December 12. 
211 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
well washed with a solution of it. I have not tried it myself, 
neither do I know the proper quantity of corrosive sublimate 
that should he put to a given quantity of water. I merely 
throw out the hint for your readers to experiment upon, and 
hope they will report the result. . 
“N.B. The trees must he washed when destitute ol 
foliage, I imagine.—H. Howlett.” 
[It is quite possiblo that corrosive sublimate would kill 
the fungus which constitutes the mildew disease; hut it is 
far too virulent a poison to he employed for such a purpose, 
except in cases where sulphur has failed. Have any ot our 
readers had any experience with it?] 
Historical Notes on the Introduction op various 
Plants into the Agriculture and Horticulture op 
Tuscany : a summary of a work entitled Genni storici 
sulla intraduzione di varie piaate ncll'agrieulturu cd orti- 
cultura Toscana. By Dr. Antonio Targioni - Tozetti. 
Florence, 1850. — (From the Horticultural Society's 
Journal.') 
{Continued from page 102.) 
A second, hut smaller and coarser species, A icotiana 
ruslica, much grown in some parts of South-eastern Europe, 
is generally said to be a native of Europe and Asia, but this 
is a mistake ; like N. tabacum, it is of American origin. So 
also is the long wliitetiowered Shiraz tobacco, recently 
published under the name of Nicotiana pcrsica, but which is 
a mere variety of the N. longiflora, a species not uncommon 
in South America, and introduced from thence, like the 
others, since Columbus’ discovery. 
Amongst the Cassias supplying the Senna leaves of our 
Pharmacopoeias, the annual species (Cassia obovata), in¬ 
troduced most probably by the Moors during their dominion 
in Sicily, from Egypt and Arabia, was much cultivated in 
Italy, especially in Tuscany, during the sixteenth and seven¬ 
teenth centuries. It is now totally neglected, nor would it 
be profitable except in the Maremma, where its cultivation 
is strongly recommended by Prof. Targionb 
The Castor-oil plants or Palma-Christi (Ricinus communis), 
was known to the ancient Hebrews, Egyptians, and Greeks, 
as supplying an oil for burning, for which purpose it was 
much cultivated in Egypt, Arabia, and India, and is so to 
this day, although the consumption of the oil is now for 
medicinal rather than economical purposes. It had never, 
till of late years, been cultivated in Italy, but is among the 
plants recommended for fertilising the Maremma. Its 
native country is uncertain. The south of Europe, the 
coasts of Africa, and East India, are generally indicated, but 
it is certainly not wild in India, and apparently only self- 
sown in the south of Europe. It may, however, be really 
indigenous in Upper Egypt, and other districts ot Northern 
Africa. 
Of Fruit-trees, the first in importance for the Italians is the 
Olive (Olea europea). Its great productiveness, longevity, 
and hardihood against every thing except cold, have extended 
it over all countries whose climates it will bear, and the 
origin of its cultivation is lost in the remotest ages of 
antiquity. From the Holy Scriptures, as well as from the 
early Greek writers, it appears to have been as general in 
their days as in ours in Greece, the Holy Land, and North 
Africa. There has been some discussion as to the period 
when the Romans first planted it in Italy, Pliny asserting, 
on the authority of Fenestella, that it was unknown in Italy, 
Spain, or Africa, in the time of Tarquinius Priscus (in the 
year of Rome 133). Yet Pliny also states that the Gauls’ 
inroad into Italy at about the same period was for the 
acquisition of oil, grapes, wine, tigs, &c. However that 
may be, it is very certain that the Greeks long preceded 
the Romans in the cultivation of a number of varieties 
of olive more productive than the wild plant. 
The olive is, perhaps, the longest lived amongst European 
trees. The youthful vigour of individuals known to be 
three or four huudred years old ; the great tenacity of life 
observed in the root or stock, throwing up suckers, for 
instance, in olive grounds abandoned and converted into 
sheep walks for upwards of two centuries, and that in a 
climate where the branches are frozen down two or three 
times every century; the numerous traditions of trees 
supposed to he eight hundred, a thousand, or more years 
of age; the extraordinary manner in which it will resist 
every ill-treatment inflicted on it by neglect or wantonness, 
and which gives rise to the common saying in the South, 
that you cannot kill an olive-tree—all render it more than 
probable that those venerable olive-trees so beautifully 
described by Lamartine as now overshadowing the vale of 
Getlisemane are the identical trees under which our Saviour 
underwent his blessed agony. 
