might not clear the land quite as effectually, and with little greater cost in the end. The mischief is, that in England we are prone to take it for granted that certain evils are irremediable, without ever fairly trying to remove them. Thus, if our hedges or trees are generally and extensively infested with caterpillars, we should laugh at the idea of getting rid of them by any manual operations; and yet the French and Belgians, in similar cases, constantly employ such means; and, in fact, the municipal authorities every year enjoin, by printed notices and fines for noncompliance, on the proprietors of land, to écheniller their trees. Even the very Turks (in such matters less fatalists than ourselves) have the good sense to send out whole armies to collect locusts, and to destroy them (as mentioned in the papers in a recent instance) by thousands of bushels. [THE process d'écheniller, or of removing caterpillars, as practised in Belgium, and also in some parts of Germany, in the 74 case of trees of considerable height, is, to cut off the points of the young shoots, on the leaves of which the caterpillars are feeding, with an échenil 75 loir, or with a very long- oldest Dutch books on gardening we have; 76 Here the blades of the instrument are fixed; and, forming two acute angles, a shoot may be cut off with either of them, by 77 pushing the instrument upwards, or drawing it downwards. Many improved forms have since been produced of the échenilloir, or averruncator, both on the Continent and in Britain, most of which will be found figured in the Encyc. of Gard., new edit. One of the best is shown in fig. 75.; but fig. 76. is nearly equally good. One of the cheapest, and simplest in construction, is fig. 77.; and one, by which a small twig may not only be cut off, but held by the instrument till it is brought down, is shown in fig. 78.; in which a shows the cord for varying the direction of the cutting or clipping part of the machine, so as to adapt its extremities to the position of the twig to be cut off; and b is the 78 cord which effects the operations of cutting and holding.] ART. II. Some Account of Gardens and the State of Gardening in the North and West Ridings of Yorkshire. By J. B. W. (Continued from Vol. XII. p. 562.) NEWBY HALL, near Ripon; Earl de Grey. - The house (said to be by Sir Christopher Wren) is a commanding structure, originally, I believe, quadrangular; but its "fair proportions" have been barbarously altered by a modern addition of two excrescences in the form of wings on the east front. Some rooms on the north side also seem not to have formed part of the original building. It is situated on the brow of a gentle slope which leads down to the river Ure, and commands on its south and west fronts pleasing views of the valley of the Ure, and the wooded hills of Studley: on the east is the featureless park; and on the north, a short distance from the house, are the extensive and extremely well-built stables. These are square, enclosing a spacious yard, in the centre of which is an orna mental pump, seen to advantage through the arched entrance from the pleasure-ground. Like the house, the stables are built of brick, except the two sides which front the house and the park; and these are of freestone, with several untenanted niches for busts in the former. The pleasure-ground is very much confined in breadth, although there is ample space for its extension between the mansion and the river: it, however, extends a considerable distance in one direction along the banks of the river. The trees in this pleasure-ground are of less common kinds than are usually seen at old places. I noticed two or three fine specimens of Quércus Cérris and Q. álba (?); likewise two very large trees of Plátanus occidentalis; a variegated-leaved oak, 30 ft. or 40 ft. high; a Salisburia adiantifòlia, 16 ft. or 18 ft. high, and as many inches in circumference; a large Magnòlia conspícua; several beautiful limes; and a magnificent oak, of singular growth, dividing, near the ground, into several tree-like limbs. An opaque-roofed green-house stands in the corner of the pleasure-ground: the plants it contains are of the commonest kinds, except some of Barratt's new fuchsias. A mass of flower-beds, enclosed by a wire fence, is extremely ill placed close to the west front of the house these beds have nothing whatever to recommend them, and it is seen at a glance that they have no business where they are. The gardener, Mr. Smith, has, in the short time he has lived here, made some very judicious alterations in the pleasureground, which, however, is still capable of being greatly improved. The kitchen-garden is large, and excellently situated, sloping gently to the south, and well sheltered at the back and sides. It is a parallelogram, with the melon ground at the east, and a small flower-garden at the west, end. The hot-houses are placed against the north wall: they are old, and of the common construction; nor did they, when I saw them (July 11.), contain any thing worthy of praise, except some young vines planted last year by Mr. Smith, which are exceedingly well managed. The south wall of the kitchen-garden is rather oddly ornamented with a considerable number of vases placed along its top. It may be owing to my defective taste; but it struck me that ornaments of this description, stuck upon the top of a common brick wall, of which the obvious intention is the production of fruit, and unconnected with any other architectural object, have a singularly incongruous effect. In the melon ground are two new fruiting pine pits, very neat; but economy of space, which, next to "fitness for the end in view," is the most important consideration in the construction of houses intended solely for the growth of fruit, has been entirely lost sight of. Against the back of one of these houses there are stone troughs, after the manner of those described in the account of Studley, in which cucumbers are planted and trained to wires fixed in the wall. A new variety of cucumber, called, if I recollect right, "Walker's Improved," is grown here, and Mr. Smith speaks highly of its merits. [Probably the cucumber raised by C. J. S. Walker, Esq., of Longford, near Manchester, of which we saw a perfectly straight fruit, measuring 39 in., in 1831.] The family reside here only during part of the autumn and winter months, and the place is not kept in high order at other times. The evils of absenteeism do not fall upon Ireland alone; its blighting effects are too visible about many of our fine old country residences. It should be here observed, that, in hastily looking at an extensive place, many things are unavoidably passed over, which, upon a more deliberate survey, would be found worthy of notice. August 18. 