If you have failed to prepare your Basswood bark for tying buds, perhaps you can get bass matte; these, if new, sound, and well soaked in water, will answer. If this cannot be had, try coarse, strong woolen yarn. We hare never tried Corn-husks. You want something that will fit close, and tie secure, to exclude air.

Budding #1

The period of innoculating having arrived, a hint to amateurs and others on the selection and preparation of buds for the operation will be seasonable. Rules for securing a successful union with the stock are abundant; but how to prepare a bud so as to make it shoot strongly the next season, is not so often noticed, and the consequence is that of many buds which the operator succeeds in getting to "take," many of them either remain entirely dormant, or shoot very weakly the next season. Whenever practicable the shoot selected to supply the buds, should have its point taken out by the finger and thumb, a week or so before required for use; this gives the buds a plumpness and imbibes them with a latent principle of activity which aids them in starting into growth. To stop them too long a time - several weeks before use - would induce them to break soon after budding, which is frequently an injury, as the shoots so made are apt to get winter killed; besides, in the case of fruit trees where a clear straight stem is desirable, the shoot is apt to grow crooked. In budding, the branch or stock should be headed back immediately after the operation, in proportion to the fulness of the bud inserted.

A full or plump bud requiring scarcely any; one scarcely visible, on the contrary, may be out well back.

Budding #2

The season of propagating by budding, or inoculating as it was earlier termed, commences with the cherry. If old trees are to be changed by this means, they should be the first to be operated on, as the growth is completed earlier on old than young trees. Young stocks of Morello should be worked also earlier than Maz-zards; while the Mahaleb makes a growth so late in the season, that often it can be budded successfully all through September. All the fruit books give the modus operandi of shield budding; and we will only suggest that it is always safe to insert the bud on the north or northeast side of the tree, because of the drying heat of the south and west sun in summer and of the sometime injury caused by warm suns in winter, exciting the bud or sap vessels during the day and rendering them extra sensitive to the cold of the succeeding night

At a meeting of the Western New York Fruit Growers' Association, held at Rochester, June 27, the best six varieties of strawberries for amateurs were voted upon. Twenty-eight ballots were cast, with the names of six varieties on each ballot. The result was as follows: Triomphe de Gand, 28; Wilson, 22; Hooker, 22; Jucunda, 17; Agriculturist, 16; Russell's Prolific, 9; Green Prolific, 4; Trollope's Victoria, 4.

Raspberry and blackberry canes that have ripened their crops of fruit should be at once cut away, thus giving all the nourishment of the root to the new canes, as well as more light and air around them to mature and perfect their wood and buds, preparatory to next year's fruiting.