the cranberry region of our State. Where there is an entire absence of sand, a thin dressing might be desirable, as well as to aid the growth of the vine as to retard the grasses. All judicious cultivators of the cranberry would of course seek the soil where it naturally abounds. Others, who would like to experiment upon their farms or gardens, need only remember that sand and water are the essentials of the cranberry.

VARIETIES.

In the varieties submitted to your inspection, we find a blending of the three different varieties, the Bell, the Black and the Pear. The large globular Bell variety is the most valuable. We are unable to destinguish them from the leaf or stalk, and so far as we have observed, they seem blended together without the differences in softness of texture that in the opinion of some, characterize certain varieties. We must confess, however, that the more practical questions, how to realize the largest, finest, and the greatest number of cranberries, have prevented minute investigation upon this branch of the subject. From the considerations that have been hastily penned, we gather the following reasons why an increased attention upon the part of our citizens should be paid to the cultivation of the cranberry.

1st. It is profitable. The cultivators of Massachusetts have found it profitable after paying two or three hundred dollars per acre in preparing the ground; and accurate calculations including every expense, have shown that it is a paying crop at even $1,00 per bushel. If profitable there, where land is worth from $50 to $100 dollars per acre, how much more so, in the cheap lands of Indiana, where large bodies of land are owned byrailroad companies and speculators, who would realize at from $6,00 to $15,00 per acre. In many places the plants are already set to some extent, and the entire expense of transplanting and cultivation would not exceed $20,00, while the average price per bushel is $2,00 on the ground, and the average annual net proceeds, from $150 to $200 per acre. Again, fruits and cattle are the natural products of the cranberry region. Grapes surpassing any cultivated variety we have ever seen, strawberries, whortleberries and cranberries grow spontaneously, while apples, and especially peaches and stone-fruits mature with a luxuriance of growth and delicacy of flavor, unknown in other portions of the State. This, together with the abundant range for cattle, renders this region desirable, independent of the cranberry; and this brings us to the second position, that the "Swamp Land," or cranberry region of Indiana, offers greater inducements to the intelligent emigrant than any other portion of the Union.

3. It is healthy. The swamps are not stagnant like the miasmatic bayous of ordinary streams, but the waters flowing through the sand retain their purity and

sweetness.

4. There is no danger of overstocking the market. The home consumption of our own State will require all that can be raised for years. This season they were worth from $4 to $6 in Lafayette and Indianapolis, and the demand exceeded the supply.

In addition to these physical advantages, there are the facinations of the chase, and the gratification of the ideal faculties of our own nature.

English Lake and the Kankakee swarm with the finest of fish; deer and prairie

chickens abound, while ducks and geese darken the air with their hovering armies. And then the glorious freedom of the chase-tenting under the frosty canopy of an October moon-tales of border life by the camp fire's waning light-these associa tions, stamp with unmixed delight the memory of the Kankakee.

And finally, there is poetry there; undulating hills covered with verdure, flowerbe-spangled prairies, waiving grass, purling streams, and all the sights and sounds of primeval existence.

Picture those prairies teeming with flocks and herds, those hills adorned with houses, gardens and orchards, and you will have a vision of earthly happiness that may well tempt others besides your speaker to try the joys and privations of pioneer life.

Then, whilst others are led off by the siren watchwords of Kansas and Nebraska, from the real and tangible to the ideal and illusive, ever trusting that the distant is the beautiful, let us not forget the one great lesson, that although toil is the penalty of success, among the varied departments of Agriculture, there is no branch of industry that will so well repay the intelligent laborer as the cultivation of the cranberry.

ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES

DELIVERED BEFORE

COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES.

ADDRESS

Delivered before the Laporte County Agricultural Society, October 6th, 1855.

BY LEWIS BOLLMAN, OF MONROE COUNTY.

Hybridism, the cause of the deterioration of our wheats. Breeding in and in, breeding by hybridism, or by crossing animals of diverse qualities. Pedigree.

The word hybridism, when applied to the intermixture of varieties, as well as species, expresses the general subject of my address, but its particular object is to point out an error in the cultivation of wheat, and a common violation of certain laws in the breeding of stock, and, in pointing out these, to show also the relation between the science and the art of agriculture.

Wheat is your great product. You, and we more southerly, and indeed all farmers everywhere, complain that the best varieties so soon run out * The Patent Office is laboring to remedy this evil by bringing to us wheat from all parts of the world, but still the complaint continues. Ask a farmer what is the cause of this degeneracy, and the invariable answer is that it is owing to the climate and soil, or something else. The old red bearded chaff, so extensively cultivated a few years ago, he will say, used to be the most enduring variety, yet it too has run out. The climate has changed-things are not as they were in each of our younger days, or something else is the matter. Thus it is that all our guessing at causes terminates

*Since making this address, I find the following in the Ohio Agricultural Report for 1852, page 270: "The remark was made to us by one of our most discerning citizens, who deals extensively in wheat and flour, that the white varieties turn a darker color, and otherwise deteriorate in quality the third year after being introduced to our soil and climate."

Also, the following in the Wisconsin Report of 1853, page 217:

"The grain (wheat) has depreciated in quality by its constant reproduction on the same soil, by care Jessness in the selection of seed and by disease and mixtures never guarded against."

in that something, which is so nearly related to that somebody who talks so much, yet knows nothing-nothing at least that is good of anybody.

