236 CHINESE CULTIVATION. 



forests ! In addition, there is the daily revolution of the globe, 

 tlie change from day to night, and the consequent cliange of 

 temperature from warm to cold, which is more felt in the tropics 

 than beyond them. The more the vertical rays of the sun heat 

 and open the ground by day, the more it becomes susceptible of 

 all the ingredients of tlie atmosphere, which, with the night 

 breezes, flows over the rarefied air of the sea, descending upon 

 the land, and producing a sort of respiration in the soil, every 

 inhalation and exhalation of which tends to supply it with fresh 

 stimulating matters. To this is owing the beneficial influence of 

 the daily land-air and sea-breezes, which are more prevalent near 

 the meridian than elsewhere, and which are not more wholesome 

 to the animal than beneficial to the vegetable kingdom. 



Finally, as riches continually multiply themselves more and 

 more, so in like manner have a luxuriant vegetation and great 

 fertility a constant tendency to accumulate. Astonisliingly 

 great as is the quantity of vegetable matter which is incessantly 

 produced and consumed in the country now referred to, still 

 gi'eater is that which continually arises from the death of 

 animals, which raise the ground, mix with the soil, and render it 

 still more capable of producing an ever increasing luxuriance. 

 The dead mass never rests : decomposition on the one hand, 

 and new life on the other, attack it and bring about a new 

 circle of transformation and motion. 



XXVII. — Chinese Cultivation. The Tchou-ma, or Chinese 

 Flax. Translated from the Chinese by M. Stanislas Julien, 

 and retranslated from the French. 



[The following extract possesses much interest in addition to what 

 it derives from its Chinese origin, in consequence of its 

 being not impossible that attempts may be made to intro- 

 duce the cultivation of Tchou-ma into Great Britain. Its 

 delicate fibre forms the flax from which the finest of the 

 Chinese linen fabrics are manufactured.] 



Amongst the products of Chinese industry which were ex- 

 hibited a few years ago in the Rue St. Laurent were some pieces 

 of a fine silky tissue, called by the Chinese hia-pou or summer 

 cloth, and made of the fibres of the plant called by botanists 

 Urtica nivea. Some seeds of this plant were sent from Canton 

 in 1843 by M. Hebert, but they never arrived, and I was at 

 that time told that they woidd probably not grow in our climate. 

 I am sorry that I was not then able to translate the papers which 



