It fell to my lot some ten years ago to take charge of some barren old pear-trees, with long spurs full of cankers. Although I took a different course from the one you have lately been advocating to render them fertile, I have the satisfaction of observing that all the old stocks are well filled with bearing wood. The horizontal branches were all cut off, and a graft or two put on the stumps or short arms, except in some places where buds were inserted and allowed to replace the branch; those put on in the shape of buds make less wood than the others, but are very productive. The trees first grafted have nearly covered the walls; they bore fruit freely on the second year's growth, and the year after the produce became greater. I allude to this to show that it would have been a mistake, where there is a great consumption of winter fruit, to have torn up the old trees add planted young ones. In the latter case I should have had to wait long and patiently for the first fruit bud, (unless root-pruning had been resorted to), while now I have plenty of growth and abundance of fruit. I think grafted trees will continue longer in bearing than if bads had been inserted in branches. I may mention another fact not a little interesting.

Last spring a Barbarossa vine produced bunches somewhat irregularly, leaving more space without fruit than I liked to see. I took a shoot from its neighbor, a Hamburgh, with a bunch just coming into flower, inarched it, and put a small bottle of water to the end of. it. This was done merely as an experiment, but to my astonishment every flower became a berry. The bunch progressed, and was to every one here a curiosity; it colored well, and became a compact little bunch in September. - Thorp Perrow, in Gardeners1 Chronicle, Pliny has recorded the story of an industrious and ingenious husbandman, who, being in advance of the knowledge of his time, cultivated a small piece of ground upon an improved method, by which he gathered much more fruits and reaped larger profits than the neighbors about him, though their possessions were more ample. His uncommon success excited their envy, insomuch that they brought this accusation against him: "That, by sorcery, charms and witchcraft, he had transported his neighbors' fruits, fertility and increase to his own fields." For this he was ordered peremptorily, by Albinus, a Roman general skilled in agriculture, to answer the charge before him.

Cresinus, fearing the issue, resolved upon his best defence, - brought his plow and other rural implements, and displaying them openly, he set there also his daughter, a lusty, strong lass, big of bone; then, turning to the citizens: "My masters," quoth he, "these are the sorceries, charms, and all the enchantments that I use. I might also allege my own travel and labors, my early rising and late sitting up, and the painful sweat that I daily endure; but I am not able to present these to your view, nor to bring them with me into this assembly." This bold and open defence captivated the people; it proved the coup de main which turned a doubtful result to his entire favor; he was pronounced " not guilty," and those present took note of his inventions. This story is derived from those who are said to have first taught to the Britons the arts of husbandry. It may, therefore, be fairly employed to show that the first improvers of agriculture had their days of trial; that in all ages and countries, and in every path of inquiry and invention - in the discovery of the rotation of crops, as in that of the rotatory motion of the earth - a Galileo has had to answer for his daring before some embodiment of ignorance constituting an Inquisition.

It has been lately discussed with some interest, whether the Romans possessed forcing contrivances, a subject about which there is some difference of opinion. That they did employ some kind of artificial aid is sufficiently proved by some well-known expressions in Martial, the most remarkable of which (lib. viii. ep. 68) tells how the Vine remains in felicity, enclosed in the transparent gemma, where no rigors of frost can touch its berries; and seen like the female figure through her muslin drapery, or the pebble beneath the limpid stream. That some kind of transparent material was used by the Roman gardeners, under the name of specu-laria, is therefore certain, whatever the material may have been. Seneca calls it testa, which is translated shell; but which may have been, a tile of talc, the lapis specularis of Pliny, which he tells us the Romans obtained abundantly from Spain. These specularia would seem to have been a kind of handglass, possibly tall transparent movable frames, such as may be seen in some of the Botanic Gardens on the Continent. The curious account given by Colu-mella of Roman Cucumber growing, is hardly intelligible upon any other supposition. "He who wishes," he says, "to have the fruit of the Cucumber before its season, should, after the winter is over, introduce well-manured soil into baskets and slightly water it.

Then, when the seeds have come up, on warm and sunny days he should place them in the open air near his . house, so as to shelter them from all cold blasts. But in cold and windy weather he should bring them under cover, and continue this position until the vernal equinox. He should let the baskets altogether into the ground, and he will thus obtain a precocious fruit. Wheels also may, if it be thought worth while, be placed under the larger vessels, in order that they may be drawn backwards and forwards with less labor. But in any case they must be covered with specularia, that even in calm but cold days they may be safely brought out into the sun. It was in this way that Tiberius Ceesar got Cucumbers almost all the year round." The learned Dr. Daubeny concludes, from an examination of all the evidence obtainable, that Roman forcing did not go beyond the production of early Cucumbers and perhaps Melons, and a supply of winter Roses.