586 Summary Vienso of the Progress of Gardening, 



and, under General Notices, there are a great variety of articles 

 on this department, which can hardly fail to instruct, and which, 

 at all events, will be read with pleasure by every lover of garden- 

 ing, on account of the associations which they will call up in his 

 mind. 



Horticulture. — There are so many interesting papers on this 

 subject in the present volume, that we cannot spare room to par- 

 ticularise them. Perhaps the most valuable articles are those on 

 the cultivation of the grape, the shriveling of the fruit in va- 

 rious places having called forth the energies of several cultivators. 

 Root-pruning, to which Mr. Rivers (p. 625.) has lately directed 

 public attention, is a practice capable of being much more ge- 

 nerally applied than has hitherto been done ; not that gardeners 

 are ignorant of it, for it was long since recommended from the 

 Caledonian Hort. Soc. Mem. in the first edition of our l^ncyclo- 

 ■pcedia of Gardening, but that pruned roots, being unseen, do not 

 make that impression on a stranger visiting a garden where it 

 has been practised which top-pruning does. The subject of in- 

 sects on fruit trees has, as usual, occupied a good deal of the at- 

 tention of cultivators ; and that of the diseases to which wheat and 

 other grains are liable has given rise to some valuable papers, by 

 Professor Henslow, in the English Agricidtural Journal. 



A few new varieties of fruits and culinary vegetables have been 

 brought into notice, and are given in a Report by Mr. Thompson, 

 accompanied by some judicious remarks. The fruit of JS^Vims 

 dulcis, commonly known in the nurseries as Berberis rotundifolia, 

 has been ripened in Mr. Cunningham's nursery, Edinburgh, and 

 found excellent; Mr. Cunningham says, "as large and as good 

 as a black Hamburgh grape ; " and, if so, we have no doubt that it 

 will soon come into cultivation as a fruit shrub. Mr. Herbert 

 has found the berries of Fuchs/a fulgens, not only eatable, but 

 excellent (p. 648.) ; and the same remark will apply to the roots 

 of O'xalis Deppez" (p. 648.). Some Chinese vegetables have 

 recently been tried by the French, but sufficient experience has 

 not yet been obtained to enable us to determine their merits. In 

 the Report of the progress of the Horticultural Society from 

 1830 to 1840, published in their Transactions, second series, 

 vol. ii. p. 428., will be found a List of Fruits and Culinary Vege- 

 tables which have been examined during that period, and 

 found deserving of genei'al cultivation. This List will be given 

 in our ensuing volume. 



Agriculture. — The progress which this art is now making is 

 rapid, both in England and Scotland, chiefly by the adoption of 

 the frequent or furrow drain system and subsoil plough. These 

 are both the invention of Mr. Smith of Deanston, to whom the 

 landed proprietors of Britain, and more especially of Scotland, 

 are under a debt which they can scarcely ever repay. In the 



