THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, July 31, 1860. 
277 
The flowers being all on the head of the plant, and sufficiently 
numerous to cover it, present a mass not to bo met with in any 
other shrub, not even excepting the Rhododendron. Dry stony 
ground suits it best; and it bears cutting down very well after 
flowering. It also propagates more freely than many shrubs—by 
cuttings put in during the autumn. Altogether, a few plants 
deserve a place in most shubberies, and being of low growth, 
ought to be near the front. 
Phillyrea. —This is of rather slow growth ; but its dark glossy 
green leaves, thickly set on a well-formed bush, give it an excellent 
appearance. There are two or three varieties of this shrub, but 
all have the same feature of forming a round expanded head, the 
bottom being much smaller • on this account the plant often has 
the appearance of being lobsided. This evil may in a measure be 
guarded against while the plant is young; and it must not on 
any account be too closely pressed on with other trees. It does 
not bear cutting down so well as many other shrubs, neverthe¬ 
less it may be done at times with success ; much depends on the 
health of the plant at the time of undergoing the operation. A 
dry stony soil suits it best. 
Pox. —Little need be said of this plant, as the common one is 
too well known; but the Balearic species deserves to be more 
freely planted. A rather stiff soil approaching to a loam suits 
the Box best. 
Alaternus. —The foliage of this plant being inclined to spot, 
renders it less a favourite than it used to be. It thrives best on a 
rather stiff soil. 
Rhododendron. —Unquestionably this is the most handsome of 
all our evergreen shrubs ; but a 3 Mr. Appleby, at page 379 and 
succeeding chapters, has entered so fully on the merits of this 
useful shrub, and also given such copious directions about its 
culture, I can only indorse what he has said. 
Ivy. —Although this is usually regarded as a creeper, it some¬ 
times forms itself into a close compact shrub of no mean pre¬ 
tensions ; but its greatest beauty is whore it clothes some aged 
tree, and, throwing out abundance of short branclilets, becomes 
more or less an object of curiosity in accordance with the founda¬ 
tion it has. An old gnarled Oak becoming covered with Ivy is 
in time killed by it, and, the smaller boughs falling off, the 
main trunk and large limbs are a dense mass of Ivy, forming a 
grotesque appearance when seen in the twilight. But the most 
beautiful feature is when it encases a large Spruce or Larch Fir 
tree, and by degrees kills the tree, and assumes the same propor¬ 
tion itself—a perfect cone, in fact, and that of the densest green; 
and in many instances so uniform in its proportion, that no 
mechanical aid can improve it. 
The above being the commonest evergreen shrubs are not put 
forth as the best selection to plant a choice clump or border ; but 
for the ordinary purpose of concealing an unsightly object, or 
for rendering cheerful some naked spot, common shrubs are the 
best. And it will be a long time ere our Eugenia, Ulicium, 
Pernettia, Skimmia, Desfontania, and others of their class will 
accomplish this task; but 1 will in a future chapter describe 
them. J. Robson. 
VARIETIES. 
Biscuits (Er. twice-baked), small, flat bread, rendered dry 
and hard by baking, in order to their preservation. They are 
divided into two classes—the unfermented and the fermented. 
Unfermented or unleavened biscuits, generally known as common 
sea-biscuits or ship-bread , are made of wheaten-flour (retaining 
some of the bran), water, and common salt. The materials are 
kneaded together, either by manual labour—that is, by the 
hands and feet of the workmen—or by introducing the materials 
into a long trough or box, with a central shaft, to which a series 
of knives is attached, and which is made to revolve rapidly by 
machinery. The mass of dough so obtained is then kneaded 
and thinned out into a sheet the proper thickness of the biscuits, 
by being passed and repassed between heavy rollers. This 
sheet being placed below a roller with knife-edge shapes, is 
readily cut into hexagonal (six-sided) or round pieces of dough 
of the required size of the biscuits. The indentation of the 
slabs of dough, in the case of the hexagonal biscuits, is not 
complete, so that all the biscuits cut out of each slab remain 
slightly adhering together. These slabs of biscuits are then in¬ 
troduced into an oven for about fifteen minutes, and are placed 
in a warm room for two or three days, to become thoroughly 
dry. The more modern oven is open at both ends, and the 
biscuits, being placed in a framework, are drawn by chains 
through the oven. So rapidly is this operation conducted, that 
about 2000 lbs. weight of biscuits are passed through one of these 
ovens every day of ten hours. 
