Institute of France. 313 



fruit-trees, uhere it is requisite to arrange all the branches for a 

 specific purpose, cultivators are compelled to put grafts on the 

 places occupied by the dead eyes ; a tedious and uncertain pro- 

 cess. M. Marien de la Martiniere practises another method: he 

 makes a small cut in the form of a V reversed above the dead eye 

 and into the core. The ascending sap is checked in its progress 

 upwards, and is thus confined to the dead eyes. 



We are now called upon to say a few words on a work by 

 M. Lasteyrie du Saillant on all the branches of the agriculture 

 and the rural and domestic oeconomy of the Chinese. It is col- 

 lected from all the authors wlio have written upon China, and 

 embellished with a very great number of drawings made in China 

 and by Chinese, in which are represented all the jirocesses of 

 their industry, and all the instruments which they employ. This 

 great empire, in which an immense population is entirely sup- 

 ported by agriculture, and where this art has been honoured and 

 protected without interruption shice the first establishment of the 

 Chinese monarchy, cannot fail to have made great progress ; 

 and in fact M. de Lasteyrie has made us acquainted with several 

 utensils more simple and more convenient than those used by 

 the Eurojjeans, and indicates some highly useful improvements 

 respecting the culture of fruit-trees. 



M. Yvard has presented a large treatise on such plants as are 

 injurious to grain, and on the means of preserving cultivated 

 lands from them. What are commonly called bad plants 

 are the production of nature; kinds of savage plants : the 

 air, water, and animals bring their seeds, which the earth re- 

 tains a long time in its bowels, and at the favourable moment 

 they are seen to spring up : frequently also the farmer himself 

 ?ows them mixed with badly compounded manure. M. Yvard, 

 who has described upwards of three hundred, gives ample details 

 of various methods for destroying these weeds. 



This experienced agriculturist has rendered a still more im- 

 portant service to agriculture, by publishing last spring, through 

 the meduim of the journals, the means which his experience 

 pointed out to him as the best adapted for repairing the losses 

 which the events of the war had occasioned by destroying the 

 corn in the ear. He had the happiness to see his counsel fol- 

 lowed, and the high price of corn at least did not indicate that 

 our provinces had been overrun by contending armies. It has 

 been by similar a|)plications of agriculture and of the arts, per- 

 fected by the spirit of the sciences, that France has combated for 

 twenty years the disasters of a cruel tvar, and has been able to 

 support, without sinking under it, the final operations which put 

 an end to her miseries. 



[To beconcinucd.j LVIII, /«- 



