48—1846.] 
THE GARDENERS’ CHRONICLE. 
787 
ORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF LONDON.— 
Notice is hereby given, that the EXHIBITION OF 
FLOWERS AND FRUIT, in the Society’s Garden, in the 
ensuing season, will take place on the following Saturdays, 
yiz., May 8; June 19; and July 17 ; and that Tuesday, April 20, 
is the last day on which the usual privileged Tickets are issued 
to Fellows of the Society. 
In the Press, to be published early in the spring, 
In one vol. 8vo, to bind with the Scmoon, BOTANY, 
HE ELEMENTS OTANY, 
STRUCTURAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, SYSTEMATICAL, 
ND MEDICAL; 
Being a Fifth Edition o: 
THE OUTLINE or rue FIRST PRINCIPLES or BOTANY. 
y Joan LiwpLEY, Pu. D. F.R.S, 
: BRADBURY and Evans, Whitefriars. 
With a Copious Glossary of. Botanical Terms. 
f 
EW IRISES, ANEMONES, &e— 
30 beautiful distinct hardy Irises, by name ^ .. 10s, 6d. 
50 new large Double Anemones, by name 126 
12 fresh imported Hyacinths, finest known ^. 10 6 
50 fine show Ranunculuses, by name 12 
‘The Gardeners Chronicle.. 
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1846, 
MEETINGS FOR THE TWO FOLLOWING WEEKS. 
DAY, Nov. 30: * 0. 2B POL 
Mow: Botanical (Anniversary) 
Hussars; chiesti poeta + oes e 
Wauownspay, — 2—Society of Arts. ^. 
FnrpAY, i—Botanical . . wy 
Mowpay, ` 
WEDNESDAY, — 9-Microscopieal 8PM, 
Å CORRESPONDENT calling himself a Five-foot 
Farmer, reproaches us for allowing ADVERTISEMENTS 
which are mere traps for the incautious to appear 
in our columns. We have received the same com- 
plaint on former occasions; and, therefore, it is.as 
well that we should at once declare that we are in 
no way responsible for the value of the articles 
which may be offered for sale by advertisement, 
The advertising department of a newspaper is as 
distinct from the editorial part as a landlord's house- 
hold from a tenant’s. The one is in no way con- 
cerned with or answerable for the other. Adver- 
tisements stand upon their own ground; they are 
to be judged of by their intrinsic probability, and 
by the character of the advertiser himself. Fraudu- 
lent advertisements appear in all places; and there 
is no help for it. A stage-coach conveys a cut- 
throat by the side of an honest man; a French 
novel and a Bible in the same box; is the coach- 
man to blame? Such things are inevitable in all 
public conveyances, and a newspaper is but a public 
conveyance of information, just as a stage-coach is 
of passengers and parcels. 
But it may be, and is, argued that in the case of 
advertisements, there is a certain class which are 
on the face of them impositions, and that the 
should be excluded. But who is to be the judge of 
this? If they are obviously fraudulent they can do 
no harm, for men of common sense avoid them; 
and no amount of watchfulness will guard a fool 
against his folly. If they are frauds in disguise how 
are they to be detected?—who is to distinguish 
them? ` The thing is impossible; and the public 
must decide for itself. : 
or ourselves we feel that no man can impute to 
us the least unwillingness to expose fraud if we 
know it to be so; we have attacked it over and 
over again, and we have not the smallest intention 
of relaxing our vigilance. Advertisers exercise no 
power over us. But we must have a clear case. 
We cannot act upon surmise, We must be sure 
before we strike, or the blow would recoil on our- 
selves, as indeed it ought. Let us for example take 
an instance. Our “five foot” friend points to some- 
thing advertised under the name of “Entykoproleon,” 
which professes to be a manure of wonderful effi- 
cacy. Now we hnow nothing of this material ; we 
have no information as to its qualities ; it may be 
valuable or it may be rubbish. For ourselves we 
are free to confess that the name has too much the 
look of quackery to invite our good opinion, and 
when we see what the composition professes to do 
our doubts are not diminished. But although it is 
plain to any man of common sense that this Enty- 
kosomething cannot cure all sorts of disorders, and 
do all sorts of things, it does not follow that it is of 
no value; that is a point we cannot touch. Men 
must in such matters use the sense which God has 
given them ; and if by long disuse they have per- 
mitted it to grow rusty, they must polish it again by 
wasting their money in running after the chimeras 
which adventurers will always be ready to “find " 
for their chace. In short, gardeners and farmers, 
like other people, must help themselves, and not be 
always crying to Hercules to pull them out of the 
Swamps into which their own blindness may have 
led them. We are perfectly willing to lend them a 
hand ; it is, indeed our vocation, and our duty, as 
we freely acknowledge ; but they must also do their 
duty to themselves. 
