79 



PART III. 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



Art. I. Foreign Notices. 

 FRANCE. 



AGRICULTURE of the Island of Corsica. In a work on this subject 

 by M. Vigarous, it is stated that there are wastes of great extent, called 

 makis, on which the following plants grow to a monstrous size : Cistus 

 monspeliensis, Erica multiflora, vulgaris, and other species, Pistacia lentis- 

 cus, .Arbutus unedo, Lavandula stgechas, and spicata, Lonicera grata, and 

 other species, Genista Anglica, Myrtus communis, Asphodelus, Helleborus, 

 Ferula, Digitalis, &c. These fine plants form such an impervious mass of 

 vegetation, that the first step towards culture is to set fire to them. There 

 are many forests in which the principal tree is the Pinus laricio, in many 

 instances 100 feet high, and four feet diameter at the base. Of this 

 valuable species of pine there are now plants to be had in several of 

 the London nurseries, and it is perhaps as well, or better worth culture, as 

 that too frequently despised tree the Pinus sylvestris. In general appear- 

 ance it has a strong resemblance to that species; but it exceeds it in 

 rapidity of growth in a most extraordinary degree. We have been told, 

 upon undoubted authority, that a young individual of each speeies was 

 planted in 1817 upon a sandy hill in one of the coldest of our eastern 

 counties. About a twelvemonth since it was found that while the Scotch 

 pine had reached no higher,than six or seven feet, the P. laricio was at least 

 twelve feet high. 



Repeopling Wastes and Waters. A society in France, who style them- 

 selves " Societe Anonyme de Fructification ge'nerale," propose in fifteen 

 years to put in productive culture about 20,000,000 of acres of waste land, 

 and to render productive 120,000 leagues of watercourses," which, deprived 

 of their antient shades, do not contain above the twentieth part of the fish 

 which they contained only forty years ago." As a condition, the society de- 

 mands a ninety-nine years' lease of all the uncultivated lands and waters 

 of France ; their fund is to be 100,000,000, and they are to pay 5 per cent, 

 to the subscribers. 



Sheep of Thibet. A variety of species called purick is said to produce 

 the wool used in the manufacture of cashmere shawls.— (Joum. des Comm. 

 Usu. et Prat, by M. Lasteyrie, No. 1 ., and Asiatic Jonrn. vol. i.) 



Grafting the Pine and Fir Tribe. The Baron de Tschudy has made a 

 great many experiments on grafting trees and herbaceous plants, some of 

 which we have noticed in the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Gar- 

 dening. The pine and fir tribe he inoculates before the buds have pushed, 

 which is found to succeed much better than any other mode. In herbace- 

 ous vegetables, he has grafted the melon on the briony, the result of which 

 was, fruit of the size of a citron, very sweet. The artichoke he grafted on 

 the cardoon, the cauliflower on cabbage, love apples on potatoes, and so 

 on. — (Ann. de VAgr. Franc, t. xxix.) 



Dodder. A French cultivator, who found his lucerne very much in- 

 jured by this parasite, recollecting that it germinates in the soil, and that it 

 is the shoots that attach themselves to the stalks of the lucerne, adopted 

 the plan of cutting the latter frequently early in the season, by which the 

 dodder, which is an annual plant, could not fix itself, and died. 



