Foreign Notices: — France. 135 



months, like Aaron's rod, have " blossomed " with young plants. My 

 worthy friend, James Cockburn, Esq., of Elm House, Guernsey, showed me 

 curious examples of the same kind in flower-stalks of the Echeveria gibbi- 

 flora. Infant plants studded the flower-stalk long after being detached from 

 the parent stem. Leaves and fragments of leaves will strike. The Bryo- 

 phyllum calycinum is remarkable for the crenatures of the leaf being fretted 

 with young plants even while yet attached to the parent plant, and still more 

 so in a state of decay. Various plants, I am aware, exhibit a similar vivi- 

 parous phenomenon; but I must now content myself with alluding to the 

 facility of striking almost fragments of the .Lychnis coronaria, a favourite of 

 mine. Not only will individual joints strike, but, if each joint be split into 

 two vertically, two distinct plants may be obtained. The echeveria is, how- 

 ever, the most tenacious of life. (J. Murray, in Gard. Chron. for June 19. 

 1841, p. 397.) 



Want of Moral Courage in Architects and Landscape-Gardeners. — The 

 greater number of these persons being sprung from the people, necessarily 

 have more or less the character of parvenus, when introduced into the society 

 of the higher classes. Observing in this class the contempt and disdain with 

 which they look on the mass of the people, they naturally avoid every thing 

 which may remind either themselves or the society into which they have been 

 introduced of their low origin. Hence, to advocate the cause of the class 

 from which they sprang in any way ; to be thought to care about their com- 

 forts, or to suggest improvements in their dwellings, would remind the 

 employer of their origin, and be thought derogatory to their newly- acquired 

 station. An architect or a landscape-gardener, therefore, who has sprung 

 from the people, is rarely found with the moral courage necessary to propose 

 to the rich who employ them ameliorations of any kind for the poor. In the 

 course of thirty years' observation, we have found this to hold good both in 

 Scotland and England, and in the former country more particularly. How 

 many improved plans of kitchen-gardens, and new ranges of hot-houses, have 

 there not been carried into execution in Scotland since the commencement 

 of the present century, and yet how few improved gardener's houses have 

 been built within the same period ! Mr. Repton, having been born a gentle- 

 man, was under no such dread as that to which we have alluded, and we 

 accordingly find him continually advocating the improvement of cottages. 

 We also know other honourable exceptions among architects, and among 

 their employers ; many whose names might be enumerated, were we not 

 fearful of making omissions, and incurring the charge of partiality. — 

 Cond. 



Art. II. Foreign Notices. 

 FRANCE. 



The Artesian Well of Grenelle. — We have all heard, with the greatest 

 interest, of the complete success which M. Mulot has obtained at Grenelle. 

 After seven years of continued exertion, and after having surmounted difficulties 

 of whose amount it would not have been prudent to speak during the course of 

 the operation, M. Mulot, at length, on the 26th of February, 1841, at half- 

 past two o'clock, had the satisfaction of seeing burst forth, from a depth of 

 548 metres, the water which he was in search of in the greensand under the 

 gault. 



The jet of water springs up with an abundance which surpasses every hope 

 that had been formed; for it yields no less than 4,000,000 of litres in the 

 twenty-four hours. The temperature was not detei-mined by M. Arago and 

 myself till the following day, the 27th ; and the state of the basin into which 

 the water flowed not admiting of an accurate direct determination of the 

 temperature of the jet, a bucket was placed in the basin, which was imme- 



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