90 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



or high hole, cat bird, wren, blue bird, meadow lark, brown thrusher, 

 dove, fire bird or summer red bird, hanging bird, ground robin or chewink, 

 bobolink or rice bird, robin, snow or chipping bird, sparrow, Carolina lit, 

 warbler, bat, black bird, blue jay and the small owl. Penalty five dollars. 

 Same for destroying eggs and nest. 



[London Quarterly Review, April, 1858.] 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. 



There is rarely a great invention received by the world of which the 

 germ is not to be found in some preceding age. This is the case with the 

 system of artificial manures, which has recently worked such v/onders in 

 agriculture, and which is touched upon as follows, in " The new and ad- 

 mirable Arte of Setting Corne, (wheat) by H. Platte, Esq., published in 

 1601, by Peter Shorte, dwelling at ye signe of ye Starne, on Bred Street 

 Hill. Shavoings (shavings) of home upon mine owne experience, I must 

 of necessity commende, by means whereof I obtayned a more flourishing 

 garden at Bishopshall, in a. most barren and unfruitful plot of grounde 

 which none of my predecessors could ever grace or beautifie either with 

 knots or flowers. I have had good experience with singular good success 

 by strewing the waste sope ashes upon a border of summer barley. Malte 

 duste may here also challenge his place, for foure or five quarters thereof 

 are sufiicient for an acre of ground. And Sal-Armoniake being a volatile 

 salt, first incorporated and rotted in common earth is thought to be a rich 

 mould to plant or set in. Dogges and cattes and other beasts, and gener- 

 ally all carrion, buried under the rootes of trees, in due time will make 

 them flourish and bring forth in great abundance." 



Also great inventions in Agricultural implements were made and for- 

 gotten. The reaping machine, by the Gauls ; horse-hoe-drill, water and 

 wind threshing machines, in a few obscure places. Fresh meat six months 

 per year was a luxury of the richest only. An old cow salted down in Au- 

 tumn, with some flitches of fat bacon, supplied whole families until Spring. 

 Ichaboe, on the coast of Africa, had a bed of guano 1,100 feet long, 400 

 broad, and average depth of thirty-five feet ; all of which was carried off" 

 before the close of 1844. 



He who lives within the diameter of a little circle, has ideas as narrow 

 as his horizon, but when he views a single great agricultural exhibition he 

 goes home a wiser and better farmer. 



[.Journul of the Society of Arts — London, August, 1857.] 



TRUFFLES. 



Mr. Martin Ravel, of France, (a truflSe merchant,) has just published a 

 very original and curious theory on the growth of Trufiles. 



That is formed by the Truffigene fly, that in winter flies about the oak 

 trees, which produce the truffle — penetrate the ground, pricks the extremi- 

 ties of the fibrous roots, and then deposit their eggs in the spot. A milky 

 fluid issues in drops which form the truffles. The wounded root dies, and 

 the truffle is left isolated. The process resembles that of the gall nut on 



