THE HORTICULTURIST.

Various Estimates of its Value.

HE point of view we take in examining any subject is of the utmost importance in determining its character. This is fully illustrated by several personal interviews we have lately had when in a semi-somnambulent state, and as the observations we record illustrate the above position, we deem it well to print them. Some are not very flattering, but when we awoke we consoled ourselves with believing the point of view of the speakers was erroneous. At all events, the difficulties of the editor's position will be better understood by a perusal of the conversations and remarks.

[A Lady and Gentleman are seen entering a gate Lodge, conversing.]

Gentleman. Well, now, my dear, I like the Horticulturist as well, if not better than ever. It generally contains just what I want to know. I hope the mail has brought it.

Lady. I should think so, from your habit of re-reading it so often. For my part, I think it is dreadful dull. We've had but one or two stories in it the whole of last year.

Gentleman. Very true, but "stories" are no part of its business. It is designed to impart information, and in a pleasant way to instruct us. Its composition is evidently a work of love, and great care and much time are bestowed upon it. My only fear is that it doesn't pay the publisher.

Lady. I should like to see more poetry and some fashion in it, for my part.

Gentleman. For that matter, if poetry and fashionable intelligence get into it, I give it up.

The Gatekeeper. Here are the newspapers and the other post-office matters. How I wish they'd stop that Horticulturalist! I never could see what people want to keep fishes in vases for, and are always trying to get newer grapes, as if they thought them better than our good old ones!

Gentleman. Ah! very true, Jonathan. You know better than that, don't you? Gatekeeper. Certainly I do! Why, the old fox grapes never was exceeded, and as for Hamburghers, they're no touch to my old seedlins.

Gardener (stepping up). Jonathan, you know nothing, and never will learn it, neither. Why, nobody can do without the Horticulturist! I wish, however, he had told us last month a little more about the mildew. I'm sure it might be better. What business had they to waste the room with a foolish story about Aunt Charlotte's seedling strawberry? it was sheer nonsense.

Gatekeeper. I suppose it was; I never reads them are things, and wonder anybody can.

[The Lady and Gentleman get home, with a new Horticulturist.] Lady. Any tales like the Strawberry Seedling in the Horticulturist this month? Gentleman. None; I have already said we don't want any tales in it.

Lady. Well, give me the Home Journal, and such as that.

Daughter. I'm sure, ma, there's a thousand better things in it than tales. Those articles on hanging plants, you know you liked.

Lady. Why, yes-now and then I do see something I like, but the fact is, I rarely read it!

Son. Then, ma, you certainly don't know what is in it. I wouldn't give it up for ten times its cost. It seems to me full of information and entertainment com

bined. But here comes neighbor Bob Acres, let's ask him.

Acres. If you ask me for an opinion, I'm always prepared. The Horticulturist isn't wuth three cents! It never has drawings of horses, cattle, sheep, or pigs; and as to your garden flowers, and frippery, who cares a copper, I don't! Daughter. Well, Bob, but I wish you did. Do you think any young lady would live at Cloverdale and never see anything but hay? I won't, believe me. Acres. Wait, my dear, till you're

Daughter. No, I won't wait till I'm asked! I hate to see a place without fruit, and a garden and flowers, and you needn't ask me—never!

Gentleman. There, Bob, you've got it; now you take the Horticulturist, and get up a garden, if you want ever to be married.

Bob. Well, if ever I do, then

Son. We'll think you mean to pop the question.

Bob. No, no. I'll never read any such stuff. Why, do you suppose I don't know how to plant a tree, or cut it down either!

Daughter. Ah! Bob, you are perfectly incorrigible.

Bob. Incorrigible or not, you don't catch me reading books. Incorrigible, am I-that's one of your botanical terms, is it!

Gentleman. Čome, Bob, that will do.

[Enter, a young Lady, with a basket.]

Young Lady. Oh, Maria! I've got such beautiful mosses; I've been in the woods all the morning, collecting to make those elegant moss baskets described in the Horticulturist. I've made enough by their sale to purchase plenty of books for our little school, and they say in town they want two dozen more! That's the way I use my dear Horticulturist!

Bob (who evidently has a liking for the last speaker). Oh, Charlotte, why didn't you ask me to help you pick the mosses? I should have been so glad.