Captains' biscuits aro prepared from wheaten-flour, water, 
with common salt, and butter, with an occasional small dose of 
yeast to cause partial fermentation. Milk is also sometimes 
employed. Water or hard biscuits are made of flour, water, 
with variable quantities of butter, eggs, spices, and sugar. Soft 
biscuits contain increased quantities of butter and sugar. Yeast 
biscuits are those the dough of which is mixed with a small 
quantity of yeast, yielding more porous biscuits. Buttered 
biscuits are made with much butter and a little yeast. Other 
varieties of biscuits are named in the following table, which 
gives the materials added to the sack of flour, 280 lbs. in weight: 
Water or milk. Butter. Sugar. Flavouring. Eggs. 
Captains’ 
quarts. 
. . 10 ... 
lbs. 
15 
lbs. Car’way seeds in oxs. 
Abernethy 
. . 8 f ... 
Hi 
... 17* 17* 
Machine . 
. . 64 ... 
58 
... 14 
American 
. 10 ... 
40 
... — 
Jamaica . 
. . 8 J- ... 
17* 
... 17* 
Coffee . . 
. . 8 | ... 
1 H 
_ . — ... 140 
Great care must be taken in the manipulative part of the 
process to incorporate the ingredients in a systematic manner. 
Thus, the butter is mixed with the flour in a dry condition, and 
then the water or milk added; and when eggs are used, they 
are thoroughly beaten up with water, and the sugar (if the 
latter is required) and the egg-paste added to the dough, 
which has been previously prepared with butter, or without 
butter. The various kinds of biscuits in the preparation of 
which yeast is employed, present a more spongy aspect than the 
unyeasted biscuits. Occasionally a little sesquicarbonate of 
ammonia (volatile salt) is added, to assist in raising the dough, 
and make a lighter biscuit. There are three principal varieties 
of the yeast or fermented biscuits, and the following table gives 
the ingredients used in their manufacture from a sack of flour, 
or 280 lbs.:— 
Water or Milk. Dried Yeast, 
galls. lbs. 
Oliver . . 10* ... 4* 
Reading . — ... 4* to 5 
Cheltenham 104 ... — 
Butter. Sugar, 
lbs. lbs. 
35 ... — 
25 to 30... — 
— ... 5 
Soft or spiced biscuits are prepared from flour, with much 
sugar, a great many eggs, some butter, and a small quantity of 
spices and essences. The eggs tend to give a nice yellow cream 
colour to the biscuits, which is occasionally imitated by the ad¬ 
mixture of a chromate of lead (chrome yellow); but this is 
dangerous, and has given rise to several cases of poisoning. 
Several of the soft or spiced biscuits are referred to in the fol¬ 
lowing table, a sack, or 280 lbs., being the amount of flour 
employed in each instance:— 
Tunbridge Cakes'. 
Shrewsbury . . 
Ginger Wafers . 
Victoria . . . 
Eggs. 
930 . 
93 
000 
750 
Sugar. 
lbs. 
. 140 
93 
112 
70 
Butter. 
Flavour. 
lbs. (Orange flower. 
.,.5 1 Water Currants. 
1 Citrons and Cara- 
v ways. 
! Volatile salt. 
Cinnamon. 
Nutmeg or Mace. 
112 Ginger. 
80 Essence of lemon. 
The extent to which biscuits are now consumed may be 
learned from the fact, that several of the largest biscuit-manu¬ 
factories each prepare and throw into market every week from 
30,000 to 50,000 lbs. weight of biscuits of various kinds. One 
of the largest and most complete biscuit-manufactories in 
England is that of Carr at Carlisle, whose biscuits, sold in tin- 
boxes are well known. Another bakery of this kind is that of 
Harrison of Liverpool.—( Chambers's Encyclopaedia.) 
Test of Colonial and Foreign Timbers. —Last May 5th 
we were present during a series of experiments, by Mr. James 
W. Dunlop, at the engineering establishment of Messrs. P. N. 
Russell & Co., Sussex Street, upon the transverse strength of 
various samples of colonial and other timbers. The object the 
experimenter had chiefly in view was, we believe, to prove that 
the strength of our colonial timbers had been much under¬ 
rated; and that, for building purposes in particular, heavier 
timber was generally used than there is any occasion for. The 
experiments were witnessed with great interest by a number of 
gentlemen skilled in such matters (who were preseut by special 
