No. 144.] ' 225 



handful of the fresh leaves plunged into pure water insensibly 

 turned it to an indigo blue. We obtained some seed from him 

 and planted them. We have compared this plant with ordinary 

 pastel, (indigo plant,) from which it difiers materially. In the 

 fail we gathered leaves enough to enable our learned President, 

 M. Payen, to analyze it. And it was proved to contain a rich 

 and abundant dye. M. Fortune says that the Chinese cultivate 

 it largely to make indigo, and also to color green tea, 



Mr. Masson further stated that at the Exhibition of Horticul- 

 ture and Agriculture at Moscow, in 1853, he saw the enormous 

 roots of a Stalice which grows spontaneously in Chinese Tartary 

 and parts of Siberia, where the root grows sometimes as large as 

 a man's leg. It is employed to tan skins. The chemists say that 

 it contains twenty-tiDo per cent of tannin, nearly double that of the 

 oak or the birch, (Meigs— Some of the Stalice are beautiful her- 

 baceous plants, ornaments of a garden.) 



Among the sorts of flax of the Crystal Palace of 1851, in Lon- 

 don, we found two new and remarkable varieties. The first was 

 called American flax, bearing a white flower, which we have 

 compared with the blue flower flax, and have found that not- 

 withstanding its uncommon height its textile qualities do not ap- 

 pear to be constituted like those of the blue flowered flax, but by 

 way of compensation, its seed gives more oil than the blue flower. 



The second variety, called Lin de Viatka, given to us by M. 

 Lodet, one of the representatives of Russia at the Crystal Palace, 

 has short stems, large fibre, solid, blue flowers, seed in large cap- 

 sules, three or four times more in quantity than our ordinary flax. 



A third kind, the Pscofi" flax, is recommended by the Impe- 

 rial jSociety of Agriculture as the richest for solidity and fineness 

 of fibre. 



We hope that some of the friends of American agriculture will 

 send for seed of the Viatka and Pscoff flax, and grow them here. 



The Secretary said that the very extraordinary discovery of gun 

 cotton by Professor Schoenbien is followed by another of high 

 value, and that is, by putting the warlike gun cotton into ether, 



[Assembly, No. 144.] 



