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To Destroy Insects (Make them shoot forth warm)

make them shoot forth, warm the two tubs; fill one of them with earth well dunged; sow your seeds, thus prepared, in one of them, and cover it with the other tub; you must then be careful to sprinkle it with warm water as often as may be necessary. Then carry the two tubs closely joined, taking care they cover each other, into a warm vault or cellar, and at the end of fifteen days you may gather a fine salad.

To increase Potage Herbs.

The manzel worzel would, if permitted to run up, grow to a great height, and afford a good plucking of potage vegetables twice a week in winter (only). It must be planted late, but may continue in the ground two or three years, when its roots will be wasted, the herbage become dwarfish, and it must be renewed by seed.

To guard Cabbages from the Depredations of Caterpillars. Sow with hemp all the borders of the ground wherein the cabbage is planted; and, although the neighborhood be infested with caterpillars, the space inclosed by the hemp will be perfectly free, and not one of these vermin will approach it.

To banish the Red Spider.

Cut off the infected leaf. The leaf once attacked soon decays and falls off; but in the mean time the animals remove to another, and the leaf, from the moment of attack, seems to cease to perform its office; but persevere in the amputation, and the plants become healthy.

To stop the Ravages of Caterpillars from Shrubs, Plants, and Vegetables.

Take a chafing-dish with lighted charcoal, and place it under the branches of the tree or bush whereon are the caterpillars; then throw a little brimstone on the coals. The vapor of the sulphur, which is mortal to these insects, and the suffocating fixed air arising from the charcoal, will not only destroy all that are on the tree, but will effectually prevent the shrubs from being, at that season, infested with them. A pound of sulphur will clear as many trees as grow on several acres.

Another method of driving these insects off fruit trees is to boil together a quantity of rue, wormwood, and common tobacco (of each equal parts), in common water. The liquor should be very strong. Sprinkle this on the leaves and young branches every morning and evening during the time the fruit is ripening.

To destroy Insects on Plants.

Tie up some flowers of sulphur in a piece of muslin or fine linen, and with this the leaves of young shoots of plants should be dusted, or it may be thrown on them by means of a common swansdown puff, or even by a dredging box. Fresh assurances have repeatedly been received of the powerful influence of sulphur against the whole tribe of insects and worms which infest and prey on vegetables. Sulphur has also been found to promote the health of plants on which it was sprinkled; and that peach-trees in particular were remarkably improved by it, and seemed to absorb it. It has been likewise observed that the verdure and other healthful appearances were perceptibly increased; for the quantity of new shoots and leaves formed subsequently to the operation, and having no sulphur on their surfaces, served as a kind of comparative index, and pointed out distinctly the accumulation of health. To cultivate the Sunflower.

The sunflower, kidney-beans, and potatoes, mixed together, agree admirably, the neighborhood of the sunflower proving advantageous to the potato. It is a well-authenticated fact that, with careful attention, the sunflower will make excellent oil. oil is expressed, may be prepared as a light viand The marc or refuse of the sunflower, after the for hogs and goats, pigeons and poultry, which will banquet on it to satiety. Query, would it not make good oil-cakes for fattening pigs? if brought into notice it might become an object of magnitude. Forty-eight pounds of sunflower will produce twelve pounds of oil. In fine, I esteem it as worthy of consideration; for 1. In the scale of excellence, it will render the use of grain for feeding hogs, poultry, pigeons, etc. completely unnecessary. 2. As it resembles olive oil, would it not be found, on examination, competent to supply its place? Whatever may be the points of difference, tion and manufactures. 3. Its leaves are to be it certainly may be serviceable in home consumphome consumpaffords an agreeable and wholesome food to sheep plucked as they become yellow, and dried. 4. It and rabbits. To goats and rabbits the little branches are a delicious and luxurious gratification, as is also the disc of the pure flower, after the grains have been taken out. Rabbits eat the whole, except the woody part of the plant, which is well adapted for the purpose of fuel. 5. Its alkalic qualities appear to deserve notice; fortyeight quintals yield eighty pounds of alkali, a plant we are acquainted with, maize excepted. produce four times superior to that of any other 6. Might it not be used as a lye? And minuter of both being oil. observation might convert it into soap, the basis potato love new earths. Let the rows be twenty- Dig and trench about it, as both that and the nine inches distant from each other, and it will be advantageous, as the turnsole loves room. from each other, and, when their stems are from Three grains are to be sown distant some inches eight to twelve inches high, the finest of the three only to be left. Twc tufts of French beans to be planted with potatoes. The French beans will climb up the side of the sunflower, which will act flower will second this disposition, by keeping off and uniformly support like sticks, and the sunthan if all had been planted with potatoes. the great heat from the potato, and produce more and the acre will bring in a vast amount, or con- Each sunflower will produce one or two pounds, tain one thousand pounds, being one-third more than grain.

To economize the Sunflower.

The cultivation of the annual sunflower is recommended to the notice of the public, possessing the advantage of furnishing abundance of agreeable fodder for cattle in their leaves. When in flower bees flock from all quarters to gather honey. The seed is valuable in feeding sheep, pigs, and other animals; it produces a striking effect in poultry, as occasioning them to lay more eggs, and it yields a large quantity of excellent oil by pressure. The dry stalks burn well, the ashes affording a considerable quantity of alkali.

To remove Herbs and Flowers in the Summer.

If you have occasion to transplant in the summer season, let it be in the evening, after the heat is passed. Plant and water the same immediately, and there will be no danger from the heat. next day; but be careful in digging up the earth you do not break any of the young shoots, as the sap will exude out of the same, to the great danger of the plants.

