Outlines of Horticultural Chemistry. 27 



business about 1 756, as my father purchased from him, then 

 a stock of pine plants, perfectly clean and free from insects : 

 and it may be worth remarking,, as rather a rare instance of 

 any such pedigree, and so remote, that from that stock has 

 descended to me the one which I am at present in possession 

 of equally free from insects, and that solely by guarding 

 against their intermixture with any other : perhaps the only 

 effectual way of preserving pine plants clean, notwithstanding 

 all the nostrums that have been recommended. 



However horticulture may have been neglected about Dub- 

 lin at the period mentioned by the writer, it is not to be 

 taken for granted that it was so in other parts of Ireland. 

 Kilkenny, at least, forms an exception, as it never was so flou- 

 rishing there as then. 



Drawing a radius of ten or twelve miles round that city, 

 you would, to my knowledge, for twenty or thirty years from 

 J 785, reckon within the circle a dozen gardens or more, each 

 of which contained pine-stoves, from 50 to 1 00 ft. in leno-th ; 

 and other forcing-houses corresponding *, well stocked and 

 managed by able gardeners from Kew, Hampton Court, and 

 other places of note round London. Now we cannot count 

 half the number : the Union has rendered some of our great 

 landed proprietors absentees ; and the fall of lands and prices 

 has disabled others, and has swept off a number of land- 

 holders, who were rapidly improving the face of the country 

 by building, farming, planting, and gardening : so that horti- 

 culture in Ireland, as far as my observation extends, was never 

 at so low an ebb as at the present moment. 



I am, Sir, &c. 

 Kilkenny, Nov. 1829. John Robertson. 



Art. IV. Outlines of Horticultural Chemistry : — Diseases of 

 Plants. By G. W. Johnson, Esq., Great Totham, Essex. 



(Continued from Vol. V. p. 409.) 



The following sketch (Jig. 7. ) represents the apparatus I have 

 found the best for ascertaining the retentive power of soils., a 

 represents a small lamp ; b, a tripod for supporting a small tin 



* As an instance,: fifty years ago the present Dowager Countess of 

 Ormond had her table regularly served, through the winter with cucumbers 

 raised in her pine-stoves on treillages against the back wall ; though, only the 

 other day, Mr. Aiton, the king's gardener at Kew, had a medal presented to 

 him by the Horticultural Society, for the introduction of the practice about 

 London. 



