As you invite " practical communications from your practical readers," I offer for your consideration and disposal, the following article, believing the account of my successful method of cultivating gooseberries, will be instructive to your numerous readers.

About thirteen years ago, I obtained a small stock of gooseberry cuttings of the white variety, and have continued to grow the same, and in fact have some of the original stocks now in good condition among my bearing bushes, which number over two hundred, yielding between thirty and forty bushels annually, of fine and perfect fruit, which I readily sell at from two to three dollars per bushel.

I always begin my gardening operations as early as the ground can be worked. I therefore soon discovered that those that stood in the part of the garden which was first dug up, and the manure worked in well about them, were free from blight or mildew, and the crop fine in size and flavor; bushes vigorous; foliage heavy, and very dark green.

The strongest proof I had of the advantage of good treatment, I will state: an isolated bush in the door-yard, was left to take care of itself. The result was a very fine crop of well mildewed fruit. The other case was, where some half dozen bushes stood in front of the bee-house, and as it was difficult to trim them, and manure and work the ground around them, the fruit was worthless - being covered with a heavy coat of black rust, or mildew. These I dug up; separated; trimmed off the tops to a mere stump; planted them out, and treated them in the same kind way that I did the others. The result is-, that they are now the finest bushes; bear as many berries as any in the garden, and never show the least sign of mildew.