308 NOTICES OF THE MEETINGS [April 29, 
Minister of the Interior, M. Persigny, to go into the districts 
affected and to report upon the facts he could collect. This he has 
done in an admirable manner, and to his work, a brochure published 
in Paris, by Hatchette et C*. Mr. Brockedon recommended his 
hearers, as containing all that can yet be said upon the subject. He 
reports the history of the scourge, exhibits its character, and relates 
what remedies have been tried, and what found successful. 
The interest which the subject has excited in England has led to 
such extensive correspondence in the Gardener’s Chronicle, that it 
contains not less than forty communications, and there are to be 
found the earliest notices of experiments made with lime-water, 
tobacco, lye of wocd-ashes, &c. : — all these have failed. Mr. Kyle 
of Leighton discovered sulphur to be asure remedy, and it is the only 
one yet known; but this, which can be applied in hot and green- 
houses cannot be used in large vineyards. House-grown grapes, 
if sulphur be puffed over the berries and vines, or if it be laid upon 
the pipes made damp in the hothouses, will vaporize and destroy 
the Oidium without injuring the fruit; but the sulphur must not 
be fired, or it will destroy the vines. 
By many it is asked,—1is the Oidium the cause or consequence of 
the disease of the vine ?— The vine, one party says, is over-cultivated 
and liable to affections which the wild healthy plant resists, and it 
should be treated as in a state of plethora; tap it, lessen its sap, and 
it will invigorate so as to resist the poison of the Oidium. This has 
been tried, and failed. If this were the cause it could not have so 
suddenly and widely extended itself. 
We can only hope that that Power which has created the Oidium 
may withdraw what to us appears to be so fearful a scourge. 
[W. B.J 
