The attentive reader of our numerous agricultural journals can not have failed to notice that about the close of every fruit season a multitude of powerful stories find their way into the aforesaid journals, touching incredible crops which certain parties have gathered from one, two, or three acres. But the agricultural papers have no monopoly of these interesting details. The writers for the political dailies and weeklies are also found to temper their vitriolic partisanship with an infusion of horticultural information. I notice that these gentlemen almost invariably close their inflammatory accounts of a tremendous crop with exhortations to the reader to go and do likewise. A taking paragraph once set afloat by the press, travels on the wings of the wind, and is quickly spread before a million of readers. Like all other attractive stories, its marvels multiply by repetition, sometimes by accident, sometimes by design. A careless proof - reader drops a figure here, or a knavish one will add another there, either of them doubling the original result. Thus exaggerated, it acquires a new popularity for all lovers of the sensational, and yet it will generally wind up a long career of travel without question or contradiction.

The uninitiated believe implicitly, and become impatient to imitate; but the experienced reader will only deprecate the original error, and lament the consequences.

By this extensive publication of those extraordinary successes which certainly do occasionally occur with fruit-growers, the bright side only of the question is presented for public consideration. No one makes proclamation either of his own failures or of those of his neighbors.. On the contrary, most of us are impatient to become bearers of good news. It is an infinitely more grateful office than the bearing of evil tidings. Hence the competition to report in print the earliest information of any exceptionally large crop, and the newspaper silence touching the equally exceptional small ones. The successes work encouragement to the downhearted, but the failures depress them still further. Either way, our sympathies are contagious.

I do not mean to reproduce the ample catalogue of overgrown stories of the present season, though many such have fallen under my notice. But two or three are worth reciting as illustrations. A leading monthly informs us that Mr. G. H. Baker, of Illinois, produced 253 bushels of the Albany Seedling Strawberry from one acre, "by simply running a narrow one-horse plow in furrows three feet apart, cutting off the weeds with a scythe, and giving him a clear profit of $1,509 for the one acre." Then an Eastern paper assures us that "Mr. Augustus Parker, of Grove Hall Avenue, Boston, picked 4,800 boxes of the same strawberry from an acre and a half of ground within ten days, and esti-mated that the unusual heat of three days dried up a thousand boxes on the vines. He sold the 4,800 boxes on his premises, for thirty-five cents a quart - or $1,680 for the acre and a half. There may have been more animating instances of success placed oil record! the present season,, but none ' suck have come under my notice.

Nor do I,mean to doubt the truthfulness of the foregoing. . But these results are. far in advance of any in New Jersey, so far as my knowledge extends, as the greatest profit realized from an acre of strawberries, so far as I know, did not exceed $512, though I have known great fields of them to clear $312 per acre. The past season has been one of unaccountable disaster to some of us. On one farm, very profitable crops of strawberries have been secured, while on that adjoining, the failure has been almost total. Such alternations, however, are inseparable from fruit culture; and as with grass and grain, it is the average income of a turn of years which should determine the measure of annual profit.

But I took up my pen to put on record a crop almost as remarkable as either of the foregoing. In the suburbs of this city there is a well-grown peach orchard, containing 2,600 hills of the Dorchester Blackberry. These are set about fourteen feet apart, and in the same row with the trees, the rows being also fourteen feet asunder. They were planted in the spring of 1864. If they had been set in a field by themselves, as blackberries are usually planted, they would occupy exactly two and a half acres. When set out, two plants were put in each hill. From these 2,600 hills, the owner, Mr. John Mitchell, this season gathered and sold fruit to the amount of $2,365 90. It was all disposed of by one agent in New York, from whom net returns were received amounting to $2,057 64. The number of quarts was 5,121; average price 46 cents; cost of picking at 2i cents, $128 02, leaving $1,959 62 clear. I have heard of even larger gains having been made per acre from the cultivated blackberry, but they were not sufficiently well authenticated to be relied on. The figures just stated I know to be correct. They can be verified to the satisfaction of all who doubt them.

The previous history of this field is as follows:

From this total must be deducted the cost of picking the crops of 1866 and 1867. It would be given now, but there are no means of ascertaining it. It probably did not exceed $159 62, leaving $3,700 as the clear net product of four crops, or $740 per annum for the five years during which the ground was in use. But during the first two years the portion between the rows was cropped with pickles and tomatoes, and the peach-trees were coming into bearing. In addition to these gains, great quantities of suckers have been dug and sold. So many were taken up last fall and this spring, that Mr. Mitchell is of opinion he would have had one fourth more berries had he done no digging.

Now then for details and explanations, such as are essential to a full understanding of the merits of the case. The land on which these crops were grown was cleared of pine timber the winter before planting the blackberries. It was not cleared up very carefully, and the plowing was done through the stumps. A shovelful of barnyard manure was put in each hill when the plants were set. There has been no manure applied since, except to the tomato and pickle crops between the rows. The blackberries have thus had no other fertilizer than the decaying stumps and rubbish of the new land. The soil is an exceedingly light sandy loam, and as it has no farm buildings, would not sell for more than $125 per acre. It is unfit for a grain crop, but is pronounced by Eastern men, who do not understand its peculiarities, as of no value whatever. But, though in appearance so unpromising to them, it is the very description of soil which we prize most highly. It will produce all the berries in perfection. No soil can exceed it for melons, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and asparagus, all staple crops with us.

What it does for blackberries is seen by the dollar marks above.

Taken altogether, this two-and-a-half-acre field may be regarded as a very profitable investment. But the extraordinary blackberry crop of this year must be regarded as an exceptional one, not to be depended on as certain to be realized annually. In stating the profit, I desire to explain why it has been so much larger this year than at any time before, as well as why it can not be expected often in the future. The naked'statement would be likely to hold out unfair inducements for others to rush into the same business, while a full recital of the causes of success will materially modify such impetuosity. Moreover, the yield per acre was so far in advance of what the most successful growers of blackberries have been able to realize in this neighborhood, that I was myself anxious to understand why it had been secured this season for the first time. The reader knows that the past winter was one of unexampled severity, and that under the long continued cold the fruit buds of all kinds perished. No such winter has been experienced here since the settlement of New Jersey. All our large fields of Lawton Blackberries were killed to the ground, except such as happened to be growing either in peach or apple orchards. The like destruction from cold had never been known.

We had no other blackberry in extensive cultivation, as the Wilson Early has not yet been so multiplied as to affect the market for fruit, much less to fill the gap occasioned by the extirpation of an old standard like the Lawton. The Kittatinny is not largely grown here, though it came out of the winter uninjured. Of the Dorchester there are even fewer plants, and no extensive field of them, the largest being that of Mr. Mitchell. Hence the supply of blackberries was cut off, and the few whose plants were growing under some kind of protection were the only parties who had fruit for market. Two of my neighbors, whose Lawtons were protected by trees, had good and paying crops, and such plants as were sheltered by garden fences bore as abundantly as ever. The market being thus almost bare of fruit, those who were fortunate enough to have full bushes secured a golden harvest. Prices averaged higher, for the season, than we have ever known. Mr. Mitchell was one of these fortunate men. His Dorchesters were effectually protected by the overhanging-trees, and he marketed the best crop he ever gathered.

Whether his plants would have escaped without protection I am not prepared to say; but my impression is they would have been uninjured by the cold, as others, having the same plant growing without protection, gathered good crops. Burlington, N. J.