* It must always be berne in mind, that a low roof, so that the trees are not too far from the glass, is most essential. My trees, seven years old, nearly touch it, - the nearer the glass the finer the fruit.

I have, I find, omitted to state the number of trees that may be grown' in a given space. The trees should be placed in the borders, back and front, three feet apart, stem from stem. A house of the dimensions given in p. 15 will thus hold from twenty-five to thirty trees. Thirty trees will give sixty dozen and upwards of fruity when in full bearing. A small bush of the Pit-maston orange-nectarine, four years old, produced, one season, four dozen of fruit, and brought them all to perfection; still this is too many, as some of the fruit were small. I mention this merely to show what can and may be done in this very interesting mode of cultivation, which, to sum up, is as follows: annual top-dressing, annual summer pruning by pinching, autumnal or spring pruning, and root-pruning.

There are, I well know, some amateur as well as professional gardeners who object to the pot culture of apricots; to such I can with confidence recommend planting of apricot trees in the borders, and lifting and replanting them biennially, about the end of October, with a few shovelfuls of the potting compost: they soon form compact and most fruitful bushes: I have some trees under this treatment remarkable for their healthy and sturdy growth.

The season of that very fine sort, the Peach-Apricot, may be prolonged to a great extent; it generally ripens in the orchard house about the first week in August, but by the following simple method it may be had in perfection till the middle of October. The end of June some trees full of fruit should be selected, and those that are to be very late should be placed under a north wall till the first week in September, and then removed to the orchard house to ripen their fruit. Those that are to ripen in September should be placed in a sunny, exposed place, till the end of August, and then be removed to the orchard house. The fruit from those trees that are much retarded will not always prove good, unless the weather be fine and warm; but that from trees set out of doors in a sunny place and then ripened in the house will be most excellent.

Half-standard apricots may be made charming ornamental trees for the summer decoration of the flower garden; for this purpose trees with nice straight stems about three feet in height should be selected, and planted in pots or tubs. They should be grown in the orchard house, and about the middle of July be removed to the lawn or any part of the garden where such trees would be desirable. They can be pruned into round heads and employed for summer ornaments, just as orange trees are in many gardens: they will be found equally ornamental and more useful, because their fruit is valuable.

The most desirable sorts of apricots for pot culture are: the Red Masculine, which ripens in June; the Large Early in July; St. Ambroise, which follows very closely; the Kaisha; the Blenheim; the Royal; and the Peach-Apricot, like the Moor Park, but larger and a better bearer. These are placed as nearly as possible in the order of their ripening, and give a good succession.

They will come in nearly at the same season as those on walls; for it must be understood that fruits in thoroughly ventilated orchard houses are not much forwarded unless the season happens to be very sunny. It is not an early but a certain crop that must be expected. I have not named any later kind than the Peach-Apricot because it is so easily retarded, and is always of the highest excellence; it is also the most abundant bearer of all.

Fig.9. An Elruge Nectarine Tree, three years old, from a Daguerreotype.

Apricots #1

W. C. Flagg after experimenting ten years with apricots, finds the Early Golden and Breda hardiest and healthiest. The latter is rather smaller, and some days later than the other, and, to our taste, not quite so good. Much larger and finer flavored is the Moorpark, but it tends to blotch, apparently with some kinds of fungus, and in wet weather to crack open and conduct itself like some of our white peaches.

In the Prairie Farmer,, Mr. Flagg gives a list of apricots ripening in succession:

This list covers two months, during one of which the peach is hardly a competitor, and suggests the possibility of covering the period from the latter end of June until the end of July with this delicious stone fruit. With special culture, it seems to us that it can be made profitable.

Du Breuil recommends the growing of them as seedlings, because he finds the seedlings more vigorous and longer lived, and states that the Red Masculine, Montagamet, and the Peach re-produce themselves from seed.

Apricot #1

Among the examples of orchard-house growth that have been sent us, one of the prettiest was a little specimen in an 8-inch pot of a grafted seedling from the Pitmaston Orange Nectarine, raised four years ago. In color, size, and flavor, it is superior to its parent, from which it also differs in the leaves being more shining, and their glands reni-form not globose. The tree is said to be more hardy; and is remarkable for fertility, very small plants from nine inches to a foot high having each borne from four to six capital nectarines. We understand that it has been sold by Mr. Rivers under the name of Rivers' Orange. - Gardener's Chronicle.

The influence of stock upon the scion is an interesting topic. I know of an instance where three grafts of the Dix pear - notorious, you know, for coming late into bearing - were inserted, on the same day, some ten years ago, into three different stocks. On two of them the grafts have been increasing in growth slowly, year by year, without producing fruit or fruit bud. On the other the graft commenced bearing the first year after insertion, and has annually increased in productiveness; (until this year, when, as it happens, there is not a pear on it). My impression is that they were all double-worked. I am certain that the last-mentioned - the productive one - was; and perhaps you would like to know the name of the pear whose stock imparted such early fruitful-ness to the tardy Dix. So should I.

By the way, the owner - a veteran pomologist - considers the Dix as the prince of all pears.

My own experience is quite similar. Two scions, taken from a small tree of the Pinneo pear, purchased of Messrs. Hovey & Co., in 1854, were set in the top limbs of my old English Jargohelle, and both fruited in 1855, and also in 1857; (no fruit this year, although the bloom was good;) while the tree itself, planted in my garden, in 1854, has not yet even blossomed, although it has made a healthy and handsome growth. D. S. Dewey.

Editor of Horticulturist:- I send you some grapes to show you, and inform, through you, our friends Tompkins of New York and Campbell of Ohio, that I have an aim above Fox grapes. Not one variety of these I send you has been grown for show; but have had somewhat a natural course; this being one of my plans to see what may be expected of them when under high and systematic training.

If your correspondents above alluded to, think I know nothing of trenching, etc, they ought to see my border of three hundred feet long, ten feet wide, two and a-half to three feet deep, properly prepared; with eighty varieties on it, some but two years old next spring, which have new canes twenty feet long.

And I can also show a Union Village with three shoots twenty, twenty-five, and thirty feet long, and one and a-third in diameter at the ground, all grown this season, in soil wherein neither spade, plough, pick, nor any other implement of agriculture ever entered within thirty feet of where it stands, except the little hole made when the vine was planted a few years ago, and grafted with Union Village in the spring of 1857. Can your correspondents account for this? I can, and may tell them many more things if they will condescend to write to me on the subject. Your opinion of the grapes will be a pleasure to me. S. M.

Calmdale, Pa.

[The grapes received are Louisa, earlier and better than Isabella, Delaware Burgundy, a fine wine grape; Concord, the best we have ever seen and very good; Cassady, excellent; Gar-rogues, not as good as desirable; White, Sweet Water, not ripe; Clara, excellent; Diana, quite up to its reputation; Catawba, ditto; and Sage, good for nothing, and only sent for a curiosity and to create a smell, we suppose; Union Village, most agreeable and "good;" To Kalon, good; Herbemont's Madeira, very highly flavored; Pitinaston, or White Cluster, not ripe; Canadian Chief, native or not, most excellent; Secord's Sweet Water, not so good as the last; Ontario, very large, but inferior to Union Village; Christie's Improved Isabella: improved in size enormously, but we cannot say better than Isabella, from this sample. - ED].