This plan is perhaps the best that can be followed, as it is at once the most certain and the most simple. You sow rhubarb seed on a rich moist border in the beginning of April, [p174] The young plants are well thinned during the summer; in the end of October they are very carefully transplanted into forcing-pots, five or six in each pot. They are placed in a north aspect, to recover the effect of their removal from the seed-bed, and in a month they are fit for forcing. We can safely recommend this method.
XXII. Account of some remarkable Holly Hedges and Trees in Scotland. By Joseph Sabine, Esq. [◊]
This is in elaborate account of extraordinary specimens of hollies, and appears to have been written with a view to induce the more general cultivation in this country of that very valuable tree. At Tynningham, the residence of the Earl of Harrington, are hedges extending to no less a distance than 2952 yards, in some cases thirteen feet broad, and twenty-five feet high. The age of these hedges is something more than a century. At the same place are individual trees of a size quite unknown in these southern districts. One tree measured five feet three inches in circumference at three feet from the ground; the stem is clear of branches to the height of fourteen feet, and the total height of the tree is fifty-four feet. The other places at which the hollies are of unusual size, are Colinton-house the seat of Sir William Forbes; Moredun, the seat of David Anderson, Esq.; Hopetoun-house, the seat of the Earl of Hopetoun, and Gordon-castle, where are several large groups of hollies, apparently planted by the hand of Nature.
XXIII. An Account of a Plan of Heating Stoves by means of Hot Water, employed in the Garden of Anthony Bacon, Esq. [◊]
We conceive that a new æra in horticulture will commence with the publication of this paper. We already possessed contrivances of a sufficiently good kind for all purposes connected with artificial climate, except the power of commanding heat; for which the two methods hitherto employed have been either too clumsy or too costly, and in either case liable to numerous objections. The old mode of introducing heat into a stove, by means of brick flues, has long been considered so bad, that every scheme that promised to supersede such flues has been hailed with joy; the uncertainty of the quantity of heat given out by a brick flue, its continual liability to explosion, the impossibility of preventing the escape of smoke from between the joints of the bricks, are all evils that require a remedy. For this purpose steam was introduced, and with great advantage in extensive ranges of hothouses. But the enormous expense of erecting a steam [p175] apparatus, the danger attending its use in the charge of an unskilful or careless gardener, and also the rapid loss of heat from the pipes upon any neglect of the boiler, have all contributed to prevent the use of steam becoming very general. The plan now described has the great merit of possessing all the good qualities of steam, without any of its objectionable accompaniments; its cost cannot in any considerable degree exceed that of flues, and its effects are so certain and durable, that a house so heated may be almost said to be beyond the power of neglect on the part of the gardener.
Without entering into the details of this plan, for which we must refer to the paper itself, we shall content ourselves with explaining its principle. Suppose two iron reservoirs, A and B, of equal capacity, placed twenty feet apart, and connected at the top and the bottom by iron pipes, the level of both reservoirs being the same; it is obvious that water poured into one of these reservoirs will flow into the other through the connecting pipes, and that it will consequently stand at the same height in both. Let the reservoirs be thus filled above the level of the uppermost pipe, and heat be applied to the bottom of one reservoir, A; the water in this will presently be forced through the upper pipe into the reservoir, B, of water not heated; in proportion as the heated water flows out of A, through the upper pipe, the cold water will flow out of B through the lower pipe; and by this means a circulation of water heated and water to be heated will be formed, which will continue as long as the application of fire to the bottom of one reservoir is continued. When it is discontinued, the temperature of the two reservoirs and of the intermediate pipes will be the same within three or four degrees. As it is the property of heated water to part with its heat very slowly, it follows that heat will continue to be disengaged from the reservoirs and pipes long after the application of fire has ceased. In fact, when the two reservoirs are once heated, the gardener may make up his fires and retire to rest, certain that his house is sufficiently provided with heat for the night.
The paper is accompanied with a plan of a vinery warmed upon this principle. [p176]
On the Recent Elucidations of early Egyptian History. [◊]
SINCE the commencement of the present century, the researches of philologists have ascertained that the language of ancient Egypt,—the language of the hieroglyphical inscriptions engraven on its ancient temples and monuments, and of the still existing manuscripts of the same period,—differs from the modern Egyptian or Coptic, only in the mixture in the latter of many Greek and Arabian and a smaller portion of Latin words, introduced during the successive dominion of the Greeks, the Romans, and the Arabs, and occasionally substituted for the corresponding native words. The grammatical construction of the language has remained the same at all periods of its employment: and it finally ceased to be a spoken language towards the middle of the seventeenth century, when it was replaced by the Arabian.