Domestic Notices : — Emland. 681 



fa" 



Fleur de Lis, 20 dwt. 12 gr. ; Lily of the Valley, 20 dwt, 11 gr. — M. Said. 

 Sulyard Street, Lancaster, October 24. 1835. 



A Pearl Onion is mentioned, in the article " Horticulture" in the Encyclo- 

 pcedia Britannica, vol. ix. p. 671., as of recent introduction, and little known. 

 It is said to produce clusters of little bulbs at the root ; the bulbs havin" a 

 fine white colour, like the silver-skinned onion, and being very fit for pickling. 

 Mr. George Don considers it a distinct species, the J'llium Halleri of his 

 Monograpti. 



Trifdlhmi incarnatum. — The cultivation of this plant is, we are glad to hear, 

 spreading rapidly ; and it is in some parts of the country very generally taking 

 the place of tares, as it produces a much greater quantity of food, and does 

 not require much more than a tenth of the labour bestowed on preparing the 

 ground and sowing it. It also comes in a fortnight earlier. — Cond. 



The London Dairies. — In the last edition of our JSticyclopcedia of Agricul- 

 ture we gave, at considerable length, an account (which, by the by, was copied 

 into the British Farmei-'s Magazine, without acknowledgement, and subse- 

 quently into the Farmer''s Series of the Useful Knoivledge Society, &c.), of 

 some of the greatest dairy establishments in the neighbourhood of London, 

 from personal observation ; but we were not aware at that time that there 

 existed dairies for the poor, in dark lanes, where the cows are penned up 

 without either light or ventilation, and without being taken out for exercise. 

 The following remarks have been sent us on the subject by Mr. Whitlaw, who 

 deserves credit for having directed public attention to the subject. We insert 

 them, to impress upon gardeners and others the immense importance of change 

 of air to health. We are persuaded that there is not one head gardener in 

 ten that is aware of this importance, otherwise they would not require their 

 apprentices and journeymen to sleep in the miserable damp holes in back sheds, 

 and other ill-ventilated places, which they now do. 



" Milk, being a direct separation from the blood of the animal, necessarily 

 carries along with it all the volatile, and much of the essential, oils contained 

 in the food. How important, therefore, that the food of the animal should be 

 carefully selected ! Every medical man is aware of the benefit derived from 

 the use of a milk diet, in the cure of disease; but to recommend the London 

 milk to a delicate patient, would be a prescription that would vitiate every 

 secretion, disease every organ of the body, and probably destroy the patient's 

 life ! That a change ought to be effected in the management of our London 

 dairies, is an assertion which cannot be disputed ; but how the evil is to be 

 remedied I know not, unless the disgusting system is exposed and laid open in 

 all its loathsome details. 



" Public attention may then be directed to the subject,"and public enquiry in- 

 stituted. When we consider the situation generally chosen for a London 

 dairy, namely, the narrow by-lanes, swarming with the poorest of the people, 

 where offal, and rubbish of every description, are left to rot, and contaminate 

 the atmosphere : in some dark hovels in these districts, you will find the dairy, 

 and the poor animals, penned up from one month to another, with scarce 

 room enough to extend their palsied limbs ; with light enough to make dark- 

 ness visible ; without exercise, and without ventilation (there being seldom 

 any other opening than that of the door-way, which, as a matter of necessity, 

 is closed during the night). Can it be a subject of wonder, that the cows are 

 constantly labouring under fever, and dying frequently of typhus ? The at- 

 mosphere is so carbonised as to be rendered almost irrespirable. The ill 

 effects of all this is but too evident in the wretched appearance of the poor 

 animals. Emaciated almost to a state of atrophy, the respiration feeble and 

 exhausted, the eyes dull and withered, hide-bound, and covered with vermin 

 and disease, nothing in the shape of existence can present a more melancholy 

 spectacle of utter wretchedness. And, lastly, when we consider the kind and 

 quality of the food on which the dairy cows in London are fed, we shall cease 

 to wonder at the great mortality that annually takes place among them. Four 

 fifths of their daily sustenance consist of grains, or the refuse of the mash 



