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PART III. 



MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE. 



Art. I. — Foreign Notices. 

 FRANCE. 



(jERMI NATION of Seeds. The presence of oxygen gas being the 



principal requisite for germination, and chlorine the most powerful agent 

 for developing this gas, it has been found that healthy seeds steeped in the 

 chloric fluid are accelerated in their germination, and that others that ap- 

 peared to have lost their faculty of germination have recovered it by the 

 same process. (Humboldt.) 



Forcing Cherries in the Sixteenth Century. At Poitou, in France, the 

 ripening of cherries was accelerated by laying hot lime- stones on the 

 ground under the trees, or by watering the ground with hot water. By 

 these means ripe fruit was obtained on the first of May, and sent to Paris 

 by post. In the following century peas were sown in boxes kept in the 

 gardener's room in the night-time, and in cold weather, and set out in 

 sunshine. They came to maturity about the same time as the cherries ; 

 and, in a letter dated the 10th of May, 1796, Madam Maintenon speaks 

 of new peas as a rarity which had been the principal talk at court for four 

 successive days. (Essay, fyc, in Oliv. de Serres, edit. 1 804.) 



Grafting. M. Louis Noisette has published the description of 137 modes 

 of grafting. Most of them are the invention of the late Professor Thouin, 

 and described by him in the Annales du Muse*e Francaise, as well as ex- 

 emplified in the Jardin des Plantes. 



Bees. Where the buck-wheat, or, more properly, beech-wheat, Poly- 

 gonum fagopyrum, is extensively cultivated, there bees collect beautiful 

 wax and bad honey ; where the saintfoin abounds, there the honey is de- 

 licious, but the wax is very difficult to bleach. (Ann. deU Agric. Franc. 

 t.81.) 



Employment of Bones as Manure. The Chevalier Masclet has addressed 

 a letter to M. Matthieu de Dombasle on this subject, stating how much he 

 was struck with the advantages of manuring with bones, in a tour he lately 

 made in Scotland. He found them equally effective on sandy and clayey 

 soils, and that their benefit was felt for thirty years. On humid and calcareous 

 soils they are of little use; but on grass-lands they are very beneficial. 

 (Annal de V Agric. Franc. Nov. 1825.) 



Influence of Salt on Vegetation. The inhabitants of Camargne in Lan- 

 guedoc have such a dread of the corrosive action of salt on wheat in a dry 

 season, that always when they sow that grain, they sow along with it Sal- 

 sola sativa ; so that if the former is destroyed by the drought, the latter, 

 which requires a saline soil, prospers, and forms the main crop. In good 

 seasons the wheat prospers, and suffocates the salsola. When the latter 

 plant is the main crop, it is burnt for soda. (Yvart.) 



Box-tree as Manure. Olivier de Serres recommends the branches and leaves 

 of this shrub, as by far the best manure for the grape, not only because it 

 is very common in the south of France, but because there is no plant that, 

 by its decomposition, affords such a great quantity of vegetable mould. 



A CanaUdigging Machine, to be moved either by manual labour or ma- 

 chinery, has recently been constructed at Paris. In soil where it is uninter- 



