Mr. M. has the old English yew thriving in open air in winter. The European mountain ash, white and red linden, red maple, weeping ash, weeping beech, weeping elm, Madeira nut, (one five years old bearing fruit,) Spanish chestnut now in fruit, (this tree has also some blossoms on it at this time.) Apricots grafted on plum stock are very thrifty.
A Remarkable Horse.—In passing through Mr. Maxwell's barn-yard, I noticed a couple of horses, one of which was hoppled with a strong iron chain. What mischievous young horse have you there? He replied, it is my old family mare Kate, who has carried me, and my wife and children, safely for the last one and twenty years! I bought her when she was about four years old, but she will break fences now (wooden ones) with her irons on, she is so active and cunning.
Locust Eggs.—I remarked at Nyack the work of the locust, and Mr. M. and Thomas Addis Emmet, Esq., examined with a good microscope, a twig worked by the little insect. The twig being split in the line of the work, exhibited the whole process of the egg deposite. The twig is pierced nearly to its centre at every three quarters of an inch, or nearly so; the wood is rendered fibrous, it is then lifted up, and the eggs, which are of a long, oval form, are deposited side by side at an angle of about 45 degrees to the grain of the twig, and the fibrous tuft of wood placed over them, with its end sticking out; these incisions being repeated every inch on a line for some few inches in each twig. With the microscope, we saw the eyes of the young locusts always heads to the centre. The general outline of the young animal was perceptible through its delicate membranous cover. They moved slightly on being disturbed. Almost every twig so operated on by the locust was entirely dead. The magnifying power of the microscope was perhaps 40 or 50.
Value of an Orchard.—I visited an apple orchard at Nyack, which arrested my attention by its regular and healthy appearance. I found young Van Houton at home, who, with perfect good feeling and true politeness, gave me the account of the orchard which I desired. When his father was about fifty years of age, he undertook to plant 150 winter pippin-trees on that spot. His neighbors thought him an old fool to plant twigs of apple at his time of day. Young Van Houton, then about 16 years of age, held the little nurslings in the holes while his father filled in the soil. The old gentleman continued to prune them, so that they are widely branched and open for air and sun within the mass of branches. For twenty or twenty-two years past, the old gentleman has often received $1,000 a year for his apples. Sometimes $6 per barrel; sometimes sold in the orchard for $1 per barrel. That old gentleman and his wife are now, between them, 174 years old. Let no man be afraid to plant winter pippins because he is fifty or sixty years of age.
I have been highly pleased with my excursion. When gentlemen of high rank in learned professions are found turning that intellectual force which has influenced the most wealthy and intelligent portion of mankind, from law, politics, &c., to that greatest, best of all arts—agriculture, I look for good results and I find them. The old world is hard at work in this direction, and I hope that we shall watch her operations with the eye of our own bird, and see to it, that we be not excelled in any good thing.
For the American Agriculturist.
MEDITERRANEAN WHEAT.
Wheatland, Va., November 2, 1843.
I have noticed your remarks in the October No. of your paper, on the Mediterranean wheat. Your views coincided with mine when I first sowed this variety of wheat; but I have sown it now for two seasons, and the change has been so great in the color, as to convince me that by cultivating it here, it will lose its dark color, and become as good in that respect, and yield as much flour as any wheat we have. The two seasons I have raised it, it has been the best wheat I had. I have doubts whether it will tiller as much as some other varieties, and therefore sow it much thicker.