If we turn to a good map of Europe we will see at a glance that the importing of fruits so far has been from the west coast of France, Belgium, and Holland, or from the south of England. As with our west coast, this whole region has been made a land of verdure by the soft, humid air of the Gulf stream. Tracing on the map the line of the Carpathian and Caucasus mountains, we find three-fourths of all Europe, north and east of these ranges, without a mountain or hill traced on the great expanse except the Valdai hills, and these are only bluffs not as high or extensive as those of our rivers and dividing ridges. It is the greatest plain section of the world, and is the ancient home of the best fruits of the temperate zones. Common sense should lead us to give trial to the horticultural products of this plain. To find apples, pears, cherries, and plums as hardy, and as well adapted to the hot summers and cold winters of Illinois and Iowa as the Fameuse apple, we need not enter the empire of Russia. Northeastern Austria has a variable summer and winter climate, which will not permit the growing of apples of the grade of hardiness of the Ben Davis, Stark, Jonathan, and Dominie; of pears of the grade of Flemish Beauty, or of cherries of the grade of Early Richmond as to foliage and ability to endure low temperature. The commercial nursery-man who will visit the "King's Pomological Institute," at Proskau, in North Silesia, will see at a glance, as he wanders over the ground, that the fruits, forest trees, ornamental trees and shrubs of the nurseries of England, France, Belgium, etc., suddenly disappear with the Carpathians on the edge of the great steppes. J. L. BUDD, AG. COLLEGE, AMES, IOWA. Prunings. The soil for window boxes is the same as for plant culture in pots; the best is that formed by rotted sods with a little well decomposed stable manure mixed with it. Rhubarb requires deep, rich soil. A good dressing of well-rotted manure, put on the ground this winter when it is not frozen, will start off the plants briskly in the spring. The same is true for asparagus. Mr. Russel Heath, Carpenteria, Cal., has an "English walnut orchard" of two hundred acres of rich, level land, near the sea-shore. The trees are from ten to twenty-five years planted. His crop in 1882 was 630 sacks of 70 pounds each; this season he expects the harvest will aggregate about one-third more. Gardener's Monthly: The writer found among the gardeners in Canada, when in that country recently, that the English plan of preserving grapes in bottles of water was in not uncommon use. The bunches are cut with pieces of stems, and then so arranged that the ends are in bottles of water. By this plan the grapes can be preserved far into the spring season.