Foreign Notices. 213 



being covered every winter with old pieces of mat nailed on the wall, and the 

 trees unnailed in the autumn, and tied together in four or five bunches, 

 quite flat against the wall. Even the apricot and mulberry trees, which 

 were on the wall, but uncovered, have been injured by the severity of the 

 winter. 



A small flower-garden belonging to Her Royal Highness Princess Caro- 

 line Amalie, at Sorgenfrie, which I laid out in the spring of 1828, and planted 

 with a select collection of several sorts of Rhododendrons, Azaleas, Kal- 

 mias, MagnoHffl glauca, Calycanthus floridus, and other shrubs, from Mr. 

 Booth, at Flotbeck, was properly covered in the autumn with spruce fir 

 branches and spray, and hardly any injury was done during the whole win- 

 ter, while similar plants in the gardens at Rosenburgh suffered very much 

 under a cover of reed mats. However, the former garden has a N.N.E. 

 aspect, and the borders of it I had prepared with peat and leaf mould, sand, 

 &c. In the garden at Rosenburgh, Pdsa semperflorens, Fiburnum Pinus, 

 Prunus Laurocerasus, and other plants, were frozen down to the ground, 

 and many of them killed, under a very thick covering of mats. 



In the middle of April last we gathered the first kidneybeans grown in 

 hot-beds, and also the first strawberries (Boskopper) forced in pits con- 

 structed for the same purpose. About the same time we also cut the first 

 cucumbers. Our first-forced carrots and cauliflowers we took on the 13th 

 of May. In the latter end of June we sent the last of the Newtown Pippins 

 to court, as fine as if they had been gathered from the open trees the same 

 day ; also a couple of peaches, the first ripe fruit this year. In November 

 last His Majesty was pleased to confer on M. Lindegaard, and the late M. 

 Holboll, the honour of knights of the order of Dannebrog ; they were the 

 first and only gardeners in this country ever distinguished in this manner. 



Last summer a green-house was erected in the Royal Gardens at Fri- 

 dericksberg, by Mr. Wolff", the royal gardener, heated by hot water accord- 

 ing to Mi\ Atkinson's plan, and it succeeded very well. I will send you a 

 further account of it for a future Number. Yours, &c. — Js. P. Petersen. 



ITALY. 



The Bread at the Foot of the Alps is made of chestnuts ; in the Abruzzi, 

 and in Calabria, of Indian corn, and the two kinds are equally wretched. 

 The chestnut bread of the Alps occasions nodosities, swelled joints, and 

 ultimately contracted limbs. The Indian-corn bread gives swine the mange, 

 and man the scurvy. But where nothing else can be procured, man must 

 be content to sustain life on such terms as he can. (Times, Oct. 28.) 



The Malaria. — The bad air of Rome and of the Campagna have, I sus- 

 pect, been greatly exaggerated. In the latter there seems to be a want of 

 wholesome water ; Rome is abundantly supplied, and this is perhaps partly 

 the reason why the city is more wholesome than the country. Another 

 source of disease is- to be sought in the nature of the food eaten by the 

 poor. When a man breakfasts on cucumbers, dines on melons, and sups on 

 love-apples, what has he to support him ? In the spring they have, in- 

 stead of these, purslain, artichokes, and lettuces. Fruit is dearer at Rome 

 than at Bologna, but vegetables are good and plentiful. A lady, last night, 

 was complaining that she could only get fifteen pauls for a cart-load of let- 

 tuces, forty-five pauls being equal to a pound sterling. A mass of artichokes, 

 consisting of twenty-six, cost, this spring, two bajoes. They are small, and 

 being boiled till they are soft, are eaten whole. Love-apples have sometimes 

 been sold as low as twelve pounds for abajoe. Wheaten bread, at the same 

 time, bears about two thirds of the price it does in England. Polenta is 

 cheaper, but the temptation is greater to fill the belly with a food, which, if 

 less wholesome, is more savoury, as well as at a lower price. (Wood's Let- 

 ters of an Architect, vol, ii. p. 173.) 



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