General Notices. 289 



manner, with ease to himself, and without injuriously straining the implements 

 used, without any other teaching ; so that an apprenticeship to a young man 

 intended for a gardener would be rendered in a great measure unnecessary. 

 The independent gentleman, who has been taught these exercises when a boy, 

 will be enabled to employ them when a man as a source of recreation ; which 

 will have the advantages over field sports, of being useful as well as more 

 rational and more humanising, as enabling him to sympathise with the labours 

 of all the country workmen on his estate. To boys, whether destined to be 

 workmen or to inherit property, a knowledge of garden and field operations 

 can hardly fail to communicate a taste for gardening and agriculture ; and this 

 taste, whether in the poor or rich, is universally acknowledged to be a source 

 of domestic comfort and happiness. 



We have gone somewhat into detail in this notice, in the hope of inducing 

 others to produce similar school books for different mechanical trades : one 

 for carpentry, for example, one for smith's work, and one for masonry and 

 bricklaying. The operations of these trades, and of garden and field culture, 

 ought, in our opinion, to be taught at school to all boys whatever ; by which 

 means they would be fitted for gaining their bread in any country in the 

 world, whether new or old. 



A similar series of school exercises in household matters of every kind 

 ought to be contrived for girls. 



MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE. 



Art. I. General Notices. 



Acclimatisation of Plants. — The desire to naturalise the many beautiful 

 flowering shrubs and trees, natives of warmer skies, is natural to every lover 

 of plants in this and other northern countries. In furtherance of this object, 

 many experiments have been made to ascertain whether the denizens of 

 warmer climes may be inured to the chilly air and frost of our northern lati- 

 tudes. Some botanists have imagined that tender plants have a predisposition 

 or constitutional mutability, by which, whatever may be the temperature of the 

 station they are placed in, they will accommodate themselves thereto. But 

 no rule of practice has been founded on this idea ; on the contrary, nothing 

 but the actual and gradual exposure of the plants we wish to acclimatise can 

 be a certain test of their ability to bear the rigours of a colder climate. By 

 such trials, the Aucuba japonica was found to be perfectly hardy. Many 

 South American, Chinese, and Australian plants have been found to be half- 

 hardy ; and, before this last winter (1837-8), many curious kinds from the 

 above-mentioned countries were supposed to be hardy, which are now dead, 

 or nearly so ; the roots only of many of them remaining unhurt. But the frost 

 of last winter was uncommonly severe, many of our hardiest natives having 

 suffered. 



That the texture and consequent susceptibilities of plants are varied ac- 

 cording to the aspect, or moisture, or poverty of the soil in which they grow, 

 is perfectly obvious. The growth is retarded by cold, drought, and by want 

 of sufficient nourishment; and accelerated by heat, humidity, and by a rich 

 generous soil. Of course, the plants on the north side of a gravelly hill, 

 whether indigenous or exotic, are of a firmer texture, and much more hardy, 

 than those on a rich southern slope. This is the reason why plants in an 

 irriguous valley are sooner destroyed by frost than those on the bleak hill ; and 

 also why plants tenderly nursed up are sooner damaged by a colder tempe- 

 rature than if reared in full air. The membranes, in the last case, being more 

 compact and juiceless, and in the other more attenuated and succulent; and, 

 according as these circumstances are more or less extreme, the plant is more 

 or less liable to be destroyed by frost. 



Vol. XV. — No. 110. x 



