Society Number Two

A horticultural society, thirty-three years established, incorporated by charter. Has a valuable library, and had once a funded property of some twenty thousand dollars, latterly reduced to $13,000, which is now, I believe, unavailable. Has a president, four vice presidents, two secretaries, a treasurer, three professors, and a long list of committees. Formerly held monthly stated meetings, and displays of plants, fruits, and esculents, as well as a grand annual exhibition lasting for three days. Now the number of displays is reduced to eight, and the annual one discontinued. Annual member's fee, $3. Life membership, $25. Located in the second largest city of the Northern States. Annually becoming less efficient and poorer.

Soil And Situation

Although Asparagus will thrive in any fertile soil with a free exposure and dry under base, it prospers best in a sandy loam well enriched with decayed vegetable matter and sea-wrack. In this it always returns the moat profit with greater certainty, and is of much better quality.

Soil For Established Stock

To insure good healthy plants, never use any of the nauseous ingredients recommended by many of the European florists. A mixture which will not fail to make good healthy plants and fine bloom, may be made as follows: four parts of good fresh loam, such as the sod, with about six inches of the soil, from an old cow pasture - if of a sandy nature, so much the better; two parts of good rotten cow and horse manure, not less than three years old;and two of decayed leaf mold; well incorporated before using.

Soil For Fruits

The Gardeners'Monthly gives briefly the following rules for selecting the best soils for the different fruits: "A light, dryish soil for the peach; a strong loamy soil for the pear; nearly the same for the plum; a heavy loam for the apple - if on limestone, all the better; and for the cherry a soil similar to that of the peach."

Soil For Lilies

In the ordinary prepared soils of eight inches deep, for the Japan lilies, the growth of flower stems varies from eighteen inches to two feet in height; but where the ground is prepared some eighteen inches deep, of rich soil and drained, the flower stems rise to four and five feet, and with proportionate increase of flowers. Lilium auratum has been grown with stems nine feet high, and having nineteen perfect flowers upon it, some of which have measured one foot in diameter.

Fruit that, by any oversight or neglect, gets frozen, if kept perfectly dark until the frost is extracted, will be but little injured.

Apples or pears should be carefully looked over at this season of the year. Take away all specked or rotten ones, and wipe the others with a flannel cloth. If possible, dry the inside of the barrel or box before again filling it with fruit.

Soil For Pears

E. Manning, of Harrisburg, Ohio, writes to the Gardeners' Monthly on this subject: Beurre Clairgeau was unthrifty on a rich soil; on high, thin soil it was thrifty and excellent. Anjou succeeded well on rich soil, and failed on thin soil. Doyenne du Cornice did best on thin soil; Golden Beurre of Bilbos just the reverse. These results were all on his own ground; in other regions they might have been different.