188 General Notices, 



Art. XVI. On the Excellences of the Ash-leaved Kidney Potato. 

 By T. Torbron. 



This most excellent potato may be planted, as soon as the frost 

 leaves the ground, on south borders, and other warm sites : 

 if the frost returns, cover the ground with fern or litter. Plant 

 the main crop in March, in an open site ; but if it be desirable to 

 prolong the season for the supply of that sort, it may be planted 

 at intervals up to July, whereby it may be had in its best state 

 nearly all the year. — Bdyswater, Jan. 27. 1842. 



[Mr. Torbron is an excellent gardener, and we wish we could see him 

 established in a good place.] 



MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE. 



Art. I. General Notices. 



JVhittaker's Composition for destroying Worms. — Mr. Fortune reported from 

 the Hothouse department that Whittaker's composition, a substance adver- 

 tised for the destruction of the insects called scale and green fly, had been 

 tried ; but that the results had not been satisfactory. It appears to destroy 

 the plants without affecting the insects which infest them. He did not find 

 that it injuresthe roots of plants, when used in the proportion which is neces- 

 sary for the destruction of worms, and therefore it may be employed for that 

 purpose in the same way as lime-water, or any acid. (Proceedings of the Hort. 

 Soc. for 1841, p. 199.) 



Art. II. Foreign Notices. 



NORTH AMERICA. 



JusslEif a grandiflora. — I am now enabled to giveyou the facts of the salutary 

 influence of this plant on the health of the inhabitants, when permitted to 

 grow in the waters of Louisiana, which facts 1 promised in my communication 

 in your Magazine of February, 1841. Dr. Cartwright informs me, under date 

 of September 24., that " Bayou Terre Bonne, in the parish of Terre Bonne, 

 having been declared a navigable bayou, or natural canal (stream it is not, for 

 it has no current, and is not fed by springs or rivulets), and its surface being 

 thickly set with the plant, which gave it the appearance of a meadow covered 

 with a tall flowering weed, and obstructed the navigation very much, it 

 was cleared of it. The banks of the bayou are now, and have been 

 thickly inhabited for seventy years, with the constant enjoyment of health, 

 until the destruction of the jussieua three years since, when bilious diseases 

 made their appearance, while those on the banks of the two Bayous Caillon 

 (Grand and Petit), Bayous Black and Blue, and some others, on whose waters 

 the plant still remains, continue exempt from them. The waters in those 

 bayous are stagnant, but pure and sweet. The plant feeds on the aqueous 

 impurities. It has no attachment to the soil, but floats on the surface of the 

 water, and only become stationary when it becomes too thick and crowded to 

 float. Put into any stagnant pool of water, it soon purifies it. I have not met 

 with it above the 30th degree of latitude in this country, but I saw it growing in 

 one of the aquariums in the botanic garden of Oxford : when I asked the 

 botanist who accompanied me in the garden why the water was so much 

 clearer and sweeter than in the other aquariums, he assured me he could not 

 tell, and added, that all the aquariums were supplied with water from the same 

 source."— J. M. Philadelphia, Oct. 15. 1841. 



Large American Red Oak. — A correspondent in the Natchitoches (Louisiana) 



