220 General Notices. 



fact connecteil with the life of Mr. Roscoe, which every gardener who either 

 is a father, or who contemplates being one, ought to attend to ; which is, that 

 he attributes much of his conduct and principles through life (which obtained 

 for him the esteem of all who knew him) to the circumstance of his mother, 

 who nursed him and watched over his early education, being a woman of 

 " superior understanding and of kindly affections." The world, as Pestalozzi 

 has shown, is not yet aware how much of the character of every man depends 

 upon his mother. — Cmid, 



Seeds received from Friends, more especially of plants not very'common, serve 

 as lasting monuments of friendship. The cutting of Clematis cirrhosa, as 

 soon as it is rooted, shall be planted against the front of my new cottage, 

 and ever and anon, as I go out or come in, whether alone or in the company 

 of a friend, I shall have a living specimen of your kind remembrance to point 

 to. If I were able to assign separate portions to all the instruments of plea- 

 surable emotions that I have experienced, through a pretty long life, I should 

 point to the cultivation of plants sent me by disinterested friends, as one of 

 tiie purest gratifications. — A. G. 



Burning Gas for luarming Rooms or Green-houses. — Various forms of stoves 

 have been proposed for this purpose, 6n the understanding, it would appear, 

 that by applying the flame of the gas to metallic bodies, an increased degree 

 of heat would be communicated by them to the atmosphere around them. A 

 little consideration will show that, however the distribution of the heat may 

 be modified b}' such contrivances, there can be no increase of the heating 

 power ; and that, when a certain measure of gas is fairly burned, the heat 

 evolved into the apartment will be the same, whether the flame be disposed 

 as a light, or made to play against metallic plates, or other combinations of 

 apparatus. In all cases where the products of the combustion are allowed to 

 mix with the atmosphere of the apartment, without provision being made 

 for carrying them off by ventilation, the effects of such processes must be 

 more or less deleterious to health, according to the proportion these products 

 bear to the mass of air they mix in. On the whole it may be assumed, that 

 this mode of heating apartments is the most expensive, the least efficient, and, 

 except that by Joyce's charcoal-stove, the most insalubrious, that can be 

 resorted to. (Extract from a paper " On the best Manner of burning Gas for 

 supplying Heat ; by Sir John Robison, Sec. R. S. E.: read before the Society 

 of Arts for Scotland, March, 1839.) 



Mudie's Views of the Adaptations of Nature in the Vegetable Kingdom. — 

 I have lately perused another of Mr. Mudie's instructive volumes, namely his 

 Autumn, lately published by Ward and Co., Paternoster Row. The book 

 contains some of the most original and profound philosophical views of the 

 beautiful adaptations exemplified in the works of nature, and particularly 

 in the vegetable kingdom. In describing what he conceives and proves to be 

 the uses and grand office of the fungi ; those " great armies of autumn," as 

 he calls them, which decompose and destroy those vegetable and animal 

 remains now no longer possessed of life, nor fit for the purposes of life, till the 

 fungi have seized and reduced them to elements fitted for the living products 

 of the following year ; our author continues : — 



" This brings us to the main point which establishes the grand use of the 

 fungi, in all cases where matter in this putrefying and poisonous state cannot 

 be decomposed by the agency of animal destroyers, or by the mechanical and 

 ■chemical operations of the elements. The putrefying substance of any one 

 species, whether plant or animal, is a poison to that species if applied to the 

 system ; and in the case of such animals and plants as do not come within 

 the list of the scavengers of nature, whose special office is to destroy putridity, 

 the food, whatever it may be, is a poison if taken in the putrid state ; and it is 

 to prevent the deleterious effects of this poison that the insects and the fungi, 

 according as the general physical circu;iistances are more favourable to the 

 action of the one or the other, invariably hasten to convert this poisonous 

 •matter into a simple and wholesome pabulum. 



" This not only shows us very cleaiiy what an important office those little 



