494 



FARMERS' REGISTER. 



[No. 8 



for eiirhteen hours, and the ashes were then 

 poured out ol" the vessel. (1820.) 



A canvass recently painted with flax-seed oil, 

 and then dried and rolled close, took fire after 

 being three hours exposed to the sun on the deck- 

 of the Schooner Olive, at Troy, New York. C Au- 

 gust, 1820). 



A piece of old packing-sheet, which had lain 

 long about an oil and color warehouse, and was 

 besmeared with different kinds ol vegetable oils, 

 on being thrown behind some casks pretty much 

 confined from the air, m^dmed.—Edinburg Phil. 

 Jour. vol. vii. p. 219. 



A cask of oat meal left from May to August in 

 a kitchen in Glasgow, caugiu fire and was totally 

 consumed, together with the hm-v^l.— Thomson's 

 jinnals, Vol. xvi. p. 390. 



A parcel of hops Vvfell dried, were put into a 

 home-spun cotton gown and placed on a heap of 

 cotton seed; after three months they inflamed. 

 Cotton it was remarked has frequently been known 

 to take fire spontaneously in a mois't and heated 

 atmosphere.— i3////w?i, JY. Carolina papsr. (1824.) 

 Certain ochres ground in flax-seed oil, inflamed 

 during the act of trituration. 



Alder charcoal has taken fire in the warehouses 

 in which it was stored.* One of sixty three casks 

 of lampblack on board the ship Catherine, bound 

 to India from England, itrnitcd, but was disccN-er,. 

 ed by the fumes before it had burst into a flame. — 

 Old Monthhj Mas;. Lon., 1827. p, 91. 



Wei Cotton.— The ship Ear! of Eldon,in Au- 

 gust, 1834, was set on fire, by reason of having 

 shipped cotton in the rain at Bombay. 



A similar occurrence took place in 1836, on 

 board a vessel which had taken in;cotton at Apala- 

 chicola, Florida, during rain. 



A piece of red cerdar about two ounces in 

 weight, broken in two, and lai<l upon the shelf of 

 the store of Air. Adam Reigart in Lancaster, 

 Penn. inflamed after two years h^d elapsed, in 

 June, 1834. It was part of a tree Ibund in exca- 

 vating the deep cut of the rail road, at the '-Gap 

 in the Mine Ridge," Lancaster county, thirty feet 

 below the surfiice. The combustion v-'as pro- 

 ceeding so rapidly, that the shelf would have been 

 in a k\v^ minutes on fire, and it evidently com- 

 menced in the interior of the wood, as some of 

 the outer fibres were sound.— i?a2rard's Jlsgister 

 of Pennsylvaaia, vol. xiii, p. 399. 



Haussman relates that several dozens of skeins 

 of cotton, dyed red, and impreiinated with an al- 

 kaline solution of alumina, with excess of boiled 

 Jinseed oil, were placed on a straw-bottomed chair, 

 under a window, and at midni<rht they inflamed.! 

 A heap of horse manure inflamed in the month 

 of May, 1822, at Sharon, in Connecticut. The 

 fire was two feet in circumference. Jlmerican 

 Journal of Science, vol. v. p. 201. | 



Ftom Loudon's Gardener's Magazine. 



A SUMMARY VIEW OF THE PROGRESS OF GAR- 

 DE^^ING, AXD OF RURAL IMPROVEMENT 

 GENERALLY, IN BRITAIN, DURING THE 

 YEAR, 1836; WITH SOME NOTICES RELA- 

 TIVE TO THE STATE OF BOTH IN FOREIGN 

 COUNTRIES. By THE CONDUCTOR. 



The progress Of a science, or of an art, is not so 

 readily measured by the advances made in it, du- 

 ring the comparatively short space of a year, as 

 by a comparison of its present state with its state 

 at some former and more distant period. Accord- 

 ingly, if we vyere to look back six years, and to 

 compare the state of gardeninnr in Britain in 1836, 

 with its state in .1830, we should find a wonderlul 

 -difl^erence between the too periods; more especial- 

 ly with reliirence to public institutions. In 1830, 

 there Avere only two zoological gardens in Britain, 

 and these were both in the metropolis. Now we 

 have zoological gardens established at Dublin, 

 Liverpool, and Bristol, and others are projected, 

 or commenced; at Cheltenham, Birmingham, 

 Manchester, and various other places. Tne num- 

 ber of provincial horticultural societies has, also, 

 been nearly doubled during the same period. 



But, though surveys of the state of an art made 

 at difl'erent intervals may afford the most striking 

 views of its progr'ess, surveys at short and regular 

 periods appear better calculated to stimulate to im- 

 provement, by speedily making known to all what 

 is done by a few; and hence the utility of an an- 

 nual summary view like that which we are now 

 about to submit to the reader. Our notices under 

 each separate head will be .very slight, but the 

 reader who wishes to enter into the details of any 

 particular subject or improvement, has only to look 

 tor it in the table of contents. 



Gardening: as a science. 



* B. G. S. Walker's Archives, vol. iii., p. 80. 



t His theory of this is as follows : "In all cases 

 where the oxygen of the atmosphere is rapidly attract- 

 ed and absorbed, the caloric, which serves as'a base to 

 the oxygen, giving it the qualities of gas, or elastic 

 properties, is disengaged in suchabundan"ce, that if the 

 absorbing bodies are susceptible of taking fire, or if 

 combustible bodies are in the neighborhood, a sponta- 

 neous inflamation will take ]il?ice.'"—Jln7iales de Chi- 

 mie. No. 144. Tilloch, Vol. 18. 



Jit appeared subsequently, that this .case of .sup- cendiaiy; th? communication of both facts was from 

 posed spontaneous combustion was the work of an in- I the same person, a respectable physician. — Editor. 



The education of gardeners. — The most remark- 

 able circumstance which has occurred during the 

 past year is, the determination of the Horticultu- 

 ral Society of London to admit no young men in- 

 to their garden, as journeymen, who have not re- 

 ceived a certain degree of school education; and 

 to recommend no journeymen from the gardens, 

 to fill situations as head gardeners, who have not 

 been regularl}' examined as to their physiological 

 and other scientific knowledge, and received a cer- 

 tificate stating the degree of proficiency they have 

 attained. The details of this measure, with our 

 remarks on it, will be found at p. 610. We con- 

 sider this as by lar the most important step for the 

 improveraeat of gardening that lias been taken by 

 the Society since its commencement; and this 

 step, by its immediate influence on the young men 

 who may be candidates for admission into the gar- 

 den, and by its indirect influence in other places, 

 in consequence of the plan being imitated by other 

 societies, will speedily be felt, not only in Britain, 

 but on the continent, in North America, and, in 

 short, throu2;hout the world. 



It has appeared to us that the rules and regula- 

 tions of the London Horticultural Society adopted 

 in 1826, with reference to gardeners employed in 