Method of Growing Flowers in Winter.

In order to produce this effect the trees or shrubs, being taken up in the spring, at the time when they are about to bud, with some of their own soil carefully preserved among the roots, must be placed upright in a cellar till Michaelmas; when, with the addition of fresh earth, they are to be put into proper tubs or vessels, and placed in a stove or hot-house, where they must every morning be moistened or refreshed with a solution of half an ounce of sal-ammoniac in a pint of rain-water. Thus, in the month of February, fruits or roses will appear; and, with rewith respect to flowers in general, if they are sown in pots at or before Michaelmas, and watered in a similar manner, they will blow at Christmas.

To preserve Wood from Insects.

In the East Indies aloes are employed as a varnish to preserve wood from worms and other insects; and skins, and even living animals, are anointed with it for the same reason. The havoc committed by the white ants, in India, first suggested the trial of aloe juice to protect wood from them, for which purpose the juice is either used as extracted, or in solution by some solvent.

To preserve Young Shoots from Slugs and Earwigs.

Earwigs and slugs are fond of the points of the young shoots of carnations and pinks, and are very troublesome in places where they abound; to prevent them they are sometimes insulated in water, in water , being set in cisterns or pans. If a pencil dipped in oil was drawn round the bottom of the pots once in two days, neither of these insects or ants would attempt them. Few insects can endure oil, and the smallest quantity of it stops their progress. Vegetable Liquor to hasten the Blowing of Bulbous- Rooted Flowers.

Take nitre, 3 ounces; common salt, 1 ounce; potash, 1 ounce; sugar, ounce; rain-water 1 pound. Dissolve the salts in a gentle heat, in a glazed earthen pot, and when the solution is complete add the sugar, and filter the whole. Put about eight drops of this liquor into a glass jar, filled with rain or river-water. The jars must be kept always full, and the water removed every ten or twelve days, adding each time a like quantity of the liquor. The flowers also must be placed on the corner of a chimney-piece, where a fire is regularly kept. The same mixture may be embe employed for watering flowers in pots, or filling the dishes in which they are placed, in order to keep the earth, or the bulbs or plants which they conthey contain, in a state of moisture. To restore Flowers.

Most flowers begin to droop and fade after being kept during twenty-four hours in water; a few may be revived by substituting fresh water, but all (the most fugacious, such as poppy, and perhaps one or two others excepted,) may be restored by the use of hot water. For this purpose place the flowers in scalding hot water, deep enough to cover about one-third of the length of the stem; by the time the water has become cold the flowers will have become erect and fresh then cut off the coddled ends of the stems and put them into cold water.

To preserve Flower Seeds.

Those who are curious about saving flower seeds must attend to them in the month of August.

Many kinds will begin to ripen apace, and should be carefully sticked and supported to prevent them from being shaken by high winds, and so partly lost. Others should be defended from much wet, such as asters, marygolds, and generally those of the class syngenesia, as from the construction of their flowers they are apt to rot, and the seeds to mould in bad seasons. When ever they are thought ripe, or sooner in wes weather, they should be removed to an airy shed or loft, gradually dried and rubbed or beat out at convenience. When dried wrap them up in papers or in tight boxes containing powdered charcoal.

To improve all sorts of Seeds.

Charles Miller, son of the celebrated botanist, published a recipe for fertilizing seed, and tried it on wheat, by mixing lime, nitre and pigeon's dung in water, and therein steeping the seed.

The produce of some of these grains is stated at sixty, seventy and eighty stems, many of the ears five inches long, and fifty corns each, and none less than forty.

To preserve Seeds for a long time.

When seeds are to be preserved longer than the usual period, or when they are to be sent to a great distance, sugar, salt, cotton, saw-dust, sand, paper, etc., have been adopted with different degrees of success. Chinese seeds, dried by means of sulphuric acid, in Leslie's manner, may be afterwards preserved in a vegetating state for any necessary length of time by keeping them in an airy situation in any common brown paper, and occasionally exposing them to the air on a fine day , especially after damp weather. This method will succeed with all the larger mucilaginous seeds.

Very small seeds, berries and oily seeds may probably require to be kept in sugar, or among currants or raisins. To preserve Exotic Seeds.

Five years ago, says a correspondent of the Monthly Magazine, I had a collection of seeds sent me from Scrampoore, in the East Indies, which have been since that period kept in small bottles in a dry situation, without corks; last spring some of them were sown, and produced strong, healthy plants, under the following system; but if taken from the bottles and sown in the ordinary way I have found them either to fail altogether or to produce germination so weak that the greatest care can never bring them to any perfection.

I have long observed that oxygen is necessary to animal and vegetable life, and that soil which has imbibed the greatest proportion of that air or gas yields the strongest germination, and with the least care produces the best and most healthy plants; under that impression I prepare the soil by adding to it a compost made from decayed vegetables, night soil and fresh earth, well mixed together and turned several times; but should the weather be dry I have generally found the compost better by adding water to keep it moist. On the evening before I intended to SOW the seeds I to sow the seeds I have immersed them in a weak solution of chlorine, and suffered them to remain until they begun to swell.

By pursuing this treatment even with our English annual seeds, I am gratified with an earlier germination and with generally stronger and more healthy plants.

To dry Flowers.

They should be dried off as speedily as possible, the calyces, claws, etc., being previously taken off; when the flowers are very small the calyx is left, or even the whole flowering spike, as in the greatest portion of the labiate flowers; compound flowers with pappous seeds, as coltsfoot, ought to be dried very high and before they are entirely opened, otherwise the slight moisture that remains would develope the pappi, and these would form a kind of cottony nap, which would be very