490 Foreign Notices : — North America. 



The autumn here has been fine, and the harvest pretty tolerable; corn 

 prices are high ; fruit is scarce, and not highly flavoured ; forced asparagus 

 is this day selling at ten English shillings the hundred. I am. Sir, &c. — 

 Jens Peter Petersen. Royal Gardens, Rosenborg, Copenhagen, Dec. 23. 

 1830. 



NORTH AMERICA. 



Culture of Gerardias, and Hints on American Plants. — Do you not make 

 too great a mystery of the cultivation of American plants ? I apprehend 

 you destroy more by kindness than by neglect. When removed from their 

 native vi^oods to our gardens, we do not find them difficult to cultivate. In 

 the Encyclopaedia of Plants, and Gardener's Magazine, you say that our 

 Gerardias, which are the most beautiful of herbaceous plants, are so 

 impatient of cultivation that few individuals have seen them in gar- 

 dens. Here they are weeds in our fields. Seventy Gerardias are found 

 to one ^sclepias or Phlox. Sow the seed in a dry poor soil, not too much 

 shaded, and your gardeners will have no difficulty with Gerardias. They 

 are mostly met with on hills, where the timber has been thinned out ; but 

 sometimes on the low grounds. In a square yard of damp soil I have 

 found Lobelia cardinalis, syphilitica, and inflata, and Gerardia ^uercifolia 

 and purpurea. Our azaleas and rhododendrons are found in all parts of 

 the country, growing equally well in great varieties of soil. — J. L. York, 

 Pennsylvania, Nov. 27. 1830. 



New Species of Elm Tree. — Mr. David Thomas describes, in SilUma^i's 

 American Journal for 1830, a new species of elm, under the name of C7'lmus 

 racemosa. Its specific characters are, flowers in racemes ; pedicles in dis- 

 tinct fascicles, united at their bases. It is a tree, and its lower branches 

 have irregular corky excrescences. It is a native of the Cayuga country, 

 in the state of New York, and of the adjacent country. (^Literary Gazette, 

 Jan. 29. 1831.) 



AFRICA. 



Relative Merits of the Cape of Good Hope, America, and Australia, as 

 Places for Emigration. — Su', You request me to give you a candid opinion 

 of the relative goodness of the Cape of Good Hope, America, and Austra- 

 lia, as places adapted to emigration. I shall endeavour to do so only by a 

 few loose observations, which you must digest at your leisure; for the sub- 

 ject is one which I consider extremely difficult to treat on to my own satis- 

 faction, and most assuredly liable to displease many who may emigrate from 

 their native lands (they know not for what), and who are likely ever after 

 to regret their having done so. 



I can only judge of the comparative merits of North America and Aus- 

 tralia from what little I have read, or heard from friends who were equal to 

 the task, and worthy of credit ; but I must say, that, even from the most 

 favourable and partial accounts, I should not hesitate to recommend, or to 

 choose for myself, the Cape of Good Hope, which, notwithstanding all that 

 has been said against it, I consider (from fourteen years' knowledge, and, 

 of these, five years' actual investigation of at least three parts of the co- 

 lony) superior both in natural resources and climate, and capable of being 

 made more conducive to domestic comfort, than either of the other men- 

 tioned countries. 



That there exist certain drawbacks to an unalloyed happiness in South 

 Africa cannot be denied ; but where is the country in which the restless 

 ambition of man, and his insatiate wishes, do not meet with disappoint- 

 ment ? This is no country to come to for the purpose of gaining a rapid 

 fortune, although many have succeeded even in this ; but it is a country 

 where the sober, honest, and industrious may acquire a comfortable liveli- 

 hood, and even attain a respectable independence, at the same time enjoy- 

 ing luxuries which do not often fell to the lot of the working classes m 

 Europe. 



