Sir: I followed your directions last year in making strawberry beds, and with such extraordinary success, that I am induced to recur to the subject for the benefit of those who like myself would " take pains to excel as good cultivators" if they knew how. I began by collecting a dozen loads of good stable manure, rejecting all the Utter. I then marked out the ground to be devoted to strawberries, and commencing on one side opened a trench three feet wide, by wheeling all the top soil, for six inches deep, to the opposite side of the intended strawberry plat.

I then spread a coat of the stable manure 4 inches thick, over the lower layer of soil, laid bare in the trench, and turned it under, mixing it well with this soil. Then I threw the top soil of the next space of three feet upon the bottom soil in the trench already manured. This left a new space or trench 8 feet wide, which was manured and trenched like the other, and this was repeated till the whole plat was worked over. I then dug over and levelled the top soil again, mixing some decomposed manure with the surface of the beds on making them. Through these beds I set two rows of plants, the rows 14 inches apart - the plants 10 inches apart in the rows. I removed the plants early in August - -young runners with little balls of earth attached. I directly covered the beds with tan-bark, 2 inches deep. This kept the plants cool and moist, so that they struck root immediately, and made such extraordinarily fine plants, that I have had a fine crop this season, many of the berries measuring 8 to 4 inches.

I planted 8 sorts, and after trial prefer the fol-lowing. Burr's New Pine, Hovey's Seedling, Swainstone Seedling, Early Scarlet. Tours, A Philadelphia SUBSCRIBER. July 14, '52.