Foreign Notices: — France. Q^\ 



Scotchmen, by speaking the Erse, or Celtic, to the Tartars, made themselves 

 perfectly understood, this people speaking nearly the same language as them- 

 selves. They were treated with the greatest kindness, and conducted back to 

 the army in the most friendly manner : and from this circumstance the Tartars 

 became friends to the Russians. From this he concluded that the Celtic 

 language must have been the original language of all the northern part of the 

 globe ; and that these unconquered people had retired, and preserved their 

 original language in Tartary, as the others had on the mountains of Scotland, 

 Ireland, and Wales, and in some parts of the Basque Mountains, and in 

 Breton. — Thomas Blaikie. 



Sorbus. — A friend of mine, was publishing a Botanical Glossary, or Ety- 

 mological Dictionari/ of the Botanical Names in Linnceus ; and he frequently 

 showed me the manuscript. He was at the word Sorbus ; and I observed to 

 him that the people of Scotland had a superstitious idea that this tree was a 

 charm or preservative against witchcraft ; and they had a proverb that says, — 



" Roan tree and red threed 

 Puts the witches to their speed;" 



when he replied, that a gentleman of his acquaintance, who had been long in 

 the East Indies, and frequently associated with the natives, told him that the 

 women in Hindostan had nearly the same superstitious opinions relative to 

 red thread ; and that they tied some red thread round their children's arms as 

 a preservation against witchcraft, enchantment, or evil spirits ; and that in 

 Switzerland, the country people strew the berries of the sorbus over the 

 graves from nearly the same idea. Now, how the same superstition could liave 

 spread from the East Indies to Switzerland and Scotland, I shall leave your 

 learned doctors to decide : I onl}^ send you this for your amusement, and for 

 the Arboretum Britannicum, if you think it worth inserting when you are treating 

 on the mountain ash. — Id. 



Paris, Aug. 10. 1836. — On visiting the Jardin des Plantes, I was sur- 

 prised to find the extensive improvements that have taken place in the 

 stoves and green-houses ; but rather disappointed with the arrangement in the 

 different compartments of the open garden, which seem in a state of compara- 

 tive neglect to what they were when I last saw them, in 1827. To the hot- 

 houses have been added two palm-houses; the framework of iron, and the roofs 

 glazed as well as the sides : they are about 40 ft. square in the ground plan, 

 and finished with a domical roof. The effect is excellent. The palms are in 

 boxes, which are placed in a sunk pit, the bottom of which pit can be lowered 

 as the plants grow ; so that their trunks may be 100 ft. in height, and yet their 

 heads be at a sufficient distance from the glass, and quite near the eye of the 

 spectator walking round the house. The stems, or trunks, being sunk in the 

 pit, will suffer nothing from the want of light ; and a circulation of air can 

 readily be contrived by a shaft, which may also serve as a staircase to go 

 down for the purposes of culture ; also for the curiosity of walking in a palm 

 grove. All that is necessary to be kept in view, in the case of such a plan as 

 this, is to place palms which grow at the same rate, and attain the same 

 height, together ; so that the dwarf kinds and slow-growing sorts might not 

 suffer by their proximity to the larger and more rapidly growing species. It 

 must be obvious, that if, instead of sinking the pits as the palms grew, the side 

 walls of the house were raised, exactly the same effect would be produced as 

 far as respects the plants. The spectator, on entering the house, would find 

 himself in a dark palm grove; and by ascending a staircase and walking romid 

 a gallery at the top of the wall (which gallery would have to be raised as the 

 plants were raised), the foliage of the plants would be seen from above. If 

 palms were classed and cultivated in this way, a palm-house, both in the first 

 cost and after-management, would cost less than any other (ler>cri[)tion of 

 plant-house, with the single exception of the article of fuel. The side walls 

 of the house might be of brick or stone, built hollow, to increase its non- 

 conducting power; and the roof of iron, glazed, and fixed; the openings for 



