obtained from trees grown on a sandy, loamy soil, with a dry bottom. On very rich soils it grows too much to wood, on very poor soils the fruit ripens prematurely. Fig orchards should be planted about twenty feet apart, and cultivated be. tween the trees, till they nearly cover the ground. Never speak of your figs blooming: they never flower, to the eye; and the mode of fructifying is rather a speculation, even in the present day. “There is something very singular in the fructification of the Fig: it has no visible flower, for the fruit arises immediately from the joints of the tree, in the form of little buds, with a perforation at the end, but not opening or showing anything like petals or the ordinary parts of fructification. As the Fig enlarges, the flower comes to maturity in concealment, and in eastern countries the fruit is improved by a singular operation called caprification. This is performed by suspending by threads, above the cultivated figs, branches of the wild fig, which are full of a species of cynips. When the insect has become winged, it quits the wild Fig and penetrates the cultivated ones, for the purpose of laying its eggs; and thus it appears both to insure the fructification by dispersing the pollen, and afterwards to hasten the ripening by puncturing the pulp and causing a change of the nutricious juices. In France this operation is imitated by inserting straws dipped in olive oil.”—Lib. of Ent. Knowledge.
Pruning.—“The more you prune the less the crop,” is proverbial in Fig culture. All that is required is to shorten any irregular or overgrowing shoot, and cut out dead wood, of which more or less will show itself every few years.
FILBERT.
Córylus Avellana.—Noisette, Fr.—Nussbaum, Ger.
The common Hazel Nut will never be an article of profit to the American gardener or husbandman; yet we introduce the
