214 



Foreign Notices. 



Australasia. 



urens being called Jaggery; and from the whole of the above cast, both male 

 and female, who are very numerous, being employed in the culture of the 

 tree itself, or in the manufacture of the sugar which is procured from it. 

 No sugar is made in Ceylon from the sugar-cane; all the sugar used by 

 the natives of that island is made either from the Cdcos nucifera, or Bo- 

 rassus flabelliformis, or Caryota urens. Great quantities of sugar are made 

 from these trees, both for their own consumption and for exportation. It 

 is sold for one fourth or one sixth of the price of the cheapest sugar made 

 from the sugar-cane. (See Sir Alexander Johnston's Letter to the Royal 

 Asiatic Society of Great Britain, Vol. I. p. 545.) 



Culture of Indigo on the Coast of Coromandel. — A memoir on this subject, 

 detailing the choice of soil and seed, sowing, routine culture, reaping, and 

 the manufacture of the dye, by M. B. Plague, will be found in the Annal. 

 Marit. for July, 1825, and an abstract in the Bull, des Sciences Agricoles for 

 July, 1827. It is not worth abridging, but it may be well to know where 

 to refer for such information. 



East India Spinach. — The JSeta bengalensis and Salsola indiea are said, 

 by Dr. Francis Hamilton, to be cultivated for this purpose. (Breivs. Jour., 

 Oct. 1S27, p. 244.) 



Fish are fed to a great extent in the neighbourhood of Canton, chiefly 

 on boiled rice, to which is sometimes added blood or other offal animal 

 matter. {J. M. in Brande's Jour., Oct. 1827.) 



AUSTRALASIA. 



Trees here appear to follow the same Laius as other vegetable Productions, 

 regarding the effects they produce upon the soil wherein they grow. It has 

 long been remarked in America, that, on the forests being cut down, young 

 trees of a different species sprout up in the places of the old ones ; and here 

 the same remark, in a great measure, holds good, acacias very commonly 

 making their appearance on land that has been once under cultivation, and 

 afterwards permitted to relapse into a state of nature. From this circum- 

 stance it should seem that trees, like other vegetables, extract a particular 

 substance from the ground, which substance it is necessary should be 

 restored, before the same species of tree can be readily grown a second 

 time ; a restoration to be effected, perhaps, by such chemical changes in the 

 constituent particles of the soil, as may arise from the cultivation of other 

 species. {Cunningham's Two Years in New South Wales.) 



Art. II. Domestic Notices. 



ENGLAND. 



The Perforator {fig. 60.) is used by Sir Richard Colt Hoare as a sub- 

 stitute for the spade, in planting leaf-wood trees, or all those which make 



