at the bottom of the trenches, we deem a great mistake. We cannot, with our limited space, discuss at length matters of practice; the most we can do is to state in few and plain words what we consider the best mode of procedure. In regard to an asparagus bed, we recommend the following plan, which we have proved to our satisfaction, and so have others at our suggestion. The best soil for asparagus is a sandy loam. Select a good warm spot, and have at hand a heap of good short manure, which will be improved by being composted with ashes. The ground should be trenched two spades deep, and the manure worked in as the trenching proceeds, so as to insure its being well mixed all through the soil. The manure should be used very liberally, if fine large stalks are expected. Having finished trenching, rake the plot over thoroughly and finely; the more the soil is stirred the better. All this should be done very early in spring. Having procured good seed, separate them from the capsule, so that not more than one seed will be dropped in the same place. Next draw drills two inches deep and eighteen inches apart, and sow the seed three or four inches apart in the drills. After the seeds are well up, they are to be thinned out to twelve inches apart in the rows. Between each three drills leave a walk a couple of feet wide. This will allow room for cutting the asparagus without the necessity of trampling upon the beds. The plants having been thinned out as above, are to remain as a permanent bed; and if the soil has been well prepared, the plants thinned out in due season, and kept free from weeds by repeated hoeings, the asparagus may be cut at the end of the second year; and the stalks will be as strong as those from a bed three years old made in the usual way. The cutting, especially the first year, should not be carried too far, or the plants will be weakened. In the fall of the year the beds may be covered with manure, which should be forked in the following spring; at which time a liberal dressing of salt may be given with great advantage. When the tops are cut down in the fall, they should be burned as soon as dry, and the ashes spread over the beds. An asparagus bed, when well made, will last a lifetime; and it is so great a luxury, that no place, however small, should be without one.

DAHLIA ROOTS.-These should be kept from growing as long as possible; but when this can no longer be done, select a warm, sheltered spot for them, and cover them with earth. If signs of frost should appear, cover them well with straw. It is.only when they have been kept in a warm place that they will begin to grow thus early. In our next we shall describe the best modes of propagating them.

RADISH. A warm border should be selected for early radishes as soon as the frost is out of the ground. Dig in a little manure, pulverize the soil finely, and sow the seed in drills about six inches apart. The best early kinds are the Strap-leaved Red-top, Early Turnip, Long Salmon, and Early Olive. Subsequent crops may be grown among beets, carrots, etc., as described hereafter.

THE LAST WINTER appears to have been as remarkable in England as in this country. A London periodical, under date of January first, says:

The year begins wonderfully out of season, with a calm and quiet day, and a temperature of forty eight or thereby, in the shade too, and all sorts of flowers blooming, and fruit trees blossoming most unnaturally in this central day of our strange winter. A great many of the general public are said to indulge in seabathing on the coast of Northumberland. Strawberries and cream have been enjoyed to dessert after dinner in Aberdeenshire. The broom blooms beautifully in Surrey. Apples, like nuts in size, are common in Herefordshire. Bewildered linnets have been caught making nests, and attempting to rear families in a dozen of counties. Roses are superabundant, and hyacinths are a drug in the flower gardens on New Year's day. Devonshire, the Devon paragraphists say. is a rush of blossoms; and a certified list of botanical lished. wonders in full show at Bournemouth has been pubWhat all this unnatural weather portends and prognosticates we cannot guess; but it comes before something.

PROFIT OF CULTIVATING PEARS.-On this subject we made some remarks in a former number of THE NATIONAL. The Country Gentleman of a recent date gives some facts and figures which abundantly confirm our statements:

The following instances of the large profits of raising pears, are from the proceedings of the Fruit Growers' Society of Western New York, and are not to be re garded as unusual or extraordinary instances, or not

easily attainable, for in most of the instances little or no cultivation was given. Mrs. George, of Victor, sold $24 worth of White Doyenne pears from one tree eighteen years old, on the tree, and the buyer picked them. Marshall Phinley, of Canandaigua, has three White Doyenne pear-trees, one quite small; sells the pears on the trees for from $50 to $60 yearly; las been offered $100 per tree for the trees; they are constant bearers. Judge Howell has a tree of this variety of pear, seventy years of age, which has not failed of a good crop for forty years, and has averaged about twenty bushels a year for the last twenty years, which have sold on the tree at the average of $3 per bushel, or $60 a year. This tree has produced for the New York market $3,750 worth of pears. Judge Taylor has three large trees of this pear of the same age; yielded in 1854 eleven barrols; sold for $137. T. Chapin has a young orchard of this variety, of four hundred trees, some eight years from planting. He sold thirty barrels in New York, in the fall of 1853. for $15 per barrel-$450. In 1854 his crop amounted to fifty barrels, which he sold in New York, for from $18 to $22 per barrel-average $20-equal to $1000.

