I May, 1899.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 405. 
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Strawberries are indigenous to Britain and other northern countries of 
Europe. They were not cultivated until about the year 1828, and then there 
were only five or six sorts known. The largest of these was the Hautbois,. 
so called from being originally found in the haut bois or high woods of Bohemia. 
Now, by crossing, change of climate, and situation, there are as many hundreds. 
of varieties. ; 
The clove is the unexpanded flower of the Caryophyllus aromaticus. Tt 
has been brought into the European market for more than 2,000 years. The 
plant is a native of the Moluccas and other islands in the Chinese Seas. A 
fine tree has been known to yield 125 1b. of this spice in a single season, and,. 
as 5,000 cloves only weigh 1 lb., there must at least have been 625,000 flowers. 
upon this single tree. Fe 
The total annual production of tobacco is estimated at 2,000,000 tons, and 
would require half the British tonnage which “ enters inwards” and “ clears. 
outwards” annually to transport the same. The value, at only 2d. per Ib.,. 
would be £37,000,000 sterling. The comparative magnitude of this 2,000,000 
tons will strike the reader more forcibly when “we state that the whole of the- 
wheat consumed by the inhabitants of Great Britain—estimating it at a. 
quarter per head, or in round numbers at 20,000,000 quarters—weighs only 
four and one-third million tons; so that the tobacco yearly raised for the-- 
gratification of this one narcotic appetite weighs as much as the wheat con-. 
sumed by 10,000,000 Englishmen, and reckoning it at only double the market 
value of wheat, or 2d. per lb., itis worth in money as much as all the wheat 
eaten in Great Britain. 
Orange-trees are exceedingly long-lived. In the orangery at Versailles 
(near Paris) is a tree raised from seed sown in 1421. There is another in the: 
yard of the Convent of St. Sabina, at Rome, said to have been planted by St. 
Dominic in 1200. In the neighbourhood of Finale is an orange-tree which: 
bears nearly $,000 oranges in a single year. In Holland there are many 
orange-trees which have been in the same family for from 200 to 300 years. 
HEATING CAPACITY OF WOOD. 
Tur River Plate Review says that a writer in the Staats-Zeitung corrects » 
very common supposition in regard to the heating capacity of wood, the most 
notable fact in the case being that such a practicable and easy demonstrable 
error should so long have prevailed—namely, that the heating capacity of hard- 
wood is greater than that of softwood. The fact, as ascertained by repeated 
determinations, is that the greatest heating power is possessed by one of the 
softest varieties of such material—viz., the linden. ‘Taking its heating 
capacity by the unit, the second best heater is also a softwood :—Fir, with 
0'99 heating power ; next follow the elm and pine, with 0:98; willow, chestnut, 
larch, with 0:97; maple and spruce fir, with 0:96; black poplar, with 0:95 ; 
alder and white birch, with 0:94 only; then come the hard oak, with 0°92; the 
locust and the white beech, with 0:91; and the red beech, with 0°90. These: 
examples leave no doubt of the general fact that hardwood heats the least. 
¥ LEICHHARDT GRASS. 
Tus Melbourne Zeader has an interesting note on the Leichhardt Grass 
(Paspalum dilatatum), which can be used either in the pasture, or, if cultivated 
in drills, as a heavy yielding fodder crop, resisting both heat and cold, being 
much relished by stock, especially dairy cows, and shown by analysis to be of 
excellent milk-producing quality. ‘Planted in drills 18 inches wide, and the 
seed 6 inches apart, a height of 5 feet has been reached, and atest cutting gave 
a yield at the rate of 12 tons 7 ewt. per acre. From another plot, drilled in as 
above in subsoil land, on 28th September, a cutting was obtained on the 8rd of 
the following June weighing at the rate of 19 tons 4: ewt. per acre, while subse- 
uent cuttings yielded up an additional aggregate of 14 tons per acre. Mr. 
H. M. Williams, of Wollongbar, was one of the first to give this pasture and 
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