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timore; but the author adds, "I have now a few hundred plants obtained [by hybridizing] which exhibit in their growth great diversity of character, but have not yet bloomed."

Within the last year, C. M. Hovey of Boston, told me they had 18 double kinds of this rose; and W. R. Prince, before his departure for California, had spoken to me of 27 double sorts in his nursery. Doubtless we shall soon have many others.

As the native land of this rose is also the land of the mounds, it must have grown in ancient times amongst a dense and civilized population. Had they not a taste for flowers? and did it not enter their gardens? Did it spread into double varieties (generally the result of high culture)? It was then as capable of doing so, as it is at this day Was the period in which that people passed away, so remote from the present, that all their varieties have had full time to perish, and their seedlings to to their wild and single state? D. T. Greatfield, 7 mo. 25.

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Belle Magnifique Cherry.

We are delighted with this fine large variety. A seedling had sprung up in the garden, into which 1 inserted a bud, and the tree is now six feet high, hung with cherries from the highest point where the branches are old enough, down to within one foot of the ground. It is truly an ornamental plant.

While our light-colored cherries were decaying in abundance on the trees, the Belle Magnifique was too small and green to be affected by the wet weather; and now (7 mo. 20,) when nearly all our other (60) kinds are gone, this comes in as a prelude to the feast of apricots. Though belonging to the class of Duke cherries, it loses most of its acidity in ripening, and ranges very high on our list of

favorites. D. T.

The Cherry Bird.

"For the past three years, I have lost nearly all my cherry crop by the cherry or cedar bird-the present year I should have had at least fifteen bushels of the finest sorts, but have scarcely obtained six quarts, on account of their ravages." B. Ontario Co., N. Y.

Our correspondent is not alone in his disappointment from the depredations of the cedar bird. A near neighbor lost forty bushels by estimate in the same way. Two years since, the writer lost a large and valuable crop of very early pears, in three hours time, by the cedar birds which descended in clouds upon them.

All the rest of the feathered race do not occasion a fiftieth part of the damage to this crop, caused by the cedar bird alone. We know of but one remedy that has proved effectual, out of some eight or ten that have been proposed. Cultivators will take their choice whether to adopt it or lose their cherries. This is to shoot a few of them. It is remarkable how soon the remainder become alarmed, and disap. pear entirely. An old fruit cultivator says that he is never troubled with them after the first week, where this remedy is applied. The present year they commenced in such numbers and with so much boldness, that the man who was gathering the crop, found it impossible to drive them away, even when he had ascended the tree with a ladder. A few hours time spent for two or three successive days, served completely to disperse them, and for weeks afterwards not one was to be seen. In applying this remedy, humanity will dictate that the charge

and the aim be so sure as not to wound without killing. This is the only species of the feathered race against which we should have any controversy-the crow, the owl, the hawk, and the blackbird, as well as all other birds, we regard as friends, the mischief they commit being so small, or the benefit they occasion so great, that we should feel bound to protect them.

Native Flowers.

Lilium canadense, (common meadow lily,) is remarkable for two very distinct varieties, besides some of inferior note. The first kind I have only observed on, or below, the Allegany range of mountains; and this is the variety from which some botanists have drawn their character of the species. The flowers are bronze-yellow, segments more at. tenuate, and but slightly revolute. Dr. Torrey calls it the "Wild yellow Lily."

The second kind is indigenous in Western NewYork, and might properly be termed the Red Meadow Lily. This is probably v. rubrum of the Ency. clopedia of Plants, and perhaps v. coccineum of Pursh. The flowers more resemble those of Lilium

superbum, in color, in the purplish dots on the inside, in the segments which are very revolute, and in number. I once saw twenty-eight growing in a pyramid on one stalk, though a third or a fourth of this number, without culture, is rather unusual. Yet in its leaves and their verticillate arrangement, it fully agrees with the former variety.

The characters of those two species, solely considered in reference to each other, may be given as

follows:

Lilium canadense: Leaves. lanceolate; nerves and edges of the leaves, hirsute.

Lilium superbum: Leaves, linear lanceolate, scattered above; nerves and edges of the leaves smooth.

Some years ago I introduced the Bronze Meadow Lily into my garden; but the soil seemed ungenial, as it grew less thriftily than the Red variety; and after a fair trial, I set it in the same border of se lected earth which agrees so well with the Laurel (Kalmia latifolia.) Now, instead of two or three flowers on a stem, it has eight, beautifully arranged on a strong stalk, not less than five feet high. D. T. Greatfield, 7 mo. 15, 1850.