HORSE TAMING.-An American in England has been astonishing the nobility and gentry, royalty too, in fact, by his wonderful skill in training and subduing horses, however wild and ungovernable. He has given several illustrations of his skill, and to two or three English noblemen has revealed his method, under the pledge of the most inviolable secrecy. A writer in the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, professes to have discovered the secret; and as it may be of use to some of our readers, we copy the material portion of his article:

We believe that the peculiarity and secret in the treatment by Mr. Rarey, like that by his "confrères" who profess equal secrecy, consists in raising one of the fore feet of the horse, doubling the knee and keeping a strap around the fetlock, fastening the foot close to the arm or shoulder. The borse then stands upon three legs. Having next put on a surcingle, pass a long strap or rein through the surcingle, and fastening one end of it around the fetlock of the other fore foot, attach the other to the surcingle after the animal is thrown, so closely as to deprive it of the use of the limb. In this item the treatment may be varied by fastening the second fetlock to the arm or shoulder after the animal is down.

When the above course has been adopted the horse, 'confined to the ground, is entirely powerless. He should previously, if practicable, have been halterbroke, and a bridle should be kept on during the operation we have described. If he has shown much fear of any particular object, a buffalo-skin for instance, bring it before him, present it closely to his nose, wrap his head up in it, and by every practicable method teach him what men and horses are slow to learn, that imaginary dangers cause more fear than realities. This may alse be done by opening and shutting an umbrella close to his face, by beating a drum or firing a pistol near his head, or many other experiments.

This plan is successfully pursued by many skillful horse-breakers among the hills and valleys of Western New York, and the horse yields to the necessities of the case; his spirit of opposition is broken.

THE WORLD AT LARGE.
A map of busy life,
Its fluctuations and its vast concerns.-COWPER.

An explosion of gas took place in the basement of the Methodist Protestant Church in Sixthstreet, near Race, Cincinnati, on Friday evening, Feb. 19, occasioned by defective pipes. The floor was torn up, the walls were shattered, and the basement was made a complete wreck. A number of persons were holding a meeting in the place at the time, eight or ten of whom were seriously injured, several of them fatally. On Saturday night, Feb. 20, the Pacific Hotel, at St. Louis, was burned to the ground. The house was full at the time, and a large number of the inmates perished in the flames or were buried under the ruins. It was supposed to be the act of an incendiary. Five steamboats were destroyed by fire on the 22d of February, at New Orleans. At one time the whole of the shipping in port was in a precarious condition. . . . Late accounts from Camp Scott, the present headquarters of the Utah expedition, state that the troops are in good spirits and eager for a descent on Salt Lake City. The Mormons, according to reliable evidence received by Col. Johnston, were actively engaged in making preparations for resistance in the spring. Governor Cumming was performing the duties of his office to the best of his ability under the circumstances.. A lad named O'Donnell, who was run over on the Hudson River Railroad, at Troy, last month, and had his leg amputated, states that he feels all the sensations in his foot and the lower part of his leg which he did before the amputation, and describes thom accurately. A strange instance of retention or "memory" in the nerve. . . . Mr. Romaine Dillon, brother of Robert J. Dillon, of this city, has been confirmed by the U. S. Senate as Secretary of Legation to Brazil. An important suit has been instituted by Mr. Aaron Blake, against the Union Ferry Company, to recover property now occupied by them at Hamilton Ferry, and embracing a large part of the lands in use by them at that place. Col. Wolcot, the refractory witness before the Congressional Investigating Committee at Washington, in the Lawrence, Stone, & Co. case, has

answers.

