X^ol. Vll.— No. 20. 



AND HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL. 



229 



siou which arose on this subject, the Comte Las- 

 teyrie and the ChevaUers Soulange-Bodin and 

 Byerley, noticed in a general way, the advantages 

 which must necessarily result to the arts in every 

 country, from the better education of those who 

 are the operators in these arts ; glanced at the 

 progress which had been made in the diffusion of 

 useful education in France ; and strongly urged 

 the necessity and advantages, not only of encour- 

 aging practical gardeners of every description, by 

 premiums and other honorable distinctions, to be- 

 come better cultivators, but to encourage the 

 young men to become reading and thinking work- 

 men, and the fathers of families to use every ex- 

 ertion to educate their children as the greatest 

 and best service which they could render them. — 

 M. Soulange-Bodin, who is a man of considerable 

 eloquence, made some veiy impressive observa- 

 tions on the subject, and recommended members 

 ©f the Society to lend and distribute the Annaks, 

 and other useful gardening publications, among 

 their neighbors, and to every gardener who could 

 make use of them. M. Boursault used various 

 arguments to prove the beneficial influence of gar- 

 dening on society generally ; and the duty of 

 every enlightened individual to promote a taste 

 for it, as a source of social improvement, and of 

 general amelioration. The Chevalier A. A. du 

 Pelit-Thouars made some interesting physiological 

 remarks on the result of an experiment which he 

 had made on the stem of a tree ; clearly proving 

 that the sap which returns by the bark and liber 

 has the power of forming wood, without the aid 

 of the alburnum ; but the details we reserve till 

 we return, and can illustrate the subject by an en- 

 graving. 



The articles exhibited were chiefly dahlias, 

 some implements and models of implements,draw- 

 ings of different varieties of the Palate, Sec. M. 

 du Petit-Thouars gave away thirty or forty copies 

 of his Cours de Phytologie, and some other papers 

 were distributed. Professor Decandolle was ])res- 

 ent, and Mrs Yosy. The national characteristic 

 was exhibited towards this lady, who, though an 

 entire stranger, and arriving some time after the 

 Meeting had commenced, was most graciously re- 

 -ceived, conducted to a seat close to the president, 

 and, when M. du Petit-Thouars proceeded to dis- 



cuse for us, both in France and England, for the 

 inacuracies, or seeming carelessness of expression, 

 which it may contain. — Editor. 



Schabzieger Cheese is that species of Swiss 

 cheese made by the mountaineers of the Canton 

 of Glaris, and readily distinguished by that pe- 

 culiar marbled appearance, and aromatic flavor, 

 comnmnicated by the pressed flowers or the bruis- 

 ed seeds of the Melilotus officinalis. The prac- 

 tice of mixing the flowers or seeds of plants with 

 cheese was common among the Romans ; thyme 

 was generally used by them. That a similar 

 method was pursued in the middle ages is appar- 

 ent from an anecdote told of Charlemagne. — 

 When travelling without attendants, he arrived at 

 a bishop's palace : it was a fast day, snd the bish- 

 op, having no fish, was obliged to set cheese be- 

 fore the monarch. Observing some small specks 

 (parsley seed) in it, and mistaking them for rotten 

 parts, he took the trouble of picking them out with 

 his knife. The bishop told him he was throwing 

 away the best parts of the cheese ; on this the 

 monarch eat it as it was, and liked it so much, 

 that he ordered the bishop to send him, every 

 year, two cases of such cheese to Aix-la-Chapelle ; 

 and, in order that the cheese-merchant might not 

 sr^nd cheeses without the seeds, he directed the 

 bishop to cut each in two, and afterwards to 

 fasten the parts by means of a wooden skewer. — 

 Foreign Review. 



The Art of improving the Quality of Fruits is 

 said to have originated in Belgium ; and while the 

 Academy of Munich were doubting the possibility 

 of this description of improvement, and even giv- 

 ing a prize to an essay which maintained the neg- 

 ative side of the question, the art had already 

 made an inmiense progress in the Netherlands. — 

 It is not meant that new fruits were never raised 

 from seed, before, but that the business of raising 

 new sorts of fruits from seeds was never before 

 undertaken on scientific principles. Chance has, 

 at all times and in all countries, discovered new 

 sorts of fruits from seeds which have sprung up 

 accidentally ; but it was only in Belgium, towards 

 the latter end of the eighteenth centiu-y, that seed- 

 lings were raiscfd in large quantities with reference 



to this object. The city of Mons made the first 

 tribute his iiamphlets, he jiresented the first to j attempt, and obtained four exquisite new pears, 