To winter Bourbon Roses.

The Editor of the Prairie Farmer announces that he has succeeded after several years of trial, in wintering with perfect security the Bourbon and other equally tender roses, so that not an inch of twig or even of leaf was blackened or injured. It will be recollected that they have very sharp weather at Chicago, where these experiments were tried.

The process is this:"First, to keep their feet dry; this is essential, for in wet soil, they are sure to be spoiled. The next thing is a proper covering for the tops. The best thing we have ever yet tried is tan bark. Indeed, this leaves nothing to desire. It is one of the best non-conductors extant, and unless soaked in water, will keep sufficiently dry for all needed purposes.

"Let the twigs be bent down in the fall before the ground is much frozen, and fastened, and then covered to the depth of six inches; place on the whole a piece of board laid so as to turn off the water, and the plant is safe till spring. Care should then bo exercised in removing the covering, a part being

The Bourbon roses include the Souvenir Malmaison, Princess

Clementine, Gloire de Rosamene, &c.

taken at a time, and a part being left till the weather is tolerably well settled."

"Tea and China roses may also be kept in tan; though a portion of them will fail."

Cutting off the Leaves.

Last summer I mentioned the case of a rose shoot which had withered in the hot sunshine, and which was preserved by removing all the leaves. A few weeks ago, a case somewhat similar also occurred. The gardener's spade had disturbed a layer of the painted damask, and it was much withered before I observed it; but immediately I cut away all the leaves, and part of the stems, at the same time screening it from the sun. It is now recovering its foliage. The questions may arise, however, would it not have recovered without this excision, and would not the leaves, as soon as they were dead, have ceased to pump out the moisture, and thus by a provision of nature, recover without any care of ours? I think not. The leaves would act as long as any moisture was left; and when none was left, the branch or shoot would perish with them. D. T. Greatfield, 6 mo., 20.

Virgilia lutea-Yellow Flowering Virgilia.

So it is called in the Encyclopedia of Plants, and the flowers are marked as yellow, agreeing with Nuttall in this particular. The only tree of this sort that I have ever seen stands in my garden, with white flowers. It has stood there about twenty years-8 inches in diameter, and 18 or 20 feet high, with a fine spreading top. It has never been in full bloom till the present time. The racemes are compound or shouldered like a bunch of grapes, about a foot in length, pendulous; and having a darker foliage than the locust, it is greatly admired. There is a constant buzz from the bees that frequent it.

Although it comes from the south,-Nuttall says hitherto only found in the mountains of Tennessee,— it is perfectly hardy at this place. D. T. 6 mo. 21.

Corrections of last Number.

In the last number of the Cultivator, on page 268, the printer has erroneously converted Rambour into Rambo, these being names of quite distinct varieties. On page 270, Bowyer's Early Heart is changed to Boyer's, the former being the correct name. The figure of the wire-loop label, on page 269, should have been drawn so that the notches designating the numbers should be near the twist in the wire, and reading from it, to prevent mistake by reading the wrong way. In the figure immediately above, the notch designating O, should be deeper or more distinct, so as to be about four times as large as the others.

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Domestic Economy, Recipes, &c.

To Cook the Egg-Plant.

This is a delicious and highly nutritious vegetable, mode of cooking it was understood. which would be more extensively used, if the proper mode has given satisfaction so far as we have known it The following of an inch thick. Put the slices on a plate, one over tried. Cut the purple egg-plant into slices a third the other, with a sprinkling of fine salt between each layer, and lay a weight of three or four pounds five hours or over night. on the top; leave them in this situation for four or liquid with the juice of the egg-plant, which will The salt will form a take out the bitter quality. drained off. Fry them brown in lard or butter. The liquid should be

given by Miss Beecher: Take the purple kind, stew The following mode of stewing the egg-plant is till soft, take off the skin, mash it with butter and sweet herbs, grate bread over the top, and bake it till brown.

Preserving Tomatoes for Table use.

Tomatoes may be so prepared as to be kept a long time, and when cooked are almost as good as the fresh fruit. The following is a receipt sent us a few years since by a subscriber in South Carolina. seasoning,) boil them one hour; then put them in Prepare the tomatoes as for cooking, (without small stone jars; cork and boil the jars for two hours, then take them out and seal them air-tight. When opened, season, &c., and cook for half an hour.

Tomato Figs.