1836. ART. III. Suggestions relative to the Amelioration of our edible Fruits with more Certainty than has hitherto been done; with some preliminary Observations on Grafting, Disbudding, &c. By D. BEATON. SHOOTS of apple or pear trees, or, indeed, shoots of any tree of more than one year's growth, may be grafted from February to August, first divesting them of their leaves and the young wood of this season's growth. Oak shoots, three years old, may be readily grafted about the end of May, when prepared in this manner. I believe Mr. Knight is the author of this system, having grafted some walnuts according to it. I have grafted fruit trees for experiment in this way, in every month of the summer, and also seen the oak so grafted; but one year's growth will not succeed. Another peculiarity of one-year-old wood is, if you cut out the buds of last summer's growth in the winter or spring, leaving only the bud at the extremity for extension, the part so disbudded will not form latent or adventitious buds. If, after following this system of disbudding for a few years, you cut out the bud at the extremity, the shoot will die down to where you first disbudded it, although it were the leading shoot of the strongest inhabitant of the forest. Again, a growing shoot, although divested of its leaves as soon as they are unfolded, will grow as fast, and increase as much in diameter, as another shoot with its leaves in full operation, other circumstances being the same; but, if you continue disleafing the second season, there will hardly be any addition to the diameter of the shoot. Disbudding in this manner the summer's shoots, as they proceed in growth, is the simplest mode I know of for reducing the strength of an over-luxuriant tree. As little or none of the sap taken up by such shoots is elaborated, it is entirely lost to the general secretion of the parent tree. By this method I have, in three years, reduced healthy vigorous young pear trees to the point of starvation. I have now several such trees, on free stocks, and in good rich soil, without more than a dozen of wood buds on a tree, the size of the trees being from 5 ft. to 7 ft. high, and from 4 ft. to 6 ft. in diameter at the lowest branches. When a tree fills the space allotted to it against a wall, and shows a disposition to still further growth, by throwing up strong vertical shoots above the wall, and luxuriant breast wood on the main boughs, instead of checking this disposition by any mode of pruning or training, I assist the tree to throw off the superabundant sap by disleafing the breast wood and vertical shoots; and in the winter pruning I displace all the buds, even the topmost ones, of such shoots, after which they will die off by degrees. If your trees are not very luxuriant indeed, one year of this treatment will reduce them to moderation; otherwise you must continue it. From a long train of experiments and observations, which it would be of little interest to notice further, I have lately taken up certain ideas relative to the amelioration of our edible fruits with more certainty than has hitherto been done. The principle on which I would proceed is in strict accordance with that laid down by the best writers on the subject; yet my application of it would indicate the very reverse. It is well known that the seed is nourished, in a great measure, by the constituent parts of what we call the fruit; and it is equally well known how essential it is to concentrate the saccharine secretions of a tree in its seed, when it is intended to obtain a new or improved variety from that seed. After dusting the stigma of the variety from which the future fruit is intended to originate with the pollen of the desired male parent, advantage is taken of every possible stimulant to produce the largest and most perfectly formed fruit which the given variety is capable of producing; inferring that the fruit, in the same degree, is capable of conveying the peculiar secretions of the tree to its seed. The inference is entitled to all the attention which has been paid to it; and, in dissenting from this inference without proof of how far my own ideas may be found to supersede or corroborate it, I merely beg the attention of the amateur who has leisure and patience to prosecute the subject; circumstances over which I had no control having prevented myself from following it up for the present. The circulation of the juices of plants, and the office of leaves, are now known to every one. As soon as the circulation begins actively in the spring, the roots take up a fresh supply of sap; which, in its ascent to the leaves, mixes with the juices already in the body of the tree; and, according as the supply of this solution is greater or less, so is the corresponding size of the fruit; from which we may safely infer that the fruit is chiefly nourished by the solution, though it may be capable of rejecting or throwing off any matter foreign to its own nature. Now, if, instead of supplying this abundance of sap by means of stimulants, you prevent its accumulation, and force the fruit, as it were, to subsist on the already elaborated juices stored up in the body of the tree, you will insure the peculiar secretion of the tree in an unadulterated state, for the nourishment of the fruit and seed. On this rests my idea of improving our fruits; and I recommend the following method to attain the end in view : Take a healthy vigorous tree, trained against a south wall: if it has borne no fruit for the last season or two, so much the |