is made from the kernel. In Spain, they strew the gratings of old and hard nuts, first peeled, into their tarts and other meats. The leaves strewed on the ground, and left there, annoy moles, or macerated in warm water, afford a liquor which will destroy them. The unripe fruit is used in medicine for the purpose of destroying worms in the human body. Pliny says, "the more Walnuts one eats, with the more ease will he drive worms out of the stomach." The timber is considered lighter, in proportion to its strength and elasticity, than any other, and therefore commonly used in England for gun stocks. It is used in cabinet work in most parts of Europe; the young timber is allowed to make the finest coloured work, but the old to be finest variegated for ornament. When propagated for timber, the nut is sown ; but when fruit is the object, inarching from the branches of fruit-brearing trees is preferable. Budding is also practised by some; the buds succeed best when taken from the base of the annual shoots; ordinary sized buds from the upper part of such shoots generally fail. Walnut trees that have not been grafted or budded, may be induced to produce blossoms by ringing the bark, that is, cutting out a streak of the bark around the body or main branches of the tree. Walnut trees seldom yield much fruit until fifteen or twenty years old; it is produced on the extremities of the preceding year's shoots. The trees should stand forty or fifty feet apart, and they may be permitted to branch out in their natural order. They need but little pruning, merely to regulate any casual disorderly growth, to reduce over-extended branches, and to prune up the low stragglers. Lest any of our native Walnuts should be neglected or abandoned by any, I annex a description of the different kinds : Juglans catharticus, is known under the name of Butternut, Oilnut, and white Walnut; these nuts are used by the Indians as a medicine. Juglans nigra, the black, Walnut, is a tree of large size; its fruit is known to be excellent. Juglans olivaformis, Pecan, or Illinois nut, is delicious. The nuts of Juglans sulcata, which is called thick shell bark, Hickory, and Springfield, and Gloucester nut, are large and well-tasted. The shell bark Hickory, shag bark, or scaly bark Hickory, Juglans alba, is so called on account of its bark, which is torn lengthwise in long loose strips, as in J. sulcata. The Juglans tormentosa, the Mucker nut, white heart Hickory, or common Hickory, and most of the other kinds enumerated, are worth preserving; or cultivating where there is none, for its timber for mechanical purposes; and that of the Juglans glabra, or Hog nut, is useful for brooms, &c. ་ ་ ་ CALENDAR AND INDEX. JANUARY. THE clear icicle shines in the sun's faint beam, As the weather at this season of the year is generally unfavourable to any employment in the Orchard or Fruit Garden, I cannot occupy a few pages more appropriately than in directing the reader's attention to subjects connected with improvements in the several species and varieties of Fruits; for it must be admitted that there is no kind of fruit, however delicious, that may not be deteriorated, or however worthless, that may not be ameliorated, by particular modes of management; so that after a given variety shall have been created, its merits may be either elicited or destroyed by the cultivator. In this place those practices only need be considered that tend to improvement. It is an indubitable fact, that all our fruits, without exception, have been so much ameliorated by various circumstances, that they no longer bear any resemblance in respect of quality to their original. Who, for instance, would recognize the wild parent of the Green Gage Plum in the austere Sloe, or that of the delicious Pippin Apples in the worthless acid Crab? Or, what resemblance can be traced between our famous Beurre Pears, whose flesh is so succulent, rich and melting, and that hard, stony, astringent fruit, which even birds and animals refuse to eat? Yet these are undoubted cases of improvement, resulting from time and skill patiently and constantly in action. But it would be of little service to mankind that the quality of any fruit should be improved, unless we adopt some efficient and certain mode of multiplying the individuals when obtained. Hence there are two great objects which the cultivator should aim at, viz Amelioration and Propagation. In planting seed for the purpose of procuring improved varieties, care should be taken not only that the seed be selected from the finest existing kinds, but also that the most handsome, the largest, and the most perfectly ripened specimens should be those that supply the seed. A seedling plant will always partake more or less of the character of its parent, the qualities of which are concentrated in the embryo, when it has arrived at full maturity. As this subject has been already discussed in the second part of this work, page 133, I shall direct the reader's attention to the operation of Cross Fertilization. This is effected by the action of the pollen of one plant upon the stigma of another. The nature of this action is highly curious. Pollen consists of extremely minute hollow balls or bodies; their cavity is filled with fluid, in which swim particles of a figure varying from spherical to oblong, and having an apparently spontaneous motion. The stigma is composed of very lax tissue, the intercellular passages of which have a greater diameter than the moving particles of the pollen. When a grain of pollen comes in contact with the stigma, it bursts, and discharges its contents among the lax tissue upon which it has fallen. The moving particles descend through the tissue of the style, until one, or sometimes more, of them finds its way, by routes especially destined by nature for this service, into a little opening in the integuments of the ovulum or young seed. Once deposited there, the particle swells, increases gradually in size, separates into radicle and cotyledons, and finally becomes the embryo,—the part which is to give birth, when the seed is sown, to a new individual. Such being the mode in which the pollen influences the stigma, and subsequently the seed, a practical consequence of great importance necessarily follows, viz., that in all cases of cross fertilization, the new variety will tako chiefly after sits polliniferous or male parent; and that at the same time it will acquire some of the constitutional peculiarities of its mother. Thus the male parent of the Downton Strawberry was the Old Black, the female a kind of Scarlet. In Coe's Golden Drop Plum, the father was the Yellow Magnum Bonum, the mother the Green Gage; and in the Elton Cherry, the White Heart was the male parent, and the Graffion the female. The limits within which experiments of this kind must be confined are, however, narrow. It seems that cross fertilization will not take place at all, or very rarely, between different species, unless these species are nearly related to each other: and that the offspring of the two distinct species is itself sterile, or if it possesses the power of multiplying itself. by seed, its progeny returns back to the state of one or other of its parents. Hence it seldom or never has happened that domesticated fruits have had such an origin. We have no varieties raised between the Apple and the Pear, or the Plum and Cherry, or the Gooseberry and the Currant. On the other hand, new varieties obtained by the intermixture of two pre-existing varieties are not less prolific, but, on the contrary, often more so than either of their parents: witness the numerous sorts of Flemish Pears which have been raised by cross fertilization from bad bearers, within the last thirty years, and which are the most prolific trees: with which gardeners are acquainted; witness also Mr. Knight's Cherries, raised between the May Duke and the Graffion, and the Coe's Plum already mentioned. It is therefore to the intermixture of the most valuable existing varieties of fruit that gardeners should trust for the amelioration of their stock. By this operation the Pears that are in eating in the spring have been rendered as delicious and as fertile as those of the autumn; and there is no apparent reason why those very early, but worthless sorts, such as the Muscat Robert, which usher in the season of Pears, should not be brought to a similar state of perfection. |