Or all simple matters important in gardening, 
the most easily well done, and the most generally 
ill done, is the securing an abundance of Pure 
Waren, that is to say of water absolutely free from 
deleterious ingredients. This, the first necessary 
of animal and vegetable life, is provided by Nature 
of the utmost purity in boundless abundance at 
every man’s feet ; but he, with that perverse inge- 
nuity for which he is often so remarkable, does all 
in his power to contaminate or waste it. Instead 
of catching the virgin fluid as it falls from heaven, 
he letyitrun to waste, and then digs holes, which 
he calls wells, in order to obtain it back again, after 
. being defiled by the impurities it meets with in the 
earth. Or, if he makes a reservoir to hold it till 
wanted, itis ten to one but he takes zinc, or lead, 
or wood, in which to keep it, or through which to 
convey it. 
All these materials are more or less unsuited to 
the preservation of water in its pure state; aud 
most especially the metals, which are in the most 
universal demand. These substances form poison- 
ous salts whieh freely dissolve in water, and are 
thus allowed to sap the lives of animals or plants. 
Most especially is this true oflead, which was, a few 
years since, found to be the secret poisoner of 
royal hounds, and to whose deadly action on human 
life many unsuspected deaths are, beyond all doubt, 
to be ascribed ; and if that is so, how much more 
destruction must have been committed among plants, 
which are injured by the very same poisons as are 
fatal to animals, so identical in its essence is animal 
and vegetable vitality. It is notorious to physiolo- 
gists that whatever will poison a plant will poison a 
man, and in the same way. 
We are drawn to this question by the numerous 
inquiries of correspondents, who have recently had 
their attention directed to it by a paper on the 
subject read by Mr. Oszorne before the British 
Association at their late meeting at Southampton. 
This gentleman demonstrated that numerous cases 
of sickness or death in the neighbourhood of South- 
ampton were traceable to the presence oflead in 
the water, and were assignable to no other cause. 
* Mr. Ware, a medical gentleman of this town, was 
attending some patients residing at Shirley, about two 
miles off, who were labouring under symptoms resem- 
bling those produced by the absorption of lead, although 
none of them had been exposed to the fumes of paint, 
or to the absorption of lead in any form that could be 
accounted for.” 
Analysis showed that the water they drank was 
impregnated with lead. Another patient was 
attacked by distressing symptoms, 
“ Accompanied with atrophy, and loss of muscular 
lth 
down an earthy erust, which guards the lead from 
the solvent action of the water; but it is by no 
means clear that this preservation is as effectual as 
is supposed,and at all events it can only operate after 
atime. We therefore entirely agree in advising 
all persons to avoid the use of water brought 
through leaden pipes. Glass is quite unobjection- 
able, and iron nearly so ; and we see no reason 
why the prediction of Sir Roserr Peer that glass 
water-pipes weuld soon be laid down should not be 
immediately verified. Green bottle-glass is cheaper 
than iron, and Mr. Ossonwr, as well as others, 
distinctly advises that it should be employed for 
purposes of conveyance. 
REMARKS ON PLANTING AND THE MAN- 
AGEMENT OF WOODS. 
No branch of rural economy is of more importance 
than the growth of timber—whether we look to the in- 
isp ble use and application of it to almost every 
necessary and ornamental purpose of life, to the beauty 
it contributes to the landscape, or the amelioration it 
affords to any country, whether hot or cold, by its shelter 
or its shade. 
As the production of timber is then so absolutely 
necessary for the comfort and the convenience of the 
community, as well as for the improvement of the 
country, the science of arboriculture ought surely, to 
command the attention and become the study of every 
landed proprietor ; to whom his woods should be, if 
properly managed, as sure a source of revenue as his 
land set apart for the production of cattle or corn. It 
is much to be regretted, however, that this very im- 
portant subject has received so little attention, is so 
little understood, and even worse practised. Agricul- 
ture and horticulture although far from being perfectly 
derstood, in a; progressive state, and have long 
been practised in this country on rational principles. 
Every farmer knows that certain systems of culture must 
be adopted on certain soils and situations. He would 
not attempt to introduce green-crop husbandry on 
strong clay soilin a low moist situation ; nor would he 
try to produce Wheat and Beans on a light sandy soil, 
in a high altitude. Neither would he sow 10 bushels of 
grain on an acre and expect a better crop than if he 
had sown four ; or leave his Turnips unthinned for the 
purpose of sheltering one another, and expect a hea 
crop of bulbs. Yet such is the ignorance that. prevails 
on the subject of planting and management of woods, 
that the very opposite of the practice adopted in the 
culture of horticultural ieultural plants is 
almost universally followed, and that to a ruinous extent. 
