has commonly a height of only 8 or 9 feet. 
TAMONIA. 
duced to Britain from Germany in the latter 
part of the 16th century. It is a more regular 
deciduous shrub than the French tamarisk, but 
Its 
branches all grow more or less upright, and are 
odorous and very brittle; its bark is smooth and 
yellowish; its leaves stand much closer than 
those of the French tamarisk, and have a scaly 
appearance, an exceedingly light green colour, 
and.a highly ornamental character; and its 
flowers come out in long loose spikes at the end 
of the branches, and are individually small and 
of a pink colour, and bloom from June till Sep- 
tember. The spikes attract the attention and 
excite the admiration of all observers; and be- 
sides having a noble appearance during the pe- 
riod of bloom, they continue to be beautiful till 
| the period of the ripening of the seeds, and then 
seem to dissolve into shattered down and scales. 
This species loves a light moist soil, and is propa- 
| gated in the same manner as the preceding. 
TAMETOMO. See Lity. 
TAMONIA. A small genus cf ornamental, 
herbaceous, tropical plants, of the verbena family. 
Two species, both biennial, blue-flowered, bloom- 
ing in July and August, and about a foot high, 
have been introduced to the hothouses of Britain 
from Guiana and the West Indies. 
TAMUS. See Bryony (Brack). 
TAN. Oak-bark which has been chopped and 
ground into a coarse powder for the use of tan- 
ners, and which has been employed in the process 
of tanning leather, and afterwards thrown out 
and dried. See the articles Learuer and Tan- 
win. Tan is much used in horticulture,—both 
in a fresh state to produce heat by its fermenta- 
tion, and in a well-rotted state as manure for all 
kinds of cold stiff soil. See the articles Barx- 
Brp, Hotsrep, and Manurg. Tan is also used, in 
various ways and after widely different methods 
of preparation, as both an incorporated manure 
and a top-dressing in agriculture. Fresh tan, 
when laid on grass-land in autumn, so as to be 
retarded in fermentation by frosts and washed 
into the ground by the winter’s rains, greatly 
improves the grass; but when laid on in spring, 
especially if a tract of dry weather should follow, 
it may evolve such strong heat by fermentation 
as will scorch and burn the grass. Tan ferments 
sturdily and very prolongedly, and resists putre- 
faction, and though very absorbent and retentive 
of moisture, cannot be penetrated by the roots of 
plants; so that it does exceedingly ill to be em- 
ployed in a fresh or merely half-fermented state 
as an incorporated manure. Yet it is very rich 
in the principles which nourish cultivated field- 
plants; and may be made thoroughly available 
for their nutrition either by complete preparatory 
rotting, or more economically by reduction with 
solvents ; and was reckoned by the old gardeners 
to be, ‘a a well-rotted state, worth more than 
twice its weight of rotted farm-yard manure. 
Stable dung has been used as a solvent, but caus- 
tic lime acts more rapidly, more powerfully, and ° 
with less waste by gaseous dissipation; and after 
it has effected a destruction of the fibre, earths 
and dung may be added to bring the whole mass 
into a soluble and perfectly putrescent state; and 
the mixture thus prepared has a finely divided 
and even comminuted texture, and may be used, 
either in the field or in the garden, for any pur- 
pose of either top-dressing or incorporated ma- 
nuring. 
TANACETUM. See Tansy. 
TANGHINIA. See Cerpera. 
TANGIER PHA. See Laruyrus. 
TANK. An excavational structure, cistern, 
or reservoir for collecting and preserving in places 
where it is scarce, or for receiving and accumu- 
lating large quantities of any useful liquid. 
A water-tank is an essential appendage to a 
dwelling-house, a farmery, or a garden in every 
district where a sufficiency of water for routine 
use can be obtained only by preserving supplies 
from rain or by accumulating them from meagre 
or uncertain springs. Some water-tanks are 
formed for collecting water, as well as for pre- 
serving it; some with open surface to receive 
rain as it falls, and others with only minute aper- 
tures to admit a rill and to give off supplies; 
some with entirely sunk space, of the nature of 
ponds or subterranean reservoirs, and others with 
more or less elevated space, of the nature of 
above-ground cisterns; some with walls of stone 
or timber in masonry or wood-work, and others 
with enclosure or frame of metal in the manner 
of plumbing or cast-iron work ; some with venti- 
lating and filtering appliances for adapting the 
water to the nicest uses of the kitchen or the 
table, and others with merely the coarse and or- | 
dinary appliances of a garden reservoir or a cattle | 
drinking-pond. The constructions of them, 
therefore, in adaptation to different sites, circum- 
stances, purposes, sizes, and materials, are so 
endlessly varied, as to be irreducible to any small 
number of rules or directions, and must be de- 
termined in each case by the judgment of the 
proprietor and his mechanics. We shall only say 
that a sufficiently good large one for the coarsest 
uses of the farmery may be constructed on the 
principles mentioned in the article Ponp; and 
that every prime or even tolerably good one for 
the finest uses of the dwelling-house ought to 
comprise appliances both for filtering either by 
ascension or otherwise, and for sweetening and 
purifying by constant currents of air. 
Tanks for the receiving and accumulating oe | 
liquid manure possess great importance in the 
economy of farming ; and as they require to be 
of large capacity, and must be excavated a little | 
beneath the level of the farmery in whatever: 
kind of ground occurs in its vicinity, they always 
involve nicety, and sometimes considerable diffi- 
culty, in their construction. 
month of Invertiel, ina Prize Essay in a recent 
number of the Transactions of the Highland So- 
But Mr. Kinnin- | 
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