Charlotte. I'll never ask a favor of you, Master Robert, till you have a proper respect for reading and knowledge; and if ever I see you tearing out those colored pictures of apples and pears, I'll-I'll never speak to you again; mind that! Bob. Oh dear, what a little hornet!

(Aside. I believe I must take to reading a little, or they'll never talk to me.)

[Enter, Charlotte's mother.]

Mother. Really, how perfect your garden looks this morning. recommended in the Horticulturist are all that was said of them. cuttings?

Those plants Can't I have

Gentleman. Certainly you can; but here is neighbor Acres, who thinks this kind of thing all trash!

Daughter. He won't think so always; will you, Bob?

Bob looks a little crest-fallen, takes up the Horticulturist from the table, asks what it costs, and ends by ordering a copy. He reads it, too, and by next year we hope to record that one of the two young ladies-we believe it will be the basket-maker-has become Mrs. Acres, with a flower-garden, a lawn, some hand

some plantations, and a reformed husband, who has been for six months vainly trying to complete his set of the Horticulturist!

Such are a few only of the contending views which go to make up the host of readers who "take in," as our grandfathers expressed it, a work like the present. The pomologist would like it better if it had no flowers in it; the lover of flowers, perhaps, has no taste for cultivating fruit. The man with a single idea for strawberries, wonders how we can ever dabble with architecture; the farmer too often sees no good in a vegetable garden; a "calendar of operations" to him should include pasturing and soiling cattle; and thus it is with us all; what we know, we like to read about, in the hope of knowing more. Surrounded, then, by these difficulties, we have, pretty much, to follow our own tastes, and the course marked out for us, and be satisfied if we enlist people of our own way of thinking; well convinced that in the multitude and crowd of periodicals each one can be suited. There has been much time and labor bestowed on the Horticulturist, by many minds, since it made Philadelphia its home; it has obtained a large additional patronage, which evidently grows with the wealth and taste of the country, and though its friends think its circulation not equal to the wants of the people, we have learned therewith to be content, as we know, after a tour which has embraced within the last eighteen months a very large part of the Union, that it has appreciative readers on its topics everywhere.

ON PACKING TREES AND PLANTS.

BY THOMAS MEEHAN, GERMANTOWN, PA.

To one accustomed to packing nursery stock, nothing seems more simple; while to outsiders it seems something of a mystery how plants which they have been taught to believe require such nice proportions of light, heat, air, and moisture with exact regularity, can exist for days and weeks, and endure long voyages, with very little apparent inconvenience, though the supposed necessary conditions of existence are so seemingly confused. Even many experienced packers, who are perhaps known to be something superior in the art, would in many cases be unable to give any reason for their respective processes.

Hitherto we have had to follow the Chinese way of doing things in learning to pack. It is related of a sailor stationed in a Chinese port, that he hired a native tailor to make him a pair of pantaloons in place of one, which, on account of two unseemly patches behind, were in a discreditable condition. The pair was handed to Pig-ta-el for a pattern, and when the number of moons necessary for one of these tardy gentlemen to complete the important piece of work, had passed away, he returned with the new inexpressibles, but, with patches of the exact size, and in the identical positions of those in the patterns on the new garment! Thus our packers pack exactly as their fathers packed, because their fathers packed so, and precisely as they were learned to pack.

In the spring of the present year, I saw a large importation of roses and Norway spruces opened. They were from a first class European house, and the packing would have been pronounced by experienced hands very superior, yet there was not one rose alive, while not a spruce out of thousands was injured. They were both packed exactly alike; but what was life to the one, was death to

the other. Had the packer understood the theory of his art as well as he did its practice, his employer would probably have gained an annual customer in one who now believes that roses cannot be imported successfully.

Heat, air, light and moisture are necessary for the growth of plants; but in packing we aim only to preserve their existence. Light is only necessary while the plant is growing. Whenever growth commences, it must have its due proportion of light, or it soon decays. One of the chief points in good packing, therefore, is to prevent growth. This being guarded against securely, plants can be kept boxed or baled up in darkness for a long time. The chief agent in exciting growth is heat. A packer's chief care should be to get full control of this power.* Every one knows that when vegetable substances are collected in bodies, deprived of air and light, and become moist, they commence to decay; and, in the process, evolve heat. To avoid this, those substances the least liable to decay by being moistened, are employed as packing material.

