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PART III. 

 MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE. 



Art. I. Foreign Notices. 



■: FRANCE. 



A Horticultural Society has been established at Paris on a plan of 

 organisation similar to that of London. We refer to our review of the 

 first number of their Transactions for details, (p. 202.) We are most happy 

 to hear of it, and our correspondent, the Chevalier Soulange-Bodin, writes 

 us of the 18th of September, that he was so much delighted that he gave 

 an inauguration fete in his garden at Fromont, on the 30th of August last. 

 An account of that fete, he states, will be found in the Moniteur, and in 

 the second number of the Society's Annals when published. Such as de- 

 sire to become members of this Society, may address themselves to M. 

 Cassin, their Agent, Rue Taranne, No. 12. 



Jardin de Fromont, June 15. 1827. — A visit was paid to this garden 

 by the Royal and Central Agricultural Society of Paris. The proprietor is 

 said to have received his learned guests " avec les luxes confortable d'un 

 chateau des environs de Paris." A relation is given of what they saw in 

 the garden, in the Bulletin des Sciences Agricoles for July last, in the usual 

 laudatory style of the notices of the Fromont garden. We should like to 

 see a better taste on the part of the writer of these notices ; in England, at 

 least, the reputation of the garden is more injured than benefited by them. 



The Sophora japonica, Hoai-hoa, Chin., Legumindsse, has been cul- 

 tivated in France since 1717, and flowered for the first time in the 

 garden of the Mare"chal de Noailles, at St. Germain, ;in 1 779, under the 

 name of Robim'a sinensis. It was afterwards published by Bernard de 

 Jussieu under the name of Sophia sinica, and also by Linnagus as Sophora 

 japonica. It is stated in the Hortus Kewensis to have been introduced to 

 England by Gordon, in 1753 ; but I took the first plants to England along 

 with Ailanthus glandulosus, and gave them to Sir Joseph Banks, in 1780. 

 Neither of these trees were then known in England. See the Jour, de 

 Paris, Oct. 14th, 1779. — Thomas Blaikie. Paris, Rue des Vignes, No. 5. 

 August 18. 1827. 



The Duchesse d'Angouleme Pear is so named because it was found in 

 July, 1815, when the reigning family of France returned for the second time 

 to the head of the government. It was discovered by chance in the 

 hedges of a forest of Armaille, near Angers, in the department of Maine 

 and Loire. The proprietor of that forest, struck with the size of the fruit 

 and its excellent qualities, removed to his garden all the plants of that 

 variety which his woods contained, and, at the end of five years, this pear 

 was common in his neighbourhood. {Bui. Agr., Juil. 1827, p. 113.) — If 

 " all the plants " which he found with this excellent fruit were seedlings, 

 no two of them would be exactly alike in quality, and of course there 

 must be several varieties of this pear in cultivation. 



