean barely, but of lakes, ponds, or rivers.
There is no evidence that any saline quality that may be in sand from
the beach of the sea, is particularly useful. It is the cleanness of the
sand, on which account it is less calculated to promote a growth of
weeds, and allows a free passage of moisture toward the surface. Hence
white sand is preferable, and the cleaner the better. Whoever has a
moist meadow in the soil of which there is considerable sand has a good
place for a cranberry bed. If you have not a sand meadow, select a plat
of ground as moist as any you have, upon which water will not stand
unless you confine it there, and draw on sand to the depth of four or
six inches, having first removed any grass or break-turf, that may be in
danger of coming up as weeds to choke the vines. If you make the ground
mellow below and then put on the sand, you will have a bed that will
give you but little further trouble. Peat soils will do, if you take off
the top and expose to the weather, frosts and rains, one year before
planting. The first year, peat will dry and crack, so as to destroy
young cranberry vines. But after one wi