The London Florist describes a new cherry under the above name, as being "large, obtuse heart-shaped; skin with a brilliant red cheek, dotted with minute yellow points; flesh delicate, translucent, tender, melting, juicy, with a rich sweet flavor," and ripening before any of the so-called Bigarreaus are in market.

Manhattan, Riley Co., Kansas, June 8, 1867.

Editors of Horticulturist : In a brief communication published in the December number, 1866, I alluded to the cause for disease in the grape, assigned by the "Lake Shore Grape-Growers' Association."Reuben (who ought not to be ashamed to write such spicy and useful articles over his real signature), in the February number, 1867, page 50, attempts to correct an error into which he alleges I had fallen. If I was in error, it was the Horticulturist's article alluded to that led me astray. Reuben asks if I did not get "a little mixed up," and as he read their views, "it especially applied to rot, and not to mildew." The article in the Horticulturist says, " The cause of disease in the grape, rot, etc." I inferred that "etc." would include mildew.

Where the grape is infected with disease, it is natural to suppose that grape-growers would investigate the cause of disease; but in middle Kansas, where a few berries on a few bunches of a few vines have mildewed but once since the first vines were planted (1856-7), my thoughts were not directed to this subject as much as where mildew is prevalent. When I planted my first vines, I knew nothing about the cultivation of the grape; but I have since read all the authors I could procure, and made some observations, and have been led to believe that where the ground is suitably prepared (not too deep here), the soil adapted to the growth of the vine, and roots that are perfectly healthy when planted, that we can here grow grapes a great many years at least without their health being affected. My observations have been confined to my own vines; and with me, vines that were propagated from green wood, or one-year-old canes, when not root-pruned at the time of planting, have often shown the yellow leaf, although I have four-year-old vines that were propagated by layering green wood, that so far the foliage is of the natural verdant color, but they were very closely root-pruned, about one or two inches only of wood left from the collar.

I have not yet produced any green wood layers that were not root-pruned that have lived over three years without showing the yellow leaf, and in % few years they nearly all die. Commencing with the yellow leaf, the growth ceases, the leaves dry, and they are numbered among the things that were. While, on the other hand, the vines that were propagated from sound bearing wood, raised in autumn, root-pruned to within one foot of the collar, heeled in, and planted in spring, have presented no sickly appearance, although such vines, propagated on my grounds, have been planted every year since the spring of 1858. I might here add, that I do not cut away as much wood when pruning as is the practice of some vignerons.

There are a great many wild vines growing along the Big Blue River, especially among the timber and u bushes." I cleared a few acres in 1856-7, including a thicket of wild summer and frost vines. In many instances rampant sprouts of the vine started from the wood of the vine remaining in the ground, and during unfavorable years I have frequently observed many of these new canes covered with sickly yellow leaves, but in no instance have I observed the unhealthy hue on vines that were rambling at will over shrubbery. You may find some who will tell you that they have seen yellow leaves on vines which were running, "as they liked best," over bushes, etc., but I speak of vines that were never injured by fires that annually sweep over the prairies, and sometimes extend to the bottom. It might be well enough to say that vines with yellow leaves, on land where they have been cut off or burned and sprouted up again, are few, very few, yet I have found some. The vines generally present a healthy appearance.

Taking these observations with the fact that one-year-old roots have immature wood, and when this immature wood is planted, whether produced by layering green or ripe wood, it must rot off, and rootlets can not start from the end of the root until it is decomposed, might I not, in my ignorance of the disease of the vine, reasonably infer that there is a possibility that the decaying wood communicates a weakness to the vine which may not show itself for many years after it is planted, until conditions are favorable for developing it? I have had vines that would show yellow leaves every alternate year, and afterward die, but not in good roots, properly root-trimmed in the fall, and planted in situations favorable to the healthy development of the vine. Disease may linger in the human frame for years, and at times the patient and his friends may imagine that he is in a fair way of recovering. So far as external appearance is concerned, he looks as if he is convalescent, but the germ of disease is lurking in his body, which sooner or later consigns him to his final resting-place.

It is said that in districts subject to disease, weak vines are more "liable to disease than strong, healthy plants, and that fungi derive their sustenance on dead as well as on the living vegetable matter upon which they grow. Might not the living vegetable matter be partially decayed, yet to the human eye appear to be living matter ? If this is so, might not the seeds of the decay be sown by planting the immature terminal roots, or severely top-pruning the vine, which results in a proportional amount of the roots decaying; and in this way the vigor of the vine becomes weakened, when disease, the same as with the human system, could take a hold with greater ease ? May it not be a hidden constitutional weakness in the plant that enables the mildew, or any other disease, to grasp the vine with facility, while a vigorous vine would resist the effort to seize and lay it prostrate ? In short, might not the great primary cause of much, if not all, of the disease of the vine, aided of course by other agents, be attributed to a constitutional weakness of the plant, and, like poor, frail human nature, the infirmities of the parent vine be clandestinely visited upon the offspring "unto the third and fourth generation?"

My experiments and reflections relating to the vine have not been with its diseases. The opportunities for such investigations have not been presented to me, on account of our almost entire exemption from mildew or any disease of the vine except the yellow leaves, which occasionally make their appearance when the conditions are unfavorable to the health of that plant; therefore my ideas must be very crude, perhaps without any foundation from which to draw inferences; but in the vine districts where disease has prevailed, there are doubtless many scientific men who have given this subject some attention, who can remove our erroneous views, if such they are, and plant in their place correct ones. Excuse the space, although I have been as brief as I possibly could to make myself understood.

I am, truly, etc., A. M. Burns.