them the command of a less quantity of the necessaries of life, and consequently, that they are much inferior in ability to support their families to their ancestors three or four centuries ago, and to what they were at the commencement of the reign of George III. In our next paper we shall endeavour to prove our other positions respecting their condition; that they obtain a less proportion of the produce of their labour; that they are worse off, compared with manfacturing labourers, than they were formerly:- and that, while rents, and the value of land, have been increasing, and the country and all other classes improving, their condition has been retrograding (To be continued.) ART. V. Verhandlungen des Vereins zur Beforderung des Gartenbaues, &c.; Transactions of the Society for the Promotion of Gardening in Prussia. Berlin 1824. Parts 1. and 2. 4to. THE Prussian Horticultural Society, was established in 1822, in consequence of an order from the king; their first public meeting was in December that year; and at their third sitting, in March 1823, some papers were read. From that time to August 1824, they found matter enough to publish sixty articles, on a great variety of subjects, the authors of which are partly royal and commercial gardeners, and partly amateurs. We pass over several introductory papers explanatory of the origin of this society, to No. 10. Observations on forcing the Turkish Ranunculus. By Mr. P. F. Bouché, Commercial Gardener at Berlin. To grow the ranunculus well in Prussia, it is planted on a slight hot-bed in autumn, and protected through the winter by a frame; the sashes of which are removed when the plants are in flower. To force the ranunculus, tubers which have been kept three or four months, or even a year over the season of planting, are chosen, as being more easily excited than those which have been only the usual time out of the soil. They are planted in pots, about the beginning of August; and by bringing these into the green-house at different periods, a bloom is kept up from October to February. 11. On the Culture of the Torch-Thistle. By Mr. P. F. Bouché, Commercial Gardener in Berlin. There is scarcely any thing in this paper that is not familiar to the English gardener. Cactus hexagonus and tetra gonus, with some other species, will not flower well if kept all the year in the hot-house; but if placed in the open air in summer, they grow slower, but flower much more freely. In general, he observes, the cactus genus require to be kept very near the light, otherwise they would grow, but never produce blossoms. He adverts to their natural situation, where they are fully exposed to the sun, on rocks or burning sands, never shaded by trees, and seldom visited by showers. 12. On the Culture of the Rhododendra. By Mr. L. Mathieu, Commercial Gardener in Berlin. The common nursery culture of this genus is given, with directions to protect the plants through the winter by coverings of boards, or litter. 13. On ringing of Fruit Trees. By Mr. R. Werthmeister. Mr. W. made rings round the branches of several apple, pear, plum, peach, apricot, and walnut trees, and some grape vines, with a view to enlarging the size and quantity of the fruit, and promoting its ripening. He succeeded in these respects, and found some of the fruits, especially of the green. gage plum, a third part larger; and he says, from eight to even twenty days earlier, than on the other branches of the same trees, which he did not ring. He also tried the operation on some raspberry plants, but he found no effect produced in the fruit, though the young shoots lost their leaves sooner. 14. Is composed of extracts from what passed at the Fourth Meeting of the Society, on the 6th of April 1823, and which are only of local interest. 15. On the cheapest and most durable Mode of ticketing Plants, whether in the Open Air or in Glass-Houses. By Mr. Dern of Scarbrück. 16. Observations on the above. By Mr. Otto, Inspector of the Botanic Garden at Berlin. Mr. Dern, after trying tin, wooden, and slate labels, at last had them made of zinc, which oxidizes very little in the open air, and can be written on or painted at pleasure. He preferred giving them a coat of paint, and writing the name with a pen in red colour ground in turpentine. Mr. Otto decidedly prefers the zinc labels, and next to them, those of earthenware; which last, however, are too expensive for general purposes. The handsomest, he considers, to be earthenware, with the name written under the glazing. 17. On shortening the Tap-roots of Plants, By Mr. F. Masseli of Militsch. 18. Anonymous Remarks on the foregoing Treatise. 19. Opinion of the Committee on the foregoing Treatise, and Remarks. 20. Anonymous Remarks on the Opinion of the Committee. 21. Illustration of the foregoing Anonymous Remarks. By Mr. Lenné. Mr. Masseli has found that shortening the tap-roots of stocks for fruit-trees, a practice which would seem to be new about Berlin, increased the production of lateral fibres, and, as he said, made the stock grow faster and stronger. He thinks the same practice may be advantageously applied to young forest-trees, on which the anonymous remarker observes, that it has long been the practice in that department of gardening; and quotes, in proof, from the works of the forresters Burgsdorff and Hartig. These authors very properly observe, that in transplanting trees, it is impossible to avoid breaking the tap-root, if the tree is five or six feet high; and that, therefore, it becomes advantageous to move the tree two or three times in the nursery, shortening every time the perpendicular roots. The committee, after a good deal of discussion, come to the conclusion "that shortening the tap-root is a necessary evil, which should only be allowed under certain circumstances; that, therefore, it is absolutely improper with young plants, that are transplanted at once to the spot where they are finally to remain; with some others, however, it is necessary, as a preparation for their future transplantation, and in that case gardeners should proceed with more care than is generally employed." This last remark is an allusion to what was stated by one of the writers, that in forest-tree nurseries the seedling plants were taken in large handfuls, and their tap-roots chopped off with an axe, by a labourer, who did not know what he was doing. 