mperature. The
commercial nursery-man who will visit the "King's Pomological
Institute," at Proskau, in North Silesia, will see at a glance, as he
wanders over the ground, that the fruits, forest trees, ornamental trees
and shrubs of the nurseries of England, France, Belgium, etc., suddenly
disappear with the Carpathians on the edge of the great steppes.

J. L. BUDD,
AG. COLLEGE, AMES, IOWA.

Prunings.

The soil for window boxes is the same as for plant culture in pots; the
best is that formed by rotted sods with a little well decomposed stable
manure mixed with it.

Rhubarb requires deep, rich soil. A good dressing of well-rotted manure,
put on the ground this winter when it is not frozen, will start off the
plants briskly in the spring. The same is true for asparagus.

Mr. Russel Heath, Carpenteria, Cal., has an "English walnut orchard" of
two hundred acres of rich, level land, near the sea-shore. The trees are
from ten to twenty-five years planted. His crop in 1882 was 630 sacks of
70 pounds each; this season he expects the harvest will aggregate about
one-third more.

Gardener's Monthly: The writer found among the gardeners in Canada, when
in that country recently, that the English plan of preserving grapes in
bottles of water was in not uncommon use. The bunches are cut with
pieces of stems, and then so arranged that the ends are in bottles of
water. By this plan the grapes can be preserved far into the spring
season.

The American Cultivator: "Can you tell we what kind of weather we may
expect next month?" wrote a farmer to the editor of his paper, and the
editor replied: "It is my belief that the weather next month will be
like your subscription bill." The farmer wondered for an hour what the
editor was driving at, when he happened to think of the word
"unsettled," and he sent a postal note forthwith.

The Farmer and Fruit Grower: Mr. Willis, Lamer, a prominent fruit grower
of the Cobden region, says he very distinctly remembers that the freeze
of 1864 killed young fruit trees to the snow line, and that he cut his
peach trees to that line, and saved that much. In 1864 the temperature
was about the same as it was on January 5, 1884--in the neighborhood of
21 degrees below zero. Mr. Lamer thought no damage was done to
strawberry plants.

A pomologist gives the following excellent advice in regard to
maintaining the fertility of fruit lands: "Encourage the utmost variety
of vegetable