310 



and whether cut ami dried for winter, or eaten green by stock 

 turned on the ground where they grow, would be very valuable in 

 case of deficiency of grass. 



Messrs. Van Eppes employ twenty hands during the summer ; 

 and in autumn, when the brush is being gathered and prepared, 

 they have nearly a hundred, male and female. They are mostly 

 Germans, who come to Schenectady with their families during the 

 broom corn harvest, and leave when it is over. 



The manufacture of brooms is carried on mostly in the winter 

 season. The quantity usually turned out by Messrs. Van Eppes 

 is 150,000 dozen per annum. (" Albany Cultivator.") 



CHENOPODIUM QUINOA. 



ABOUT twenty-eight years ago this plant was introduced into 

 Britain from Peru, where the seeds are used as food, nnder the 

 name of petty rice. Attention was drawn to it by London, in 

 his " Gardener's Magazine," in 1834, and in 1836 it was culti- 

 vated on a large scale by Sir Charles Lemon. This plant and the 

 lentil are two of the most promising exotics that have been recom- 

 mended for field culture. There are two varieties of quinoa, the 

 white and the red seeded; the red has bitter properties, and is only 

 used for medicine. In North America the seeds of the former are 

 used as a substitute for maize and the potato. A white meal is ob- 

 tained from it, having a tinge of yellow. Tt contains scarcely any 

 gluten, but, like oatmeal, makes very good porridge and cakes. Its 

 nutritive qualities are proved by the analysis of Dr. Voelcker 

 ("Journal of Agriculture of Scotland," October, 1850), which 

 states it to yield 3'66 per cent, of nitrogen, equal to 2 87 per cent, 

 of protein compounds. In this respect the meal appears to be 

 superior to rye, barley, rice, maize, the plantain, and potato. It 

 has long furnished the food of millions in South America ; and 

 in Scotland and Ireland the plant would find a congenial climate 

 and rich soil. 



PUNDI OE FUNDUNGI. 



THIS is an hitherto undescribed species of African grain (proba- 

 bly the Paspalum exile), much cultivated and esteemed in Sierra 

 Leone, and other places on the African coast, where it is know r n 

 by the Foulahs, Jolofis, and other native tribes, under the local 

 name of Hungry rice. It is a slender grass with digitate spikes, 

 which have much of the habit of Digitaria, but which, on ac- 

 count of the absence of the small outer glume existing in that 

 genus, Mr. Keppist, Librarian of the Linnean Society, of London, 

 refers to Paspalum. It produces a semi-transparent cordiform 