The small pear-shaped tomatoes, may be preserved as follows. They are very fine and their resemA chemist at our elbow, who has analysed both figs blance to figs is not wholly in name and appearance. and tomatoes, tells us that the composition of the fruits is quite similar.

Scald and peal the tomatoes, and then boil them in one-third their weight of sugar, till they are sun, occasionally turning them and sprinkling with penetrated by it. Then flatten and dry them in the sugar. When dry pack them in layers, with sugar sprinkled between.

Tomato Ketchup.

Pour boiling water on tomatoes, let them stand until you can rub off the skin; then cover them with salt, let them stand twenty-four hours. Then strain them, and to two quarts put three ounces of cloves, two ounces of pepper and two nutmegs. Boil half an hour, then add a pint of wine. Miss Beecher.

To make Cucumber Pickles.

cider, or two parts water and one of vinegar; then place them in the pickle-jar; heat good cider vinegar scalding hot, with an ounce of alum to a gallon of vinegar, with any kind of spices, and in such quan. tities as suits the taste; pour it over the cucumbers while boiling hot; cover them tight, set them in a cool place and if the vinegar is right they will keep till June, when the old vinegar should be discarded and new substituted. Pickles made in this way are always crisp; the alum hardens the skin of the cucumber, so that it never turns soft. Those made in this waya year ago are in excellent condition now.

Soak the cucumbers three or four days in old, sour

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INTERIOR VIEW OF "FLORAL HALL."-State Fair at Syracuse, 1849.

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Rural Architecture.

Downing's Country Houses.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF COUNTRY HOUSES: including Designs for Cottages, Farm Houses, and Villas; with remarks on Interiors, Furniture, and the best modes of warming and ventilating; with 320 illustrations. By A. J. DowNING. 8vo. pp. 484. Appleton & Co. THE distinction between a civilized and a brutal people, is not only indicated, but, in a great measure, caused by the influence of their homes. The domestic habits of all nations may be cited as proof. The rude log hut or the brush-covered hovel on the one hand, and the embellished cottage and farmhouse on the other, afford a living index, pointing to the character of the people within. We must not however suppose that the ultimatum has been reached by the present architecture of civilized nations. It most evidently has not. For example, the best portions of our own country afford, we are compelled to say, too many violations of the rules of taste, of adaptedness, and of economy, in the houses of the inhabitants. Take a single defect, out of fifty, in a farm-house. The housewife is compelled to walk three needless yards, fifty times a day, in passing from the kitchen to the living room. To save these three yards, by improved arrangement, would save thirty miles of walking in the year.

The book before us is exactly the one now wanted by the country at large. We think it decidedly the most widely useful work yet from the pen of its popular author. Every man who lives in a house should examine its contents. No person, possessing the least shade of taste, or love for convenience and economy, can fail at any time to pass an agreeable half hour in turning over its pages. But interest. ing as it is to the superficial reader, it will also bear thorough study. It is full of the most valuable sug. gestions, no matter into what part the reader may open, which will many times repay all the time spent in its examination.

from $2500 to $15000. The fourth comprises a great Ideal of valuable matter relative to the treatment of interiors, and with the description of furniture, all largely illustrated with engravings. There are, besides, many practical directions relative to economy in erection, materials, construction of chimneys, ventilation, paints and cements, eave gutters, &c., besides a chapter on the tasteful and convenient arrangement of stables.

Some may think a few of the designs approach the awkward or grotesque, simply because they have not been accustomed to see houses so constructed. One object of the author, it must not be forgotton, was to give a great variety in style, adapted to the varying localities of the country, and it is very easy to adopt the more simple and regular forms, by those who prefer them.

Others may object to the distinct line drawn between cottages, farm-houses and villas. But this distinction need not exist in fact; a cottage design may be adopted for a small farm-house, and a villa for that of a decidedly wealthy farmer. The man of moderate means may have a strong predilection for literary or scientific studies, and hence a small room as a library and cabinet may be more appropriate than for the larger house of his richer, but less cultivated neighbor. There is no difficulty in varying the designs given to suit circumstances.