Of all substances yet known, moss is the best in this particular, as under ordinary circumstances, its decay is very slow. How wet the packing material should be, or how much of it should be employed, will depend on the time the plants may have to remain covered, and what description of plants they are. Plants with soft watery foliage need the packing material rather dry; while deciduous trees, or plants with hard leathery foliage, may have it quite wet. If plants have to be sent some distance, it is in any case safest to use rather dry packing material; and to depend on maintaining sufficient moisture for the plants' existence, by packing tight so as to prevent evaporation. It need scarcely be added, after what has been said, that the cooler plants can be kept until they are opened, the better for them, unless the temperature is below freezing point, frosty weather being equally, with hot, favorable to evaporation.

It may be useful to say a few words on the details of packing as well as the principles. Plants are transported in either boxes or bales. The former is by far the most convenient for small trees under three feet, as well as for all kinds of pot plants; trees of larger growth are best baled. Boxes for this purpose should be strong, as they are liable to rough usage at times on wharves. In packing pot plants, the first process is staking the plant, tying in all the branches, as the closer they are tied the less they will get injured by each branch and leaf rubbing against others. Then the soil must be fixed so as to prevent its being thrown out of the pots. This is effected by tying moss over it around the stem of the plant on the upper surface of the pot. There are two ways of tying on the moss. In one case the packer takes the end of the string and the pot in his left hand, crosses the string over the surface and under the bottom of the pot six or eight times, and finishes by bringing it around under the rim. In the other the pot stands on the bench, and the string is brought around under the rim, each time it is made to cross over the moss, and does not go under the pot at all. The first is the easiest way; the last makes the best job, as it can never loosen, which the first often does. After the plants are mossed, and a box selected capable of holding the required number, a few inches of moss is placed in the bottom, and the largest and heaviest pots selected and placed on their sides on two faces of the box, so as to "look at each other." Strips of any narrow pieces of waste wood are then cut so as to fit exactly inside the box; these are placed along the face of the pots, so as to come on a line with

* Many packages of plants are now transported in steamboats or ships, and they are too often carelessly placed near the influence of the boiler. It would be well always to mark the package "to be kept cool," and to give instructions to that effect.-ED.

the upper edge, and then are firmly secured by a nail driven into the end of the strip through and from the outside of the box. When one row is thus finished, some few inches more moss is placed on the lower course of pots, another layer of pots, and then another strip; this is again repeated till the box is full. If the strips are pressed tight to the faces of the pots, they will not press heavily on those beneath them; and if the whole is properly done, plants may be sent a six weeks' voyage in safety, without the breakage of a pot. Some plants, as oranges, camellias, and other similar plants, are taken out of their pots, and moss or canvass wrapped around the balls; these are repotted on arriving at their destination, and in proper hands do very well, while it saves considerable expense in freight and express charges. Young trees are packed in moss, in any way they will lie conveniently; when the box is tight, a very thin layer of moss is employed between each layer of trees; in open crates, a greater quantity is used around the roots, and less among the branches.

Baling is a more difficult operation to perform properly. From fifty to one hundred of ordinary sized nursery trees make a respectable bale; two or three of the tallest trees are first collected together, then small quantities of damp moss placed in the crevices of the roots, a few more roots laid on, and more moss, until the whole number is laid together; a band of rye straw is then passed around the bundle near the collars of the roots, and drawn together as tightly as possible; two or three more bands are passed around at other parts.

A bast or cocoa-nut mat-the last to be preferred is then laid on the floor of the packing shed, and a few bundles of rye straw spread out the length of the stems of the trees, so that six or eight inches of the end of the straw will lap over the mat; then on the mat some six inches of wet straw is placed, and on this, the roots laid in about the middle of the mat; the bundle is placed, the wet straw well packed around the roots, the mat drawn up very tightly around, and sewed together; and then lastly the straw brought equally around the bundle, and corded regularly around, at about six inches interval till the end is reached, when the cord should be brought down on the opposite side lengthwise, secured to each circle of cord as it passes, and finished by being secured to the mat at the base.

In cording bales, deciduous trees cannot be too tightly drawn together; evergreens should be drawn together more loosely, as they are apt to heat, especially if they are somewhat damp.

I trust this brief explanation of the principles of packing, and slight sketch of the mode of doing it, will be sufficient to set novices on the track of becoming proficients in the art. I am sensible I have done little for their information, for it is truly one of those arts in which "practice makes perfect."