I HAVE two cases of strawberry culture here in the west, which I desire to report. Probably neither of them present any extraordinary points to experienced fruit growers, but they are certainly remarkable as showing the difference between different modes of cultivation. The first case proves that a little care and skill, properly applied, will produce favorable results; the latter demonstrates that more care and skill will pay in a proportionate degree. They both came under my own observation, and I am familiar with the mode of culture in each case.

Neighbor A. had a tract of one hundred and twenty square rods of ground - just three-fourths of an acre. The soil is a light hazel loam, overlying a limestone clay, and with a small admixture of sand. It had been cleared and cultivated about two years. This was planted, in the spring of 1870, with Wilson's Albany plants, at distances of about eighteen inches in rows of three and a half feet apart. The culture consisted of one or two dressings with the hoe and as many plowings during the summer, and no mulching or. other protection during the winter. The first portion of the summer was extremely dry, hence they made no runners till late in the season; but the rains of July and August started them vigorously, and the tract became nearly covered with fine healthy plants. In the spring no other attention was given them than a slight hoeing and a pulling of the weeds.

From this tract he picked and marketed fifty-six bushels, and consumed at homo about four bushels - in all 1,920 quarts. This is at the rate of eighty bushels per acre.

The fruit was sent to market (unassorted) in the Beecher quart baskets, and sold at prices ranging from twenty-five cents down to eight cents per quart - averaging a little less than ten cents. The picking cost two cents per quart.

Neighbor W. had a small tract of five square rods - just one thirty-second part of an acre. From this he picked three hundred and fifty quarts - or seventy quarts to a rod - footing up to the respectable sum of three hundred and fifty bushels to an acre of ground. Whether the same ratio could be maintained for a larger tract, is a question. Yet it would seem that what can be done on one rod or on five rods of ground, could be done on ten or a hundred, provided the same care and culture is given.

The culture given by Mr. W. was different from that given by Mr. A., in that it was much more thorough during the first season after planting, and that the plants were well mulched with forest leaves in the fall. The culture had given them a good supply of roots, and brought into being the germs of numerous fruit stalks; the mulch of leaves being just what was requisite to maintain them in the best condition. It is hard to conceive that different degrees of culture would produce such different results; yet so it is - -as the soil in the one case was very similar to that of the other.

One other fact should be named - the ground of Mr. W. had been sub-soiled, that of Mr. A. had not. The first case shows quite a satisfactory result, especially for this section, where fruit culture has not been reduced to a science.

If, however, it can be shown that an expenditure of twenty or twenty-five dollars in labor and mulching material, for each acre, can produce so much difference in the result and the consequent profit, it certainly is a weighty argument in favor of that expenditure.

A word on mulching material: Forest leaves are undoubtedly the best; probably cornstalks are the next best. Straw, of wheat, rye or oats is first-rate simply as a mulch, but is objectionable on account of the weed and grass seeds it contains. Bagasse, from the cane mills, is liable to smother the plants.

Banks of the Mississippi, June, 1871.

Pencil Marks By The Way #1

I KNOW it will not do to call everything a humbug that happens to fall on our own grounds. To do bo, would be to discard perhaps three-fourths of the varieties of fruits known to horticulture.

But when anything is proven to be valueless everywhere - or even in a majority of eases - I think it may very properly bo classed as a humbug. Among these I undertake to name the Crystal White Blackberry. With an over-zealous disposition to test things, I procured some of them about four years since. Annually, until this year, I have been anxiously awaiting in vain for its crystal white berries, but it winter-killed to the ground each season. The past winter, however, it carried through a fine growth of wood, and I have been rewarded with a prolific yield of fruit.

But, O, such berries! Not so large as a majority of the wild blackberries of the woods; and as to color, they are not black, they are not white, they are not red. Instead, they are a shiny brown. How any one could have conceived the idea of naming them Crystal White, passeth my comprehension. The color, however, may do, but the quality is simply execrable. Quinine may be taken as a medicine; but few people can be found, I reckon, who will relish it as a dessert. This fruit very strongly resembles it in taste, and is in every sense a vile thing - fit only to take a place in the Materia Medica as an ague cure.

How any person who had ever tasted the fruit, could desire to introduce it as an acquisition, or how any nurseryman could, after a trial of its quality, be induced to place it in his catalogue and send it out, is one of the mysteries of horticulture. I write this without knowing to whom the public is indebted for its introduction; only remembering that many most respectable and reliable nurserymen have it on their catalogues.

In the same list I would place the Van Buren Golden Dwarf Peach. For several years it has persistently refused to bear a peach or show a blossom. It has been winter-protected, and left exposed, always with the same results. Other peaches, named and seedlings, hardy and tender, have borne abundant crops around it; so that it may be set down as a total failure. It may perhaps answer well enough for the latitude of Georgia, where it originated; but he who plants it in the Northern or Western states, will look for crops in vain.

As a means of trapping the larvae of the Codling Moth, has not received that attention, I fear, the subject deserves. That bandages of straw, or hay (cloth is muck better), do serve as a retreat for these insects, any one may. have ocular demonstration on trial. During July, I placed hay bandages - for want of a better material - around the stems of most of my bearing trees; and now, the 25th of September, I find beneath them numbers of these larvae, securely hidden away,and many of them imbedded in the bark of the tree beneath the band. The bands should be searched several times during the season, and all found destroyed.

Professor Riley, the Missouri Entomologist, attaches great importance to this remedy, and recommends that some manufacturer should engage in the production of cheap coarse bands for the purpose.