450 
the protest of the College of Physicians against the in¬ 
terdict on fruit. Well-dressed vegetables and good ripe 
fruit are still pronounced not only harmless, hut whole¬ 
some. There may he something in Mr. Soyers’ theory, 
that for delicate stomachs, even ripe fruits should be 
properly prepared hy cooking; and at this season, on 
the great apple-pie question—plain or spiced our own 
private judgment would be in favour of the addition of 
lemon-peel and cloves. 
The Epidemiological Society have lately approved an 
excellent paper on the use of vegetable and mineral 
acids in cholera and other diseases of the bowels. It 
has been observed that the peasantry in cider countries 
never have cholera. A like immunity is said to attend 
the consumption of hard, sub-acid ale and beer at 
Birmingham and other places. Other and weightier 
reasons, of course, are added to these ; and, as it would 
be difficult to find cider and lemon-juice for all London, 
the author cohcludes by recommending the use of 
vinegar, citing the ancients, among whom vinegar is 
said to have been a common drink. “ Dip tliy morsel 
in the vinegar,” said Boaz to Ruth. The books give a 
French receipt for camp vinegar, evidently of great 
antiquity; whether it be the same which enabled 
Hannibal’s army to cross the Alps is still a question. 
It contains a certain proportion of indifferent wine, and 
has infused into it a variety of the staple productions of 
the garden, which the poor conscript could not carry 
with him, to flavour bis food. The vinegar said to have 
been the common drink ol the Roman soldiers was a 
rough, common, sourish wine, nearly allied to our haul 
cider, or harder beer. Roving Englishmen, who have 
been accustomed to strong Port and brandied Sheri y, 
are apt to characterize all the wine they drink abroad as 
vinegar. Such gentry have before this stigmatized our 
own oldest and choicest Claret as nothing but vinegar 
—so much raspberry-vinegar. Well; raspberry-vinegar 
itself may not be a bad tiling to mix with our watci 
when the latter is not altogether fresh, and when a 
lurking suspicion of its poisonous nature still haunts 
the mind. 
One word on this vexed affair of the water, on which 
so much seems to depend. The highly-gifted physician 
of the Millbank Penitentiary, finding that his patients 
were drinking Tbames-water during the cholera, had 
this changed for the water from an artesian well; but 
without any perceptible change for the better. But the 
happiest results have providentially followed the re¬ 
moval of hundreds of the prisoners far away from the 
exhalation from the sewers on the banks of the lliamcs 
near the prison-walls. 
We have before us, in a review, an account of the 
medical missions in China. The Chinese system of irri¬ 
gation has always heen referred to as a model by those 
who would yet further improve the present state of 
things by conducting the sewerage of towns to the low 
I lands adjacent, so as to havo the latter “ in a state of 
perpetual irrigation and manure.” 
“ Thin pasture lands, in a state of perpetual irrigation 
and manure, become, at seasons, so many vast plains, 
September 13. | 
from which the most noxious miasm arises, and are, at 
all times, the unfailing sources by which scrofula, ophthal¬ 
mia, cutaneous affections, remittent, intermittent, and 
typhus fever, arc endcmically perpetuated. J. J- 
The principle on which Poultry Nomenclature is founded 
is mainly that of their original geographical dispersion. 
In several classes this is sufficiently authenticated, but 
in others, from the little attention, in former days,_ 
bestowed upon the subject, and the difficulty of r.ecog- ( 
nising present races in the usually vague and indistinct 
accounts of the few early writers on this branch of 
Natural History, great uncertainty necessarily prevails. 
Malays, and the other Asiatic fowls, Bantams and 
Shanghaes, we are enabled to traco satisfactorily from 
their primitive habitats; hence, indeed, our often- 
expressed unwillingness to accept tbo erroneous desig¬ 
nation of “ Cochin-China,' a district from which few, if 
any, specimens of the last-named fowls appeaii to have 
been derived, while Shanghae is clearly tbo head¬ 
quarters of the breed. The same reasoning sanctions 
tlie employment of the term Dorking to the five-clawed 
fowls that had their origin in the districts around that 
town, or wore, at least, those first brought into gcneial 
reputation. llamburghs, again, in the I eucillcd 
variety, are fairly referable to that locality 7 , though f.u, 
we must acknowledge, from bciug so exclusively ; more 
especially in recent years, when our main supply has 
been received from Holland. The “Spangled” Ham- 
burghs, however, are justified in claiming that title 
solely from certain features common to them with the 
pencilled birds. But, at the same time, the various 
syuonymes that are suggested in lieu of their present 
generally-received designation, are all and each of them 
open to equal, if not greater, objections than that they 
now bear. Regarded in this light, the 1 olish fou l has 
a still worse case, and the principle of an original 
geographical position is here unsupported by any trust¬ 
worthy evidence. If usage, therefore, be considered as 
insufficient authority for the name they now bear, we 
must confess our inability to afford any clue to a better 
designation founded on the same ground. So that, if 
wo depart from the present system, to style them simply 
“ tufted fowls," seems the only alternative left to us. 
Game fowls were emphatically called, by no less an 
authority than Buffon, the celebrated French naturalist, 
the English fowl, and, indeed, if an uniform geo¬ 
graphical system be insisted on, wo do not see how 
they could be better described, although the derivation 
would here proceed from the circumstance of their 
having been brought to the highest state of perfection, 
not from having been the aboriginal fowl in this 
country. 
Lastly, as respects Spanish, the type ol that breed is 
pre-eminent in Spain, though common, in a greater or 
a less degree, throughout various regions on the shore 
of the Mediterranean Sea. - 
The various alleged distinct breeds that make their 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