Now let me ask, is this guess-work the way to discover the cause of the evil of which we complain? Nature, we know, does not act blindly, but in all her operations acts by laws, which her God impressed upon her works when He created the heavens and the earth. To discover the principles of these laws is the work of science; and hence you perceive how blindly the art of agriculture acts, when its operations are not dictated by science. Indeed the simplest operations of the farm cannot be conducted but by observing these laws. Wood has a quality we call its grain-the farmer splits rails by obedience to this quality or principle, not by disregarding it, directed by science.

That foreign wheats are much influenced by our soil and climate, no one denies, but that our native varieties would be deteriorated by them, no one is going to believe. There, then, is some other cause for this evil. What is it?

When a person plants a melon and a pumpkin near each other, he finds the vines producing a vegetable which does not eat like a melon or cook like a pumpkin. Even your Yankees cannot make a pie out of this product; and it might be cooled in such springs as we have in Monroe, yet the tired and thirsty laborer in the harvest field could not eat it. As Mr. Sparrowgrass, in that far best of all monthlies, Putnam, says: "I had the satisfaction, however, of producing a curious hybrid in my melon patch, by planting squashes in the next bed. I do not know which to admire most-the influence of the melon on the squash, or the influence of the squash on the melon. Planted side by side, you can scarcely tell one from the other, except from appearance; but if you ever do eat a boiled musk melon, or a squash raw, you will have some idea of this singular and beautiful phenomenon."

Here Mr. Sparrowgrass speaks of this product as a hybrid, and Mr. Webster tells us that a hybrid is an animal or plant, produced from the mixture of two species. You know that plants have male and female parts of blossoms-the tassel in corn is the male, the silk the female, and the fine yellow dust which falls from the tassel is that part which makes the ear fruitful. There is a union of the characters of plants by this dust, or pollen as it is technically called.

Science shows us this, and, reasoning scientifically, let us see whether the degeneracy of wheat is not owing to a promiscuous intermixture of varieties.

A hybrid, you will remember, is a cross between two species, or varieties of the same species. When, therefore, we sow different wheat near to each other, what is the result? A union of the two, producing not simply a third variety, but numerous varieties. But the cradle of the farmer-no! that is an antiquated word up here, for you have the reaper-the reaper cuts along the line of the varieties sown, and the farmer declares that in one swath is the Mediterranean and in the other is the blue-stem. And yet neither the one nor the other is in either swath. Soon after the Mediterranean was introduced into our country, several farmers spoke of the improvement the soil was making in this variety. The grain was not so long, but it is thicker and fairer, they said. Last harvest, a year ago, I was helping a neighbor to cradle his wheat, and rubbing some out in his hand, he declared it was nothing but the common bearded, yet the seed he said had been sold to him for the Mediterranean. Last fall, wishing to get some of this variety, I hunted for it among my neighbors, but it was not to be found. One neighbor had

some, which had a pedigree equal to most of what is called pedigrees of thorough bred Durhams, and from him I purchased. It ripened just ten days later than it ought to have done; for I cut it and a variety of white wheat on the same day. In other words, we have no Mediterranean in our county; and I doubt much whether you have.* If it is to be found at all, it will be in the barn of some obstinate countryman of mine, some Dutchman, who has refused to sow any other kind on his farm, and who, at first, was lucky enough to get pure seed.

On this question of hybridization the following remarks are interesting. I take them from the lecture of Mr Lindley, in a work entitled "Lectures on the Progress of Arts and Sciences resulting from the Great Exhibition in London:"

"But this," says the Lecturer, "leads to a question which I think of the highest interest, and one which has been more distinctly brought out in the exhibition that has just been closed than it has ever been before. We all know the effect of hy bridizing, or crossing the races of animals; and we also know that, within certain limits, this may be done in the vegetable kingdom. We are all aware that our gardeners are skillful in preparing by such means those different varieties of beautiful flowers and admirable fruits which have become common in all the more civilized parts of Europe; but no one has paid much attention to the point as regards cereal crops. Yet it is to be supposed that if you can double the size of a turnip, or if you can double the size of a rose, or produce a hardy race of any kind from one that is tender, or the reverse, in the case of ordinary plants, you should be able to produce the same effect when operating on cereal crops. It so happens, however, that the experiment has not been tried except on the most. limited scale, and to what extent it may have been carried has been more brought out in this exhibition than ever it was before. '

"In the last treatise on this subject, by Dr. Gaertner, a German writer, who has collected all the information relating to the production of hybrids in the vegetable kingdom, the author declares that, as to experiments on cereal plants, they can hardly be said to have an existence. The exhibition has, nevertheless, shown us that they have been made, and some examples will tell with what result. I have no very good means here of explaining such' experiments, but I must advert to them, because they prove distinctly that you may operate upon the constitutional peculiarities of wheat, just as you may upon those peculiarities in any other plant.

"For instance, Mr. Raynbird, of Laverstoke, who obtained, in 1848, a gold medal from the Highland Society for experiments of the kind, sent to the exhibition this box, which contains a bunch of Hopetown wheat, a white variety, and a bunch of Pipris Thickset, which is red. The latter is coarse and short strawed, and liable to mildew, but very productive. Mr. Raynbird desired to know what would be the result of crossing it with the Hopetown wheat, and the result is now before us in the form of four hybrids, obtained from those varieties. If you will take the trouble to examine them, you will see that beyond all doubt the new races thus obtained are intermediate between the two parents-the ears are shorter than in the Hopetown and longer than in the Thickset wheat; in short there is an intermediate condition plainly perceptible in them throughout. And it appears from

*I subsequently examined some wheats on a farm in Laporte county, and found them completely hybridized, there being almost as many varieties as there were grains.

A. R.-20.