 Mrs Yosy. [ viz. the Passe Colmar, the Beurree Ranee, the 



The most remarkable thing which we have yet Beurree Spence (in honor of the celebrated ento- 

 seen hi the neighborhood of Paris, is the establish- mologist,) the Beurree d'Hiver, and Les Delices 



ment of M. Soulange-Bodin, at Fromont. As this 

 is the travelling season with nurserymen, we would 

 recommend all of them who can spare time to 

 visit France, to go thither, and see the art of 

 grafting, and especially the greffe a la Tschoudi, 

 pushed further than it has yet been in any estab- 

 lishment either in France or Britain. In rare ex- 

 otic shrubs, we are inclined to think M. Soulange- 

 Bodin will soon be able to undersell every nursery 

 in Europe. We shall discuss the subject of this 

 establishmeirt in our next Number, which we in- 

 tend to devote entirely to giving some account of 

 the tour which we are now making. In the mean 

 time, we set oft" for Chantilly, JMorfontaine, and 

 Ermenonville (which we have not seen since 

 1815,) to try if we can find at the.se places any 

 thing worthy of laying before our readers ; ho|)ing 

 that, as wo are now incessantly occupied for tljcir 

 advantage, the great hurry in which this letter has 

 been written, and the impossibility of our seeing 

 a proof of it before it goes to press, will be an es- 



d'llardenpont. These were raised in the garden 

 of Counsellor Hardenpont. Other amateurs have 

 devoted themselves to the same subject, and ob- 

 tained several pears of excellent quality ; the Bon- 

 ne de Mons, the Doyennti do Mons, and many 

 more. M. Siart procured La Napoleon ; and that 

 learned pomologist, the Abbe Duquesne, raised, 

 among others, the excellent Marie Louise. M. 

 Petit pursued those researches which M. Duquesne 

 was ohhged to abandon from ill health and other 

 causes. In Flanders they discovered the incom- 

 parable Fondante des Bois (Boschier) ; the Capu- 

 chins of Louvaine obtained their Pastorale ; and 

 the Comte de Colona of Malines, L'Urbaniste. — 

 During these times thousands of plants were 

 originated annually at Brussels, with a view of 

 studying the quality of their fruits. The resuh of 

 the whole has been published by Professor Van 

 Mons, in a catalogue dated Louvaine, 1823. — 

 Messager des Sciences et des Arts, livres 1 et 2. 

 1826, p. 77. 



Cultivation of the Potato in J^orway. — So slow 

 has been the progress of thit root in Norway, that 

 Von Buch states that it was scarcely known at 

 Bergen in 1762 ; a circumstance the more re- 

 markable, as at least a century has elapsed since 

 its introduction into Iceland, the climate of which 

 is less favorable than that of Norway. In about 

 twenty years the potato found its way into the 

 Nordland, and not long afterwards was introduced 

 into Fimnark, where it has now become pretty 

 general. The potatoes of Alten, though seldoni" 

 exceeding the size of a small egg, form, neverthe- 

 less, a valuable addition to the resources of the 

 inhabitants of Lapland. Their produce usually 

 averages about thirty fold. In one recent in- 

 stance it reached to forty-four. The price is usu- 

 ally from 3s. 6rf. to 5s. the barrel, or sack, of four 

 English bushels. The potatoes grown in Finmark 

 are remarkably sweet to the taste, of a waxy na- 

 ture, and in colour of a deepish yellow. Some 

 that were sent me lately from Alten, were planted 

 in good garden ground, in the early part of the 

 summer, and prove to be a valuable kind of early 

 potato. The originals were all of a round shape; 

 the produce, however, which are good, and ex- 

 ceed the former several times in size, are many of 

 them oblong, and not unlike the common kidney. 

 The remarkable alleviation of disadvantage in re- 

 spect to climate which Finmark presents, the fre- 

 quent luxuriance of its indigenous plants, and the 

 powerful vivifying influence of an arctic summer, 

 encourage the supposition that, under proper man- 

 agement, its soil might be rendered far less un- 

 grateful than is generally supposed. The culture 

 of the potato in particular, it may be hoped, will 

 both improve and become extended ; a circum- 

 stance that, in the present almost absolute depen- 

 dence of Finmark and Nordland upon Russia for 

 a supply of bread corn, is earnestly to be de^nstl ; 

 and, if we examine the character of the chmate 

 of the Islands and coasts of Northern Norway, 

 the degree in ^vhich it differs from all countries 

 under the same parallel, and the circumstance by 

 which this <litterence is apparently produced, such 

 an expectation will not appear ill-founded. Von 

 Buch, who certainly did not form too favorable an 

 idea of the climate of Finmark, justly remarks, 

 that in well secured cellars at Keilvig, close to the 

 North Cape, Hammerfest, and Alten, it never 

 freezes ; that the stream of fresh water which en- 

 ters the bay of Hammerfest from the little lake 

 above it, flows unfrozen during winter ; and that 

 the long grass, which springs among the crevices 

 of the rocks of the North Cape itself, does not 

 cease to vegetate powerfully beneath the snov*, 

 in the absence of the sun. — Capell Brooke's Lap- 

 land, p. 203. 



The Culture of Culinary Vegetables in the Sand- 

 wich Islands, was introduced by Marini, a Span- 

 iard, about the end of the last century. Marini 

 formed extensive gardens, where melons and 

 gourds of all kinds, various species of cabbage, 

 potatoes, and other vegetables common in Europe, 

 were cultivated with great success. — Voyage to 

 the Sandwich Islands in 1824-25, 4to, p. 41. 



Preparation of Cinnamon — The manager of 

 the cinnamon gardens good naturedly sent some 

 of the cinnamon peelers to our bungalows, that 

 we might see the way in which the spice is jire- 

 liared. They brought with them branches about 

 3 feet in length, the rough bark of which they 

 scraped off with knives, and then, with a peculiar 



