68 Voreiiin Notices : — France. 



were the ornament of that town before the Revolution ; thence to Chateaii- 

 Salin, where we established two correspondents, one of them Mademoiselle 

 Loritz, a great amateur, with the best collection in that part of the country. 

 At Metz we arrived on December 6., and remained till the 10th. In the 

 Botanic Ganlen we found that the Andna Chcrimdlia had been fruited seve- 

 ral 3ears ;ij,'o, by the conmion treatment of bark-bed woody plants. The 

 pots are about a foot in diameter, and the plants were raised from seed 

 about twenty-eight years ago ; nine or ten fruits were produced six or eight 

 years since, about the size, shape, and colour of oranges, and very palatable. 

 Young plants have been raised from their seeds, which are now nearly 15 ft. 

 high, the height of the parent plant. The director of the garden is M. 

 Coutie, an excellent man, and an enthusiastic gardener, about eighty years 

 of age, who worked in the gardens of Kew thirty years ago. The grounds 

 of the Baron de Tschoudy, who invented the greffe herbace, are in the 

 neighbourhood of Metz ; but of these, of the gardens of M. Durand (a 

 reader of both our Magazines), of the Comtc Dourche, of the nurseries of 

 Messrs. Simon freres, of the vegetable gardens, and of the vegetable market 

 and seed-shops, we have not time at present to enter into details. 



We arrived at Paris on the 1 2th ; and after visiting the farm of Trappe, 

 the agricultural establishment at Grigrion, the manufacture of potato-flour 

 at Bondy and at two other places, and revisiting a number of the vegetable 

 and flower-gardens of Paris, and the forcing-gai'den of Versailles, to observe 

 their winter-management, we left that city on Jan. 9., and arrived at Bays- 

 water on the 16th inst. Having thus given our readers an outline of our 

 four months' tour, we intend filling it up in succeeding Numbers, under the 

 division of Original Papers, Part I. — Cond. 



Vegetable Anatomy. — Dr. Dutrochet has discovered that, if you submit 

 any part of a plant to the action of hot nitric acid for a short space of time, 

 all power of cohesion is lost by the vessels, which become transparent, and 

 are easily separable from each other by gentle dissection. So complete is 

 the effect of this agent, that even the most delicate cells of the cellular tis- 

 sue become disengaged from each other, and may be examined singly, and 

 with perfect ease. We rejoice in this discovery, as it will enable gardeners 

 and others who cannot afford to purchase compound miscroscopes, and 

 delicate dissecting instruments, to verify the anatomy of Mirbel, and many 

 of the ingenious experiments of Knight, and other physiologists, and, pro- 

 bablj', to make new discoveries themselves. 



The manner in which Dutrochet performed his experiments was this : — 

 " I placed," he observes, " a fragment of the plant I was desirous of study- 

 ing, in a little phial filled with nitric acid, and plunged it into boiling water. 

 By this operation, the parts which compose the cellular tissue lost their 

 power of cohesion, and became transparent, which rendered their examin- 

 ation much less difficult. At the same time, the tracheae and the other 

 vessels filled with an aeriform fluid, which is also a great assistance in view- 

 ing them. Care, however, must be taken that this operation be not too far 

 prolonged, because, if it be, the vegetable tissue will be destroyed : the 

 observer must regulate the time which the plant is to remain in nitric acid 

 according to its greater or less degree of delicacy. Generally, the time for 

 suspending the expeiiment is indicated by the fragment having become 

 transparent, and being capable of easy separation. To make the observ- 

 ation, I throw into water, in a watch-glass, the smallest possible morsels 

 which can be procured by mere mechanical division, and! place them under 

 the microscope." This subject is farther illustrated in the News of Litera- 

 ture and Fashion, by an eminent botanist. (See No. 8 9., et seq.) 



Uva passu. — This term was applied, by the Romans, to those sorts of 

 grapes which were calculated for drying like our raisins (raisin sec, Fr.) ; 

 snd, hence, when the word jMsse is placed before the name of any fruit, it 