22. Experimental Observations on the Culture of the Bletia Tankervilleæ. By Mr. Otto, Inspector of the Botanic Garden in Berlin. The soil he recommends is one part of leaf-mould, one of peat-earth, and one of river-sand; the pots should be plunged; and very little water given when the roots are not in a growing state. The plant, Mr. Otto considers as an epiphyte. 23. On the Culture of the Ferraria Pavonia. By Mr. L. Mathieu. This plant, about Berlin, is grown in pots; but there is nothing new to us, on this side of the water, in Mr. Mathieu's account of its culture. Indeed, what Mr. Sweet has said on the culture of bulbs and epiphites, in the last edition of his Botanical Cultivator, may be considered as the ultimatum on this subject, for the British gardener. 24. On the Culture and Use of the Sea or Shore- Cale, Crambe Maritima. By Mr. Brash, Royal Gardener at Bellevue; with an Appendix, by Mr. Voss, Royal Gardener at Sans-Souci. This vegetable is cultivated in the open garden, in the same way as in Britain, and also forced by covering with pots of earthen-ware, or frames of boards, surrounded by fresh horse-dung. The appendix consists chiefly of extracts from the pamphlet of Curtis on Crambe. (To be continued.) ART. VI. Récit d'une Excursion Horticulturale faite à Londres, dans le mois d'Avril, 1824, par M. Soulange Boudin, Membre de la Société Linnéenne de Paris, et de la Société d'Encouragement pour l'Industrie Nationale, &c. &c. (Extrait des Annales de l'Agriculture Françoise, 2d série, tome xxviii.) M. SOULANGE BOUDIN is not exactly a nurseryman, but one of those gentlemen or proprietor cultivators, common on the continent, who are fond of gardening, keep up a collection of plants, and propagate them for sale with a view of paying the expences of the establishment. We have no parallel description of cultivators in this country, unless we except a number of the merchants of Liverpool, who have villas in the vicinity, and send their extra fruit and vegetables to market. There are few descriptions of books more entertaining to the horticulturist than Mr. S. Boudin's pamphlet; and we only I wish it had embraced a more extensive account of the suburban gardens of the metropolis; but our author only visited the Horticultural Society's Garden, and a few of the principal nurseries, and these only with the eye of a cultivator, or rather nurseryman. He sets out by expressing his warm approbation of the extreme neatness, cleanliness, and order, displayed in English hot-houses in general; and admires our plan of setting plants on open stages, elevated so as to bring them near the glass; a practice not common in France, where they are for the most part set on the level floor. In Lee's nursery, he was much struck with the heaths, and seems to consider the collection there as the best in the neighbourhood of London, and in the most 38 vigorous growth. Their healthy appearance he says, is supposed to be owing to the practice of watering them with water in which the leaves and stalks of common heath have been steeped. This, we believe, has no foundation in fact; though Mr. Knight, the P. H. S., in a paper in the Horticultural Transactions has suggested the idea of forming a liquid manure for heaths, or other rare plants, by the maceration of the leaves of their own, or of nearly allied species. In Mr. Knight, the nurseryman's hot-houses, he saw the greatest number of seedling camellias ; and he describes a mode which that cultivator tried, but without success, to accelerate the period of their blossoming. This was as follows: when the plant had attained the height of 18 or 20 inches, and consisted of one shoot, it was bent so as to form a circle, and inarched to itself. (fig. 33.) Mr. Knight's object was to cause the sap to follow this course, and by that means promote its maturation for producing flowers; but it does not appear that any manipulation of this sort has much or any effect. The president of the Horticultural Society thinks even ringing will fall short of this desired object; though the experience of Mr. Hempel, the German pomologist, led him to a different conclusion. It is certain, however, that the quickest way yet known of inducing blossom in any seedling plant of the ligneous kind is to take a bud or graft from it, and insert it in the extremity of a bearing branch of a tree of the same species, as the president does in the case of seedling peach trees. (Gard. Mag. No. 1. p. 70.) Much depends also on the full exposure of the foliage to the light: seedling camellias kept in a house exposed to the north, or kept in any house several feet from the glass, will not come to a state of puberty or maturation for flowering, as when kept within a few inches of the glass. M. S. Boudin admires, as every man must, the extensive and well-regulated establishment of Messrs. Loddiges, and is in raptures with their lofty palm-house, its fine specimens of plantains, palms, tropical liliaceae and epiphytes. He notices their extensive steam apparatus, their beautiful contrivance for imitating rain, their fine collection of camellias, and their systematic mode, whether with the hardy or house collections, of keeping the plants of each genus and species by itself. So extensive a concern, indeed, could never be |