General JSTotices. 227 



MISCELLANEOUS LNTELLIGENCE. 



Art. I. General Notices. 



Statistics of the Woods and Forests of Europe. — It has been ascer- 

 tained that forests occupy a third part of the soil of Russia, Sweden, 

 Norway and Germany; a fourth of Austria and Prussia; a fifth of Bel- 

 gium; a sixth of Switzerland; a seventh of France, (four hundred 

 square leagues;) a ninth of Italy; and a twelfth of Spain. In the Brit- 

 ish isles they only occupy a twenty-fifth part of the soil, which is fortu- 

 nately the richest in Europe in coal mines. {L'Echo, <S-c., trans, in 

 Gar'd. Mag.^ 



The surface under cultivation in Britain, Italy, Prussia, the Nether- 

 lands, Austria, Bavaria, and Wurtemberg, occupies a third of the soil, 

 in France more than one half, (14,572 square leagues;) in Germany, 

 in the kingdom of Naples, and in Sicily, a quarter; in Austria and Iliy- 

 ria, less than a fifth; in Russia in Europe, and Hungary, a sixth; in Swe- 

 den and Norway, a ninth. The remainder consists of forests or of 

 barren and uncultivated tracts. {Jd.') 



Temperature of the past winter in Europe. — At Paris, in January, 

 183S, the temperature was 14'^ below zero of Reaumur, which is only 

 4" less than it was in 1795, the coldest year in Paris on record. These 

 records, as to temperature, commenced in the year 1763; and in no year 

 from that period to the present, except 1795, does the temperature ap- 

 pear to have been so low as in January last. {Id.) 



In the Berlin Botanic Garden, in Germany, on January 16th, 18S8, 

 the temperature was 22^ Reaumur below zero, (18" below zero Fah- 

 renheit,) with two and a half feet snow and very little dew. At Vienna, 

 in January, the cold varied from 8° to 9'^ below zero, Fahrenheit. At 

 Frankfort, on January 16th, the cold was 16"^ below zero, Fahrenheit. 

 The mean temperature of some parts of Britain was 25 — 61°, which is 

 8.31° below the mean of any corresponding month during fourteen years. 

 {Gard. Mag.) 



Grafting the Orange on the Pomegranate. — Mr. Andrews of Boston, 

 U. S. Consul at Malta, was recently in this city, and confirms the fact 

 I formerly stated to you, on the authority of a friend who had visited 

 that island some years since, viz. that the red flesh oranges of Malta 

 derive their hue from the pomegranate stock, on which they are engraft- 

 ed, and promises to send you undeniable certificates of it. Brydone, in 

 his fifteenth letter, also saj's, that "the Maltese oranges deserve the 

 character they have, of being the finest in the world : many of them are 

 of the red kind, and much superior to the others, which are too luscious. 

 They are produced, I am told, from the common orange, but grafted on 

 the pomegranate stock. The juice of this fruit is red as blood, and of 

 a fine flavor." It is singular, that the call you made on the cover of 

 this magazine, for a reference to some Avork, in wliich the fact was stat- 

 ed, should not have produced one to Brydone. That author, however, 

 was not the one in which I saw it, and which, with the oral testi- 

 mony of my commercial friend, induced me to use it as argument in fa- 

 vor of the opinion, that the stock improved the fruit. {M. J. S. Phil- 

 adelphia — Gard. Mag.) 



