314 
COLLECTIONS AND RECOLLECTIONS. 
can get his so cheap; here we are only four miles from the most ex¬ 
tensive iron-works in the kingdom, and I cannot procure iron at the 
rate he mentions. After stating the faults, may I mention what I 
think will be the improvement P I have now altered one of my stands, 
which was made after Mr. Murphy’s pattern, and have converted it 
into the form of Mr. Saul’s, merely changing the top and bottom 
ring, and bending the uprights outward. It looks lighter and more 
elegant, and I think will not he so liable to break the branches of the 
plants, there being more space for them. The leaves of the plant 
will also in a great measure hide the bottom part of the stand, which 
will be more agreeable to the eye, than seeing the stand at such a 
distance from the stem.—-A n Original Subscriber, in Yorkshire. 
Quicksilver-Water will not Destroy the Pine-Bug, 
and Description of Witty’s Patent Gas-Furnace. —In your 
Register , page 90, a Subscriber in Sussex (E. Esbury) asks for a 
description of Witty’s Patent Smoke Consuming Furnaces for Hot¬ 
houses, also if the Quicksilver-Water recommended by Speechley is 
successful for the destruction of Insects on Pines. I have several 
times tried the quicksilver exactly as Speechley prescribes, and was 
always disappointed, as I never could see the smallest impression it 
had on the meally or pine-bug, or white scale. I am therefore con¬ 
vinced by experience it has no power whatever on the bug and 
white scale, and I know of no other insect hurtful to the pine. Mr. 
Speechley’s writings on the pines and vines are highly to be recom¬ 
mended, yet I cannot think otherwise but he has been under some 
mistaken notion in that part, and if he actually had the bug, and got 
the plants clean by using nothing but the quicksilver-water, I am in 
the opinion he must have put his plants under some change of culti¬ 
vation which might clean them, while he imagined it was the quick¬ 
silver. My reason for thinking so is, a neighbour of mine had the 
bug on his pines, and he tried several cures recommended by writers 
on gardening, but to no purpose. At the September shifting, he had 
no fresh leaves, and got horse-dung sweat and prepared as a substitute 
with which he filled the pits, laying a covering of old leaves on the 
top to plunge in; about six weeks after the plants had been in the 
dung-heat, he could not see the least vestige of bug on his plants : 
in the spring shifting, he disrooted the young plants, and again pla¬ 
cing all his plants in dung,.it completely cleaned his pines, which he 
had no thought of when he took the dung as a makeshift. When I 
came to this place, the pines were as dirty of bug as any I ever saw, 
and I have got them perfectly clean by working them with dung-heat, 
and striking the crown and suckers in a hot-bed frame. 
