282 [Assembly 



animal or vegetable. The great natural source of it is common 

 salt, which has sixty per cent, of it. It is procured by decom- 

 posing common salt by joint agency of sulphuric acid and perox- 

 ide of magnesia; three parts salt to one of magnesia, well mixed, 

 placed in a retort with two parts of sulphuric acid, previously 

 diluted with two parts of water. Apply gentle heat and the 

 chlorine comes over. 



Mix muriatic acid with half its weight of black oxide of man- 

 ganese, collect the gas over water and keep it in glass with glass 

 stoppers. 



[Revue Horticole, Aug. 1850. Translated by H. Meigs.] 



THE GARDENS OF FRANCE. 



France is the garden of Europe ; this is the secret thought of 

 the numerous visitors of our country. We here present ourselves 

 merely as the echo of the language of benevolent strangers who 

 travel through our provinces with attention or come to stay 

 among us. 



It w^uuld be useless for us to undertake to justify this opinion, 

 so very flattering to our national self-love, unless we had other 

 motives to speak on this important subject, and to draw the eyes 

 of all men to it. But an observer, a practical farmer, animated 

 with warm desire to discover general ameliorations in agricul- 

 ture, wall have pleasure and profit in looking about him. 



France is not a country of level plains, where the eye can at once 

 embrace a vast space of monotonous unifbriuity — quite the con- 

 trary; the surface of our soil is every where formed oi {^mamdons) 

 gentle risings covered with verdure, or cultivated plains inter- 

 sected by undulating vallies, watered by numerous large and 

 small winding streams, circulating tlirough green meadows (prai- 

 ries) and smiling banks. The mountains of softened aspect are 

 clad with bushes and woods; the animated sea-shores, the moss- 

 covered cottages of the inhabitants and laborers visible every- 

 where. Has not this rapid description already shown that the 

 great whole forms one immense natural garden, framed in by the 

 ocean on the West, the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean on the 