The olive grows naturally in the East, from Greece and 
Syria to Persia and Afghanistan, and is, without doubt, really 
indigenous to the whole of that region. It is also found 
wild in great abundance in Southern Italy, but how far it 
may there he the degenerate offspring of self-shown olives 
from cultivated sources, is a matter of much dispute among 
Italian writers, and is here discussed by Prof. Targioni, who 
concludes with much plausibility that it is a true native. 
The Crape Vine (Vitis vinifera) must, as already observed 
by Pliny, be ranked amongst trees on account of the 
! prodigious size it will attain.* This may he more especially 
observed in the Maremma, where it grows wild in the 
greatest abundance. It appears to be there, as hi other 
parts of the Southern Europe, truly indigenous, extending 
from thence over the greater part of South-central Asia, lor 
the Vitis indica, on the testimony of the more recent 
Indian botanists, is by no means specifically distinct. From 
these wild vines have evidently been raised the innumerable 
varieties cultivated over the greater part of Europe, Asia, 
and North Africa, and now carried out to all parts of the 
globe where the climate will admit of it. But the period 
when it was first taken into cultivation, is lost in the 
obscure ages of antiquity. We read in the Genesis, that 
after the flood Noah began to plant the vine; the heathens 
ascribed its first introduction to their fabulous heroes oi 
divinities, Diodorus Siculus to Osiris, Servius to Saturn, and 
in the most ancient times Italy was called (Enotria from the 
wine that it produced. 
We have already observed that the varieties of the grape 
are most numerous ; they are also often so strongly marked 
as to cause many writers to deny the possibility of their 
having all sprung from the wild vine, hut their apparent 
permanence is, in most instances, only due to their universal 
propagation, by cuttings or layers, not by seed. Pliny 
records eighty kinds, and many others are mentioned hy r 
Virgil, Columella, Varro, Macrobius and other writers, which 
it is now impossible to recognise with certainty amongst the 
modern varieties, amounting, in some collections, to above 
three hundred. Fee, Gallesio, and others have, liowevei, 
endeavoured to identify some with more or less plausibility, 
of which the following are a few instances :— 
The Apiana of Pliny, or Apicea of Cato, is supposed to be 
a muscat imported from Greece, and it is believed that 
most of the muscat-flavoured varieties were originally raised 
in the Archipelago. 
The ambrosiaca is believed to bo another muscat. 
The grtecula is the Corinth stoneless, or currant grape. 
The rheetica the uva passa of Spolcto, another stoneless 
and currant grape. . 
The vcnicula, sircula, or stacula, is the marzemina ol the 
Venetians. 
The dactylites is perhaps the uva galletta of modern Italy. 
The trifera, the uva di tre volte from Chio. 
The picina, perhaps the uva colore. 
* Among the instances given of enormous vines, we may quote the 
following; Pliny records a vine in the Portcos of Livia, which over¬ 
shadowed the whole area used as a promenade, and yielded annually 
twenty.two amphoras (154 gallons) of wine; the same writer states that 
he had seen at Populonia a statue of Jupiter, made of the trunk ot a vine, 
and that the columns of the temple of Juno at Metapontus, and the steps 
of that of Diana of Ephesus, were also of vine wood. In more modern 
days, Soderini mentions a vine in Portico di Romagna, which extended over 
1000 braccia (2000 feet); in the Mdm de l’Acaddmie of Pans for 1737, a 
muscat vine at Balancon, is described, which at twenty years old produced 
4206 bunches of grapes. Giovanni Targiom-Tozzetti, our author’s grand¬ 
father, in his travels in Tuscany, quotes one ill the woods near Monte- 
bamboli, the trunk of which two men could not embrace. Santi found a 
vine at Castellottieri in the Maremma, torn up by a storm in 1/87, w “°* e 
trunk is preserved in the botanic garden at Pisa, with a stem - 
half feet in circumference; and Prot. Targioni has lnmse f recorded in 
the article “ Botanical Chronology ” in the Dictionary of Natural History, 
printed at Florence by Batelli, two vines near Figlim, in the upper Vat 
d’Arno, with trunks five feet in circrmference. The doors of the 
Cathedral of Ravenna are made of vine wood. 
