It is curious to see how rapidly really useful ideas spread; and also how strangely perverted they get to be, sometimes, in raw hands. It is the fashion, now-a-days, for every one to say that fruit trees need a cool toil, and good cultivation is now understood to mean not stirring the soil only, but careful treatment and judicious methods, even, sometimes, of non-cultivation.

We met a curious instance lately, where there was a perversion of this idea - a fruit-grower (a Vinelander, of course), contends that grapes and blackberries ripen better by having the fruit close to the ground; hence he does not believe in stakes or trellises, but lets them ramble where they like. He has got the idea of a cool surf ace for fruit into his head also, but he does not cultivate, does not manure, does not mulch. He believes it best to let the grass grow in the rows and around the bills, for it keeps the ground cool. He even don't believe in pulling up the weeds, for they are useful in shading the land. Wonderful man ! like Nebuchadnezzar of old, he will have to run to grass too, to get his living, if he expects to follow his ideas out to perfection, after that fashion. We saw a specimen of his fruit beds, and we felt like adding another part to the fruit-growers' cresd, as follows ;

" From strawberry beds over run with grass, from cooling weeds and running grapes, Good Lord deliver us,"