lst: Adaptation of trees to soil, climate, &c. — 
Every tribe of plants, and indeed almost every indivi- 
dual of a tribe, has itsown peculiar habitat or soil, climate, 
and situation, congenial to its nature : and the first thing, 
therefore, that ought to be attended to in planting is the 
adaptation of the plants to the several soils, situations, 
and climates, that may oceur in the ground to be 
planted (for these may be very various in a small 
extent of ground), and here the first error is generally 
power of the upper limbs. Dr.Ox: p ymp: 
toms to arise from the poison of lead, and procured 
some of the Burley water for me to test. Upon`examina- 
tion, I found a large quantity of lead in solution,” 
* Mr. SHELLEY, whom I have already mentioned, in- 
formed me that his father and two of his brothers 
died of the same complaint that he was labouring under 
when he applied to Dr. Oxe for advice. This complaint 
has been traced to the poisonous effects of the impreg- 
nation of lead in the water of Burley ; and I have no 
doubt that the loss of many, perhaps hundreds of lives, 
has been caused in a similar manner, not only in this 
part of the country, but in many parts of England,” 
Nevertheless, Mr. Osnonwz stated that in the face 
of this evidence, and in defiance of the most un- 
doubted facts, some landlords wnere this mortality 
occurs 
“ Have refused to remove the leaden pipes in their 
houses and to substitute iron; even when families in- 
habiting them have actually been under medical treat- 
ment, for the effeets of the impregnated water ; and 
that they have even gone so far as to insinuate that the 
medical attendant had an object of his own in mention- 
ing the subject, and to threaten the tenants with an 
action for saying that their illness was attributable to 
this cause.” 
We advise the authorities of Southampton to try 
the effect of a coroner’s inquest in the very next 
case which arises. A verdict of Wilful Murder, 
or even of Manslaughter, would probably bring 
these landlords to their senses. 
It has generally been supposed that the action of 
water on lead is owing to the presence in it of car- 
bonie acid which forms carbonate of lead, 
soluble poison. But Mr. Osporne has shown that 
atmospheric air, even when free carbonic acid is 
absent, is à powerful solvent of lead, and that 
in some waters, as that of Southamption, the evil is 
increased by the presence of chlorine, which forms 
a chloride of lead, another poisonous salt, soluble in 
water. Itis, therefore, clear that lead pipes should 
never be employed for the conveyance of water to 
be consumed by man, beast, or plant. It is very 
S 
true that water naturally impure—as for example, 
spring water impregnated with lime, is said not to 
act rapidly on lead, in consequence of its throwing 
ieh is obvious to a very casual observer. 
In travelling any of our roads, he will at once discover 
in passing a plantation that the planter has been at a 
loss to know what his soil would best produce, and 
therefore to secure a crop he has planted a mixture of 
all sorts; and very frequently the varieties to which the 
soil and climate is most uncongenial are those most 
abundantly planted, and thus some of our most valuable 
sorts of timber-trees have got into bad repute—for ex- 
ample, the Larch, which for many years was indiseri- 
minately planted in every soil and situation, and hence 
when a succession of severe winters and springs oc- 
curred, such as 1837-8 and 1839, in all humid situations 
the plant was so injured in its health that thousands of 
acres in Great Britain were entirely destroyed. This 
evil might by a little study be, if not altogether, at least 
very much avoided. Almost all the varieties of our 
useful forest-trees have been long cultivated in the 
country, and a little careful observation will soon 
enable a person of ordinary abilities to discover the 
character of the soil and situation in which each species 
or variety best thrives. For instance, of the Pine tribes, 
the Scotch Fir luxuriates on a heathy soil incumbent on 
pervious subsoil, on a high altitude. Larch on sharp 
brown loam, on dry subsoil, high situation and sloping 
banks. Spruce and Silver Firs, soft loam or peaty soil, 
low moist situation.* 
Of hardwood trees the Oak is the most accommodat- 
ing as well as the most valuable ; it will grow in almost 
any soil and situation, under 800 feet above the level of 
the sea ; but thrives best and attains its greatest mag- 
nitude in clayey loam on a rather retentive subsoil and 
on gently sloping ground. The Ash and Elm are more 
particular in the choice of their habitat than any of our 
hardwood trees, a sharp gravelly loam on gravel or 
sand, is the soil in which they thrive best, and on an 
altitude under 500 feet above the level of the sea, 
Plane will grow well 100 feet higher than Ash or Elm, 
and on soil and subsoil much more retentive in its 
character. The Beech is rather singular in its nature; 
it is often met with in great luxuriance on Strong reten- 
tive clay, in a low damp situation, while it is much 
more frequently found in excellent health and great 
size on dry gravelly soil on rather a high situation ; the 
_ * Although these varieties (the Spruce and § ir), thrive 
better in soils of this character than any of our other sorts, it 
is not to be understood that they will not grow in any other 
for itis well known that they do also succeed well on dry soil; 
on a pretty high altitude. 
