FOREIGN NOTICES. 



generally with naked feet, through a forest of pillaws, soups, sweets, bowls of 

 sour milk, sherbets, and candlesticks, which they do with considerable skill, wait- 

 ing upon the guests without treading in the plates, or sweeping away their con- 

 tents with their long flowing garments. During the feast, the company are enter- 

 tained by the shrill and discordant notes of boys, who sing alternately verses from 

 the poets, and are accompanied by a musical instrument consisting of many strings, 

 struck with a hammer. Wine and ardent spirits are always taken by Persians 

 and Turks before dinner, and not during or after a meal. It is considered more 

 wholesome and agreeable to get drunk before eating, and an Eastern never drinks 

 without the intention of doing so to excess. He cannot understand the habit of 

 taking wine in small quantities as a simple stimulant. There is one invariable 

 accompaniment to all Persian dinners : a bowl of sugar and water, which is drunk 

 with a wooden spoon, frequently of very elegant shape, and of such extreme 

 delicacy, that, when used, it bends almost double. 



M. Pepin, of the Garden of Plants, has a note on the effects of sulphur on 

 camellias, and other kinds of house plants, to show that, though sulphur may be 

 good for vines and peaches, there is danger in using it for other plants in the 

 same manner. He mentions an instance in which the gardener of a gentleman 

 residing in Paris had applied it, in the month of October, to young camellias 

 covered with insects, thinking, as it is stated, that by this plan he would get rid 

 of them in the same way as those on the peaches treated for blight in the open 

 ground. But as the conditions were very different, the results were not the same. 

 It appears that the camellias in question, about fifty in number, were from three 

 to six feet high, planted out in clumps en espaliers ; some of them only were in 

 pots. Those in the clumps were trained in the pyramidal form, and the others in 

 the fan form along the walls of the house. The borders of the clumps were filled 

 with miscellaneous plants, having a margin of Lycopodium Braziliense. Shelves 

 running round the house were filled in the same way. 



The sulphur was applied in the evening, and, next morning, the ground was 

 covered with camellia buds. Some days after, the young branches were affected 

 seriously, and, subsequently, the whole of the wood down to the very roots, so 

 that, with the exception of Donkelaerii, mutahilis, Chandlerii, and elegans, the 

 whole of the camellias died. Among the ligneous plants saved, the principal are 

 a Ficus elastica, about seven feet high ; the buds and terminal leaves, however, 

 have been much affected. With this were a Dracana ansfralis, and some varie- 

 ties of Epiphyllum Ackermanni. It appears that the lycopodium which formed 

 the margin, twenty-five varieties of azalea in pots, a collection of heaths, Hahro- 

 thamnus elegans, Clematis japjonica, Passijlora Belotii, Daphne indica, and more 

 than a hundred other plants of similar kinds, have been destroyed by the sulphur- 

 ous vapor which was produced, during the night, in the house. 



M. Pepin observes that, as is well known, sulphur is used, in many cases, for 

 plants in stoves and greenhouses ; but it is necessary to understand the nature of 

 the insect, and the plants to be operated on. Great caution must be used, also, 

 as to the quantity of sulphur proper to be employed, as well as the particular 

 parts to be operated on. It must not be supposed that sulphur may be used as 

 freely in a house as in the open ground. 



The Moutan P.^jgnies. — When Mr. Fortune visited China, on the service of 

 the Horticultural Society, the acquisition of new Moutans was one of the first 

 objects to which he attended. In his Wanderings, he mentions the beauty of th 

 varieties seen by him at Shanghai ; how he heard of yellow, and purple, and 