been committed to the custody of the sergeantat-arms, and sent to jail to remain there until he Bills have been reported in the New-York Senate by Mr. Schell, and in the Assembly by Mr. Hanford, to remove the seat of goverument of this state from Albany to this city... Schooner Bloomfield Drummond, a wrecking schooner of this city, belonging to Messrs. Herbert and Bennett, and employed in bringing iron from the ship Clara Brookman, ashore at Squam, sunk last month off Long Branch, and all her crew, eight in number, perished. One man was taken dead from the rigging on Wednesday morning, the rest have not been found.... Mrs. Millard Fillmore, the second, to whom ex-President Fillmore was married at Albany in February, proves to have been, before her marriage with Mr. Schuyler, a Miss Carmichael, born at Morristown, New Jersey. The ex-president and his lady will make their residence at Buffalo. A Southern Steamship Convention was held at Richmond, Va., on the 24th of Feb. Ten railroad companies were represented. The capital stock of the company is arranged to be $3,000,000, and two steamers are to be built at Norfolk and twe in France, if the arrangements can be perfected. .. Government orders have been received at Brooklyn Navy Yard, to pay official honors to Mohammed Pasha on his arrival, and to offer him every facility for inspecting naval vessels and yards. Capt. Durham and his clipper-ship Adriatic, retaken by the French in the Gulf of Spezzia, and carried into Genoa, after their escape from Marseilles, is reported, by private advices from Europe, to have once more escaped from Genoa, and probably gone off in triumph. . The Freemasons of Virginia have resolved, as a body, to lend their aid toward the purchase of Mount Vernon, and invite the order in other states to follow suit... A verdict for $50 has been rendered in favor of Roswell Green, of Brooklyn, against Rev. J. H. Hobart Brown, of the Episcopal Free Church of the Good Angels, for slandering the character of Green in their church relations. Commodore Matthew C. Perry died at his residence in New York on the 4th of March, after a severe attack of chronic rheumatism of about ten days' duration. Dictator Comon fort's only daughter accompanied him in his flight to New Orleans from Mexico, and both are expected north to visit the principal cities at an early day... M. Blondel von Callenbreck has been appointed by the King of the Belgians Minister Resident at Washington. He has recently been Charge at Constantinople, and exchanges places with M. de Brosch Spencer, the present Minister at Washington, who goes to the East. N. B. Tuyl, who kidnapped the free negroes at Geneva, in this state, and sold them in Kentucky, a few months since, has been arrested at New-Orleans, and will be returned to Kentucky for trial. A bill to increase the army was defeated in the U. S. Senate on the 25th of Feb ruary, by a vote of 35 to 16. The detention of the Collins steamers from their regular trips, is said to be on account of the taking out of an attachment by Brown, Brothers, & Co., against the company, for nearly seven hundred thousand dollars, on which they are now held by the sheriff of this city. . . . A heavy fire took place on the 29th of February, on Maiden-lane and Libertystreet, doing damage to the amount of nearly a quarter of a million. . . . The Tennessee Senate, by a vote of sixteen to six, have passed resolutions disapproving of Hon. John Bell's course on the Kansas question in the U. Senate, and asking for his resignation. . . A machine for blacking boots and shoes has been patented by a firm at Newark, N. J. . . . Two distinguish

tionists were left dead on the field. Government had offered propositions of peace which were both liberal and merciful, and it was thought that President Castilla would emerge from the strife with a glory which could not be tarnished even by his opponents in the Church. An attempt had been made by the officers of the war steamer Ucayali to take off the vessel for revolutionary purposes, but it was frustrated. Officers who served under the late government, but remained neutral during the last revolution, are to be restored to their rank. A new cabinet has been formed in Bolivia, and the army was being reduced. The administration of President Lenares was producing very good effects. InChili the government and the opposition were both preparing for a severe election struggle. Money was much more plenty. The crops were excellent, and promised a very full yield. The merchant steamer Catapilco was wrecked off Pichedangui on the 8th of January.

