The coming event, expected with anxiety, but fully expected, is steam ploughing. Who doubts it? The same people who doubted ocean steamships and the telegraph. The agricultural papers describe a machine for sheep-shearing; we have seen one for clipping hedges. - The Southern papers speak very highly of Mr. Axt's Catawba wine, made during the past season. Mr. A. is planting vineyards in various counties, at so much an acre. - A correspondent says he has great confidence in the benefit to be derived from cutting branches from plum-trees, when in full bloom, to make them productive; the process has no influence on the curculio. - Keeping bouquets is an important consideration. Let two dusters of fresh gathered flowers be introduced into a sitting-room; place the one in the mouth of a narrow-necked jar of water, and arrange the other over a shallow dish of water, and it will be found that the latter will be perfectly fresh, days after the former are faded. If a larger dish, with water in it, is placed below, and a bell glass set in the water, so that no external air can enter, the flowers may remain perfect, say camellias, etc, for whole weeks, because they are surrounded by air incessantly moistened by vapor from the plates. - If you want to be successful in transplanting, don't be afraid of working in dull weather.

If you are shy of a "Scotch mist," buy an India-rubber mackintosh. Nothing is so cruel to many sorts of trees as to let their tender fibres parch up in a dry wind, or a bright sun. Such weather may be fun to you, but 'tis death to them. - A Neapolitan ambassador, at the English court, said, that during a residence of ten years in London, he had eaten but one ripe fruit, and that was a baked apple I - The mistletoe is sometimes found on trees in New Jersey, as well as further south. The berries are transparent, and enliven the whole plant. - There is no plant lately introduced, that will give more pleasure to the many lovers of fine shrubbery than the Wiegelia rosea; the amabilis is probably little inferior. These, and the various spireas, are our best treasures for early blooming - displacing the liiac and other old favorites. - We have, in Philadelphia, two successful cultivators of pine-apples, Mr. Anspach and Mr. Tucker. They produce as good pines, at least, as are ever seen in Covent Garden market, or on the tables of the nobles of England, from which country it is best to import plants; those coming from the islands are apt to be bo infested with vermin as to be a nuisance. - The most skilfully constructed bouquets are those with the brightest colored of the flowers in the centre, gradually decreasing in intensity of color from that centre to the edges of the groups.

One prevailing color of different degrees of intenseness will prevent a patchy or spotty appearance. If bright crimson roses form the centre, paler roses should be near on either side as well as above, and the same will hold good of geraniums, etc. - Some of our correspondents insist that the Rhododendron figured in the January number, is Catawbiense. It may be so, but we shall not pronounce upon it till we see the plant in bloom - principally because Mr. Van Buren, who communicated the description and the colored drawings, and who has the opportunity of inspecting it carefully, and who is familiar with the Catawbiense, believes it is not that species. - Mr. Rivers has exhibited, in England, dwarf cherry-trees on the mahaleb stock, only one foot high, that have each borne nearly a quart of fruit. Our own dwarfed cherries exhibit a great inclination to grow beyond dwarfing management, probably for want of root-pruning, which has not yet been attempted. Remember that the ashes of anthracite coal is a good manure for cherries; they do not require much enrichment of the soil. - The apricot may be dwarfed by budding it on the sloe. - The interest felt by so many landholders in this country in the cultivation of fruit, causes an amount of practical intelligence to be devoted to the subject that has no parallel on the other side of the water.

It would be impossible to assemble the same number of practical scientific cultivators in any other country, as will meet, for instance, at Rochester, the next autumn. These conventions are rapidly clearing up vexed questions, and establishing truths. - However unfortunate the late winter may have been to private gardens, the nurserymen must not complain; there are few who will cry, "Hold! enough! " and orders will flow in for recruits to supply the place of the soldiers killed off. Roses, especially, will be in demand. - Tulip beds may be kept in perfect bloom for three weeks, by shading them with any kind of sheeting fastened to a wooden frame. Without this their bloom is short. - All sensible people believe, by this time, in the power and virtue of the individual home; combinations for health, and air, and trees, and sunshine, need not partake of one iota of the "community system," which, till human nature is altered, and that never will be in our time, is found, in practice, utterly at variance with the constitution of the human mind.

