FOREIGN NOTICES. 



animadverting on the "health of London during the week ending August 20," makes the follow- 

 ing remarks: "The deaths ascribed to diarrhcea are 126, of which 115 occurred among children. 

 The tender age of nearly all the sufferers, 97 of them not having completed their first year, is 

 sufficient to dispel the popular error that the use of fruit is the exciting cause." Several years 

 ago a serious and very fatal epidemic, then called " English cholera," prevailed in the neighbor- 

 hood where I was living. It chiefly attacked very young children and old people, and was 

 almost as rapid in its pi-ogress as the Asiatic form. This epidemic occurred in the autumn, and 

 many people, influenced by the common prejudice, dug holes in their gardens and buried all their 

 fruit, and some even went so far as to destroy their trees. I made many inquiries as to the pre- 

 vious habits of the victims of this epidemic, and in almost every case I learned that fruit had not 

 for some time previously formed any part of their diet. One writer in the Lancet has strongly 

 recommended the use of baked fruit as a preventive of cholera, and another has strenuously 

 advocated the administration of diluted sulphuric acid during the actual attack, and the proofs 

 brought forward of their good effects correspond with my own experience. It is asserted that 

 the cholera has never yet prevailed in the cider counties, nor in Birmingham, where acidulated 

 treacle beer and sulphuric acid lemonade are freely used to obviate the poisonous efi'ects of white- 

 lead in the manufactories. — M. D., in London Times. 



CtiLTiVATiON OF THE Apitelakdea. — All who are in the habit of growing stove plants can not 

 fail to acknowledge the great beauty, as well as utility, of this genus, flowering as they do in 

 the depth of winter, when a great scarcity generally prevails, and recourse must be had to forcing 

 to procure a supply of flowers for decorative purposes. Aphelandra cristata is so well known 

 that no remarks are necessary with regard to it. There is, however, another species which is not 

 so well known, from being more recently introduced ; I refer to A. aurantiaca, a species with 

 splendid scarlet orange colored flowers, and which also possesses the property of flowering when 

 extremely small — it has been flowered when scarcely six inches in height. The Aphelandra can 

 be propagated by cuttings, which may be struck in a moist heat. They should be shifted, as they 

 may require it. The best soil for them is loam, leaf-mold, or well rotted cow dung and peat, with 

 a small portion of sand. They must be kept in a moist stove, and plentifully supplied with water 

 during the summer. If judiciously treated, they will flower in December and January. As soon 

 as they have done flowering, the shoots should be reduced to within two or three ej-es of the 

 joint from which they started, and the plants dryed off and nested, during which time scarcely 

 any moisture is necessary. As soon as they begin to show signs of growth, they must be shaken 

 out of the old soil, and the roots reduced. They should then be re-potted in fresh soil, in pots 

 about a size or two smaller than those they have been taken out of, and shifted, as they may 

 require it, until they are finally placed in the pots in which they are to bloom. Judicious drain- 

 age is necessary ; and frequent applications of the syrjnge will be found not only to improve the 

 health of the plant, but also be of material service in checking the increase of insects, this genus 

 being particulai'ly liable to be attacked by the mealy bug and red spider. — W. H., in Gardeners^ 

 and Farmers^ Journal. 



Cuthill's Black Prince Strawberry. — On the I'Zth of May last you inserted a few practical 

 remarks I wi'ote regarding the value of this Strawberry as a good sort for forcing, as well as being a 

 most abundant bearer and of good flavor. I am very anxious to make a few more remarks, feeling 

 convinced they will prove acceptable to those who are interested on this point. After gathering 

 a very good crop from the plants I forced in the spring, I turned them into the open ground ; 

 they went on well, and at the beginning of September most of the plants bloomed freely, and on 

 Friday, the 30th September, I put on my employer's table a "large" dish of Strawberries, similar 

 in size, color, and almost equal in "flavor" to those I gathered in the early part of the season. 

 There is at this moment abundance of blossom, fruit ripe and ripening ; but as we have had a 

 few frosty nights, I have now placed glasses over the plants, and have no doubt I shall gather 

 several more dishes before the end of October. — Tlios. Wchb, in London Gardcncm^ Chronicle. 