We have noticed perhaps one or two defects. No provision is made in any of the villas, (with one exception,) by a nursery or large bed-room on the common floor, for the children, a most important portion of every complete family. There are also too many basement kitchens; a thing which should not occur, it strikes us, where land is less than one thousand dollars per acre-because it is easier to walk twenty yards on a level, than to ascend three yards in height. But these defects are not difficult of remedy, and are but as a speck on the column, when compared with the great value of the work. This work consists of four main portions. The Indeed, when viewing the innumerable errors in first (after the introductory remarks,) is occupied building, all over the country, we cannot but wish with twelve designs for cottages, with their various that a hundred thousand copies might be speedily minutiæ, with prices from $300 to $2,500. The circulated. We give it as our opinion, that insecond contains seven designs for farm houses, dependently of the increase in good taste, every costing from $1000 to $5000. The third furnishes person of ordinary sense who may be about to build, fourteen designs for villas or country residences, may save, as a general average, from fifty to a

hundred dollars on every thousand expended, by studying this book.

We had marked a number of passages for copying into our columns, but want of space will exclude all but a few. The following rules to be observed in designing farm-houses, contain much in little. The first four refer to the production of beauty :"That the form of the building should express a local fitness, and an intimate relation with the soil it stands upon by showing breadth, and extension upon the ground, rather than height.

That its proportions should aim at ampleness, solidity, comfort, and a simple domestic feeling, rather than elegance, grace, and polished symmetry. That its details should be simple and bold, and its ornaments, so far as they are used, should rather be rustic, strong, or picturesque, than delicate or highly finished.

That in raising the character of the farm-house, the first step above the really useful, is to add the porch, the veranda, and the bay-window, since they are not only significant of real, but of refined utility.

So far as the useful is concerned in the farm-house, its principles are better understood, but we shall do no harm in recapitulating the most important :

The farm-house should be built of strong and en. during materials, whether of timber or stone, so that it may need repairs very seldom.

The pitch of the roof should always be high, not only to keep the chamber-floor cooler, and to shed the snows in a northern climate, but to give suffi. cient garret room for storing and drying many of the smaller products of the farm.

The living-room of the family should be a large, and usually the largest and most comfortable apart. ment; it should be so placed as to be convenient to the other apartments used in the every-day occupations of the family, and its size should never be sacrificed to that of the parlor.

Every farm-house should contain a room for milk (even when the dairy is a separate building, as in most American farm-houses,) as well as a room or back building for wood or other fuel.

When the means of the farmer allow him to extend his accommodation, they should first be applied to multiplying and rendering as complete as possible, all apartments, on the first floor, calculated in any way to facilitate the domestic labors of the family or farm, before he increases the size or number of his parlors.

substantial, comfortable, and sensible house. It looks essentially like a country house, and while it has rather more dignity than most farm-houses, there is neither ambition nor ostentation visible in its exterior. On the contrary, the rather low and broad chimney stacks and the truncated gables show that there is a desire to avoid any especial affecta. tion of elegance. It is in short a design which might be built in any part of the Union, and would be recognised as a country house of some importancewhile it has no feature out of keeping with the position and life of a farmer in independent circumstances.

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Principal Floor.

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LIVING-R 21

ACCOMMODATION. The exterior of this design is our own, but the arrangement of the first floor we borrow from one of Mr. Loudon's farm. houses. It is spacious and comfortable, without sacrificing too much to the parlor and living. room. The back door opens, it will be seen, into the scullery-which may be a wash-room or back kitchen. The passage which runs from the kitchen to the dairy should be lighted by a small sash of ground glass, placed in the partition of the scullery, exactly opposite the back door.

In many cases in this country, the dairy room being in a separate building, persons adopting this design would prefer to turn the room devoted to this use, on this floor, into a bed-room-making the pantry a milk-room, and diminishing the size of the scullery sufficient to take a pantry out of the space occupied by it.

In addition to the rules laid down in SECTION II. for the production of fitness and tasteful effect in Indeed, the ease with which this kind of paralcottages, we may also add, that though a farm-lelogram plan may be varied to suit different wants house should always be built of solid materials when will occur to every one of the least ingenuity-and economy will permit, yet there is a mental satisfac. we therefore offer the exterior, as the most needful tion in finding at all times, that it is constructed of portion, as a guide to the mode of building to be materials most abundant on the farm, or at least in adopted. the district where the house is placed.

Wherever good building materials abound, their use in building the house of the owner of the land, not only enables us to understand that the abundance and cheapness of those materials have made it easy to build a large house there, but it also affords us an index of the natural products of the earth, and has therefore a local meaning, much more valuable than any novelty that we may gain by bringing our bricks from Holland, like the original settlers of NewYork, or importing portions of a French chateau, like some of our modern architectural virtuosi."

We copy a single design, that of a bracketed farm-house of wood :

"The proportions of this farm-house are good, the form is a simple and pleasing one, and the impression

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it produces upon the judgment is that of a roomy, rooms.

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