Editor Horticulturist : - Can you or any of your correspondents tell me how to destroy those large caterpillars on the Tomato plants? My tomatoes and those of my friends are infested with caterpillars from two to three inches long. The only way of making an end of them that I know of is to gather them off and kill them. This is a sure way, but the task with me is a long one, as I have a great number of plants, and the caterpillars seem to breed at a two-forty rate. I have to go over my plants twice a week with a pair of shears, and every worm I see I just cut him across with the shears. I suppose you will say this is a very good way to kill them; but what I want to know is, if they can not be destroyed before they do any harm? Can they not be destroyed while in the larva state? My celery plants are infested with a caterpillar something like the one on the tomato plants. If you can tell me how to get rid of them, I shall be much obliged. Yours respectfully, Hommock Park.

[We certainly do think Hommock Park's method a very sure one; but it is very tedious. Tobacco water and other substances will cause them to drop from the plant, but seldom kills them. A good plan, and one that saves much subsequent trouble, is to destroy the eggs; many are thus killed at a single blow. The ichneumon very often selects these worms to deposit its eggs in, and destroys many in this way. You will often see the backs of these caterpillars covered with small white cocoons. If you put them under a glass, you will soon have a swarm of ichneumon flies. The caterpillar on young celery plants is a greater pest than the other. We do not know of any certain mode of getting rid of them except killing them by hand. Perhaps some of our readers may know a better way. - ED].

Editor of the Horticulturist : - In the July number of your Journal, you give a report of the late exhibition of the Brooklyn Horticultural Society, wherein you would apparently give your readers the impression that the Seedling Strawberry which received the premium as the Best, was not justly entitled thereto; and further, you seem very desirous to make people believe that Mr. Fuller and Mr. Burgess exhibited Seedlings, which were actually entitled to the prize over mine.

While I admit that both these gentlemen exhibited very fine berries, yet I must say that I think the judges were men of very good taste, and understood the work before them. In your report you suggest that Seedlings should have been exhibited two years and examined on the ground. Now this is just exactly my view of the case, and the latter part of this suggestion I made to several prominent members of the Society on the first day of the exhibition. While these suggestions may be your honest convictions, yet I can not see why you should think, as you say, that under this rule Mr. Fuller's and Mr. Burgess's Seedlings would have taken the prize over the one that received it, you never having seen it in bearing. My bed of "General McClellan" covers a piece of ground 85 yards long and two yards wide, from which I picked, this season, 350 quarts of berries, which is over 300 bushels to an acre. Another very good proof of the real merits of my Seedling is, that although contrary to the rules of the Society, an interested party remained in the room while the judges were examining the fruit, and done his best to defeat me and win the prize himself, but the judges being honest men, believed in giving honor to whom honor is due, and hoping you will be kind enough to do the same, I am respectfully yours, Newark, N. J. Francis Brill.

[It was our purpose to have inserted Mr. Brill's letter in our last issue; and we supposed it was in till the number was issued. Mr. Brill is mistaken in supposing we wished to create any false impression whatever; we simply exercised our right of criticism. The point was just as likely to have reached some other person as Mr. Brill; we were not thinking of persons, but of the objects immediately before us. Now we will explain to Mr. Brill why we thought the others might have taken the prize under the conditions we suggested. We tested all these seedlings in the room; some of them we had examined for two or three seasons in the beds, and knew two or three of them to be of large size, good quality, and exceedingly productive, and we accordingly supposed they would stand more than an even chance with a much smaller fruit, even though it should excel a little in quality. The same thought would probably have occurred to Mr. Brill himself under the circumstances. But he should not be too sure that we have not seen his seedling, if, as we suppose, General McClellan is identical with the berry that he has been selling for a couple of years past as Brill's Favorite. We had no thought, in any thing we said, in detracting in the least from the real merits of Mr. Brill's seedling, or in lessening the honor to which he may be entitled in having originated it.

Wo desire at all times to mete out simple and even-handed justice. - Ed].