324 
FOREIGN AGRICULTURAL NEWS. 
Consumption of Guano in Great Britain. —In 1841 this 
amounted to 500 tons of Peruvian 5 in 1842, to 2,000 
tons ; in 1S43, to 5,500 ; in 1841, to 10,450 of Peruvian, 
and 16,000 of African; 1 st July, 1844, to 1 st July, 1845, 
to 124,410 tons of Peruvian, and 131,240 of African! 
Blister of the Peach-leaf. —This is said to arise in 
consequence of an over supply of moisture to the roots. 
he Houses. —A short time before 1 left England, you 
published in the Gardeners’ Chronicle a number of let¬ 
ters and plans for the construction of ice-houses, but, 
as far as I can remember, nothing at all resembling 
the Chinese one, which I shall now describe to you. 
On the left bank of the Ningpo river, proceeding up¬ 
wards from the town and forts of Chinghai, and in 
various other parts in the north of China, I have met 
with these ice-houses. When I inspected them for 
the first time, last winter (1843), their construction 
and situation differed so much from what I had been 
accustomed to consider the essentials of an ice-house 
at home, that I had great doubts of their efficiency; 
but at the present time, which is the end of August, 
1844, many of these houses are yet full of ice, and 
seem to answer the end most admirably. You are 
probably aware, from my former descriptions of the 
country, that the town of Ningpo is built in the midst 
of a level plain, from 20 to 30 miles across. These 
ice-houses stand on the river sides, in the centres of 
this plain, completely exposed to the sun—a sun, too, 
very different in its effect from what we experience in 
England—clear, fierce, and burning—which would try 
the efficiency of our best English ice-lionses, as well 
as it does the constitution of an Englishman in China. 
The bottom of the ice-house is nearly on a level 
with the surrounding fields, and is generally about 20 
yards long by 14 broad. The walls, which are built 
with mud and stone, are very thick, 12 feet in height, 
and are, in fact, a kind of embankment rather than 
walls, having a door through them on one side, and a 
kind of sloping terrace on the other, by which the ice 
can be thrown into the house. On the top of the walls 
or embankment a tall span roof is raised, constructed 
of Bamboos thickly thatched with straw, giving the 
whole an appearance exactly resembling an English 
haystack. And this is the simple structure which 
keeps ice so well during the summer months, under 
the burning sun of China ! The Chinaman, with his 
characteristic ingenuity, manages also to fill his ice¬ 
house in a most simple way, and at a very trifling 
expense. Around the house he has a small flat level 
field, which he takes care to overflow in winter before 
the cold weather comes. It then freezes, and furnishes 
the necessary supply at the door. Again, in spring 
these same fields are ploughed up, and planted with 
rice; and any water which comes from the bottom of 
the ice-house is conveyed into them by a drain con¬ 
structed for the purpose. Of course here, as in Eng¬ 
land, the ice is carefully covered up with a thick 
coating of straw when the house is filled. Thus the 
Chinaman, with little expense in building his ice 
house, and an economical mode of filling it, manages 
to secure an abundant supply for preserving his fish 
during the hot summer months. This, I believe, is 
the only, or at least the principal purpose to which it 
is applied in this country, and never for cooling wine, 
water, or making ices, as we do in Europe. 
It is now, I think, a question whether we could not 
build ice-houses at less expense, and more efficient, 
upon the Chinese plan than upon the old under-ground 
system common in England.— Gard. Chron. 
Renovating Vine Borders. —The following is a method 
of doing this without disturbing the roots of the 
vines: An old vine under my charge having failed 
for two successive years in producing anything like a 
full crop of grapes, and attributing the principal cause 
of failure to the border being exhausted, I adopted the 
following novel plan of renovating it with perfect, 
success. About the middle of March, and just as the 
vines were beginning to start, I penned a few sheep 
on the border, and fed them well with Swedish tur¬ 
nip and oil-cake for about a month. Immediately 
after the sheep were removed the border was slightly 
forked up and left fallow during the remainder of the 
season ; the consequence was, that the vines made 
excellent short-jointed wood, and they have ever since 
carried more fruit in one season than they did in two, 
previous to the “ sheeping” of the border. I cannot say 
what quantity of turnip and oil-cake were consumed; 
nor can I as yet state what quantity ought to be con¬ 
sumed on a given space of ground. My border is 48 ft 
by 15 ft., and I kept six sheep on it during the term 
mentioned above, and gave them as much turnip and 
oil-cake as they could eat. Some, I have no doubt, 
will laugh at the idea of feeding sheep on a vine- 
border, and think it a very unsightly object to see 
sheep and hurdles in a garden ; but let them bear in 
mind that half a dozen of sheep and a few hurdles 
for about a month are not at all so unsightly an object in 
a garden as a few shanky small-berried bunches, where 
a full crop of well-shouldered, large-berried bunches 
of grapes ought to be, and which can be obtained 
without the labor and expense of renovating a border 
in the usual way. I intend renovating a peach-house 
border in the same way, and will send an account of 
the result. Much depends upon how the sheep are 
fed ; the richer the food the better the droppings.— lb. 
Large Peaches. —At the late 'show of the London 
Horticultural Society, at Chiswick, peaches, measur¬ 
ing each nearly a foot in circumference, were exhibited 
They were grown at Burleigh, the seat of the Marquis 
of Exeter. 
Importation of Indian Corn into Great Britain .— Mr. 
Escott has given notice, in Parliament, that early next 
session he will move a resolution that maize or In 
dian corn be imported into this country free of duty. 
Analysis of Sugar Cane, by Mr. Herapath. —1000 grain? 
of sugar-cane being burned gave 7| grains of ash, and 
these 7 1 grains of ash being examined were found to 
contain: 
Silica,.1.7S0 
Phosphate of lime,.3.402 
Red oxide of iron and clay, . . . .176 
Carbonate of potash, .... 1.467 
Sulphate of potash, . . . . .150 
Carbonate of magnesia, . .430 
Sulphate of lime..058 
Grains,.7.457 
Flax a Restorative and not an Exhausting Crop .— In a 
paper read by Dr. Kane before the Royal Irish Aca 
demy, that gentleman attempted to prove, that in the 
production of the fibre no exhaustion of the soil 
takes place, that substance being exclusively com¬ 
posed of organic mater derived from water and the 
atmosphere. He says, in this respect the fibre differs 
from the woody stem which it surrounds, as the latter, 
by combustion, yields a considerable quantity of ash, 
consisting of inorganic compounds derived from the 
soil: but then, the woody part of the plant is not 
removed off the farm, it being of exceedingly little 
value; and, however the cultivation of the crop may 
exhaust the particular part of the farm on which it 
was grown, by the matter contained in this woody 
fibre, it is apparent, that the farm itself will not thereby 
be exhausted, as these matters are returned to some 
other portion of it, in conjunction, perhaps, with the 
manure of the farm-yard. The proportion of inorganic 
matters contained in the seeds is very small compared 
with its entire bulk, so that the consumption of the 
seed on the farm not only makes the flax a non 
exhausting crop, but absolutely a restorative one. 