The Princess Royal of England was married to the Prince of Prussia on the 26th of January. They left England for Prussia in February. The launch of the Leviathan was happily_concluded, and without accident, on the 31st January, and she is now fairly afloat and moored at Deptford, waiting the completion of her interior arrangements..... The Atlantic Telegraph Company have held a meeting and made arrangements for securing the balance of stock necessary. A considerable number of honorary directors were appointed at this meeting; among others those from this city are Consul Archibald, Auguste Belmont, Peter Cooper, Francis P. Corbin, Wilson G. Hunt, A. Low, Matthew Morgan, and Watts Sherman. Resolutions were passed highly complimentary to Mr. Cyrus W. Field, in connection with the enterprise, and it was announced that he would have the general business charge of the enterprise during the work of laying the cable.... The British Parliament reassembled on the 4th of February. In the House of Lords a general debate took place, in the course of which Lord Derby, after referring to the still threatening state of affairs in India, spoke at some length upon the recent attempt on the life of the Emperor Napoleon, and hoped government would take early steps for disabusing the minds of the French people as to refugees in England. Earl Granville replied that notice had been given in the House of Commons of a measure for a change in the laws relative to conspiracies to murder formed upon English soil. Great pains have been taken by Louis Napoleon to moderate the tone of his officials toward England, and the result is a much better feeling toward him in high official quarters, though it scarcely seems to extend to the people. Lord Palmerston, on the Sth, asked leave to bring in a bill to make conspiracy to murder, felony; and a sharp debate ensued upon the motion, it being sarcastically opposed by Mr. Roebuck, Mr. Kinglake, and others. The leave was finally granted by a vote of two hundred and ninety-nine to ninety. It is believed, however, that the bill, when introduced, will meet with very sharp opposition, and that its chances of passing are but slight. Many extremists believe that a disruption of the ministry upon this subject at an early day is not improbable. Lord Palmerston had also introduced a bill in the House of Commons providing for the transfer of the governmental control of India to the Crown. In France reports were in circulation of the resignations of Marshal Valant, Minister of War, and of Count Walewski, Minister of Foreign Affairs. A vote of thanks to the army in India has been passed in the House of Lords, after some sharp objections to Lord Canning, the governor-general, being included in the list

of persons complimented. In both houses congratulatory addresses to the Queen on the marriage of the Princess Royal were unanimously agreed to. A resolution was adopted in the House of Commons conferring pensions of one thousand pounds a year each to the widow of the late Sir H. Havelock and the present baronet. A frightful explosion had taken place at a colliery near Ashton-under-Line. About one hundred were in the pit, and a great number were supposed to be killed. . . . Earl Ashburnham, who was sent to China and afterward to India, has returned to England, disatisfied with his command, and with the management of the war. Heavy drafts of troops were to leave at once for India. . . . A shocking catastrophe had occurred on the coast of England. The ship Leander, Captain Curtis, of Bath, Me., and the steamer North American, came in collision, and in a short time after the ship sunk, carrying down with her the captain's wife, the second mate, and eight of the crew.

French papers are principally occupied by details of the movements being made by the emperor to guard against the defeat of his son's succession in the event of his being assassinated. A law has been passed naming the empress as regent, in that event, and the empire is to be divided into four grand military divisions, under Baraquay, Hilliers, Canrobert, and Castellan, with Pelissier commander-in-chief. Real or pretended discoveries are being made with reference to the attempted assassination, which indicate that the elements were principally Italian, and that others besides Napoleon, prob ably the Kings of Naples and Sardinia, were to have been massacred.... One of the principals in the late attempt upon the life of the Emperor Napoleon, it is said, has been proved to be Thomas Alsopp, an Englishman, and wellknown as a former dealer upon the stock exchange. It is not stated that he has been ar rested. . . . A difficulty has sprung up between the French Government and the Swiss Confederation, on the subject of the extradition of refugees, and on the point M. Billault, French Minister of the Interior, has resigned. General Espinasse, aide de camp to the emperor, has been appointed in his place; but it was believed that he would be transferred to the minister of police.. A decree had been promulgated by Louis Napoleon, naming Prince Jerome President of the Council in his absence, and expressing every confidence in him. . . . The Crown Prince of Prussia and his bride made their public entry into Berlin on February 8th, and were enthusiastically received. The King of Prussia is to leave at once for Cannes for the benefit of his health. ... A new revolutionary plot was said to have been discovered at Madrid, though the particulars are not given.... Luigi La blache, the great singer, died at Naples on the 23d of January. Another rising in Rome is said to have been frustrated.... The Rothschilds were negotiating a loan for the papal government. . Accounts from China are of the highest interest. Canton was bombarded on the 28th of December, and the allied forces, consisting of four thousand six hundred British, and six hundred French, entered the town on that day. The resistance is reported as having been unexpectedly feeble. Indian news was favorable. Sir John Lawrence is to be ap pointed Lieutenant Governor of the Punjaub. Sir Colin Campbell had taken possession of the Furuchabad, and Gorrickpore had been taken by Maharajah Jung Bahador. General Outram's force of four thousand remained at Ellunbugh. Tranquillity had been partially restored to the disaffected districts.