Volume 4, Number 5, Whole Number 155

February 06, 1869

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DR. WARDER’S LECTURE

Dr. Warder’s lecture before the Onarga Horticultural Society in the library room of the REVIEW office, on Saturday last, was attended by about fifty ladies and gentlemen. The Doctor occupied about an hour on the subject of grape culture. It would be impossible for us to give his lecture without engravings, as his remarks were illustrated with vines, &c. He advocates planting the vine from eight to ten inches deep, trains on the trellis plan, and prunes vigorously. His remarks were received with approbation, and being a gentleman of great experience we must believe them to be nearly correct. We, however, know to a demonstration that his system of pruning is unsuccessful in this region. Cutting back to three or four eyes is not trimming but mutilation. In one breath the doctor told us that the foliage was the lungs that furnish life and nourishment to the roots of the vine, and in the next, he told us to cut off these lungs, to destroy as much as possible all the facilities necessary to make strong, healthy vines, because sick and mutilated ones do better for a few years. There are vines in this vicinity that have only been slightly trimmed for a dozen years, and for the past nine years have yielded from fifty to seventy-five pounds each season, while vines in the same neighborhood, that have been scientifically mutilated each season, are poor, weak, sickly vines, not worth cultivating. The Doctor gave his views on osage hedge culture, but judiciously informed his audience not to put too much confidence in a work he issued some years since, as he had changed his views. The Doctor will say the same in regard to his vine pruning in a few years. It may do well in the section of the country in which he resides-on Grand Prairie it won’t do.

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NEWS OF THE WEEK

-Burlington, Iowa, is $55,000 in debt.

-Davenport, Iowa, is $450,000 in debt.

-Blue birds are flying in Massachusetts.

-Violets are blooming in South Carolina.

-”Hair albums” are the latest thing out.

-Cleveland objects to the postal carrier system.

-The Abyssinian war cost England nearly $50,000,000

-A Utica (N.Y.) firm sells velocipedes at $25 apiece.

-Six bridesmaids and no groomsmen is the correct thing now.

-Scarlet fever is carrying off the children in Somerville, Mass.

-”We, the great American people” use daily 1,000,000 postage stamps.

-An Illinois cow, weighing 1,270 pounds brought $125 in Keokuk, Iowa.

-Massachusetts proposes to legislate gambling out of existance. What will become of the Boston stock brokers?

-The “oldest inhabitant” of the Massachusetts State prison was released on Friday. He had labored for the State twenty-one years.

-Private Jones fought in sixty battles and skirmishes during the late war, and came out minus a leg, and so poor in purse that he could not borrow money to buy a loaf of bread. He is in the almshouse now.

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LOCAL ITEMS

As a proof of the value of Onarga for fruit culture, we’ll state that our esteemed friend Luther T. Clark, who has forty acres in fruit about one mile from Onarga, was offered by an Ohio gentleman last week, $10,000 for his place. We remember very well when Mr. Clark was setting our his orchard, everybody said that he would drag the market; but he had no difficulty in reaping a harvest of greenbacks the past year, and a splendid prospect ahead.