Men do combine satisfactorily to pave, light, and procure good water, without a quarrel; then why not unite to have a handsome and healthy country park, instead of so many compacted towns as we often see? - A family in Scotland has been poisoned by a rustic servant mistaking monkshood for horseradish; the cook, also, not knowing the difference, scraped the former, sent it to the table, and poisoned the guests, three of whom died in an hour or two. The Gardener's Chronicle says this comes of people being barbarously instructed, and employs the occasion to enforce the necessity of instruction in common things. - The Herbaria, belonging to the London Horticultural Society, has been brought to the hammer; they were the collections of the officials sent abroad, and were made in order that the officers might be able to ascertain the names and value of the seeds which were sent home; that purpose served, they became mere records of past discovery, of very great botanical interest, but with no farther bearing upon the objects of their owners.

Douglas's collection, formed in Northwest America and California, amounting to 500 species, was purchased by the British Museum for $150. Hartweg's, for $100. The whole realized about $1,200. - The Independence Beige informs its readers that "in the Belgian colony of St. Thomas, a potato has been grown, weighing more than 50 lbs." Good-by, big gooseberries. - Fronds of ferns are employed to embellish baskets of fruit for the table; they give the fruit an ornamental and somewhat foreign appearance. - The forcing of shrubs is most successfully managed when the pots are full of roots from early potting, and these roots receive the advantage of a mild bottom heat before a higher temperature affects the buds. - Hives, in which swarms of bees of the previous year have died, should be kept clean and dry, and out of the way of mice, for the purpose of hiving swarms in them. The time this precaution saves a swarm can scarcely be credited. - Do fishes hear? is a question just now debated abroad; the conclusion come to seems to be that they do not; concussions of the air by thunder, and so forth, startle them, but the sense of hearing is believed to be wanting. - An ornamental object for a window, or room, may be made by placing a large pine cone in the mouth of a glass having a small quantity of water at the bottom.

The scales of the cone are first slightly opened, and lentil seeds are dropped into the openings. Water is sprinkled over the cone as may be necessary, say twice a day, and, in a short time, the lentils send up their small green shoots, and cover the cone. The scales are opened by placing them in any moderately warm place for short time. - In Lind-ley's Theory of Horticulture, it is stated that a M. Otto, of Berlin, employs oxalic acid to make old seeds germinate. The seeds are put into a bottle filled with oxalic acid, and remain there till the germination is observable, which generally takes place in from twenty-four to forty-eight hours, when the seeds are taken out, and sown in the usual manner; of course, placed in a suitable temperature as the seeds may require. Another way is to take a woollen cloth, and wet it with oxalic acid, on which the seeds are placed and folded up, and put into a suitably heated structure. By this method, seeds have been found to vegetate equally as well as in the bottle. Essential care must be taken to remove the seeds out of the acid as soon as vegetation is observable.

M. Otto found, that by this means, seeds that were from twenty to forty years old grew; while the same kinds, sown in the usual manner, did not grow at all. - Some of the old gardeners have an idea that old cucumber and. melon seeds produce plants more fruitful than those from new seeds. The most luxuriant plant is produced from the good, sound, and plump new seed. - The last priced catalogue published by Groom, lately deceased near London, contained three varieties of the tulip, at the enormous figure of five hundred dollars each; they were all of his own raising; there is also one at two hundred and fifty dollars, twelve at a hundred dollars, and four at fifty dollars each. Mr. G. succeeded best by mixing large quantities of coarse river sand in his soil. His whole stock has been dispersed since his death.

The Cranberry, and its Culture, is the title of another manual, from C. M. Saxton & Co., Hew York, written by B. Eastwood, very well illustrated, and full of information. The culture of this fruit is of great importance; it will pay well in soils suitable for little else. A large demand, even for export, has grown up, and, from the easy transportation of the fruit, it is very profitable. The experience detailed in this work cannot be dispensed with by those intending to plant the cranberry. From ten to fifteen dollars a barrel is the price now obtained in the Boston market; a pint has been sold in London for nearly a dollar; all that can be raised will find a market. In the appendix, there is an estimate of the profit of the culture, by Mr. A. Flint, as follows: In 1853, he sold fifty barrels, at thirteen dollars the barrel, making six hundred and fifty dollars as the product of two acres of what was quite recently an almost worthless bog meadow!

The American Pomolooical Society will hold its next meeting at Rochester, on the 24th of September. The regular notice from the President was unaccountably omitted last month.

A. LOOMIS, of the Byron Nurseries, Genesee Co., N.T., has issued a very comprehensive catalogue of fruit, and ornamental trees and shrubs, roses, vines, etc. We hope his neighbors, and persons within reach, will consult the catalogue and plant the trees.

The interest attached to the pursuits of floriculture is well expressed by Teschemacher, who says: "Examples are exceedingly rare of men once engaged in it ever giving it up but with their latest breath - What were life without a rose? "