on Gardening and Rural Affairs. 439 



16. Cut into slices, and thrown in a certain proportion into caldrons 

 of boiling water, they prevent the sediment of water from adhering to the 

 sides and bottoms of such vessels. 



17. They form a wash or thin plaster for buildings, which may be 

 coloured by soot, ochre, or other colours, as washes of lime are co- 

 loured in this country. 



18. Roasted to a brown state, and ground to powder, they make a very 

 good coffee. 



19. Crushed, they are employed for whitening linen and other cloths. 



20. The water expressed from bruised potatoes is a rapid promoter of 

 the germination of seeds. 



21. 22. The fecula, or starch, with sulphuric acid, is converted into 

 syrup, from which a species of sugar may be obtained, analogous to cas- 

 sonade (moist sugar). 



23. With soot and other mixtures this syrup makes an admirable 

 blacking. 



24. Crushed potatoes, or their fecula, will afford spirit by distillation. 



25. The potato may be cultivated in caves and cellars, which resource 

 might have saved Missolonghi. We were rather surprised at this remark 

 of Messrs. Payen and Chevalier, as every gardener knows that the young 

 potatoes formed in cellars are merely a remodification or transfer of the 

 nutriment contained in the old potato, and as this transfer is always 

 made at a great loss of nutriment, if the besieged at Missolonghi had enough 

 of potatoes to plant their cellars, it would have been more profitable for 

 them to have eaten them as they were, than to have encouraged them 

 to form new tubers. 



26. 27. The water contained in the tubers of young potatoes may be 

 employed for dyeing grey, and the blossom furnishes a beautiful yellow. 



28, 29. The water of potato blossoms cleans cloth of cotton, wool, and 

 silk, and assists in the manufacture of artificial soda. 



30. A potato diet cures the scurvy. 



51. The sediment of the fecula, mixed with the powder of charcoal, 

 may be made into little billets, or bricks, either for building or burning. 



All these uses are independent of the application of the apples or fruit 

 of the potato, the writer of which, when immature, might probably be 

 used as in 27, 28, and 29. ; and when ripe, like the tomata. The tender tops 

 may be used as spinage. (G. Mag. 353.) 

 Pinteux, senior Butcher and Syndic of the Shambles of Paris : Reflections 



sur la Production et la Population des Bestiaux en France. Paris, 8vo. 

 Bonafous, M. Mathieu, of Turin, a Botanist and Cultivator, Author of 



several Works on the Mulberry and Silk Worms : Recherches sur les 



Moyens de remplacer la Feuille de Murier par une autre Substance propre 



au Ver a Soie, et sur l'Emploi du residu des Cocons comme Engrais. 



Paris, 8vo. 



The leaves of lettuce, of the rose, bramble, dandelion, pellitory, hemp, 

 the hop, and fig, will keep the silk-worm alive, but not enable it to produce 

 silk. M. Bonafous has found that the only plant worth notice as a sub- 

 stitute for mulberry leaves is the Myagrum sativum, L., an annual plant of 

 the family of cruciferae, indigenous in most parts of the Continent. M. B. 

 fed worms with the leaves of this plant alone for sixteen days ; at the end of 

 that time a number were found dead, but those which remained alive being 

 supplied with mulberry leaves, acquired strength and made very good cocons. 

 Thus it is of some value to know that in a case of necessity the silk-worm 

 may be kept alive for ten or twelve days on other leaves than those of the 

 mulberry. According to Dandolo, it is the resinous matter contained in the 

 leaves of this tree which, elaborated in the stomach of the worm, enables 

 it to produce silk By analysing the leaves of a great number of plants, 



