Lazenki (fig. 78.), a palace near Warsaw, with grounds

78

well described in your Encyclopædia of Gardening, and which every stranger allows to be most beautiful.

Moncoteau, and Natolia-Gucin, are not far from Warsaw, and very beautiful. There may be added the gardens of Mariejswice, Konskie, Skierniewice, Bobresck, Woyslawice, all of a rare beauty.

In what relates to the culture of forest trees, the management of natural woods, &c. we are entirely indebted to the enlightened endeavours of Count Louis Plater; who has also established a school of Forest Culture in Warsaw.

The large and beautiful botanic garden belonging to the University of Warsaw, under the direction of M. Schubert, Professor of Botany, possesses not only a very large number of species (about 10,000), but contains a collection of fruit and forest trees.

To these remarks, I may add one respecting the Larix communis. There are, in several parts of Poland, many woods of this tree, but particularly in the private forest belonging to the Count Soldyk, on the estate of Chlewisk. On this estate there are trees so old and large, that some years ago the French government sent M. le Chevalier Jean de Reverseau to purchase a great number of them for the French navy. Each tree, cleared of the bark, was 84 feet long, and 36 inches in diameter at the broad, and 18 inches at the small end. Twenty pair of oxen were necessary for drawing each of these trees out of the forest. It is, perhaps, also not unworthy of notice, that there have been made some trials, upon the use of the leaves of pines of several species for

tanning leather, and that they appear to be applicable for

that purpose.

I am, dear Sir, &c.

Warsaw, May, 1826.

KITAIEWSKI.

The engravings with which we have illustrated Professor Kitaiewski's interesting communication, are from sketches taken by us in 1813. Other sketches from the same residences and other places in Poland, will be found in our Encyclopædias.- Cond.

ART. IV. On a Disease which has attacked certain Elm Trees in Camberwell Grove, Surrey. By a Constant Reader.

Sir,

My attention was excited some few months since by an advertisement which appeared in several London and provincial journals headed "Diseased Elm Trees," and requesting persons having trees visited with a disease similar to that briefly described in the advertisement, to communicate with the advertiser, as it appeared that a suit in Chancery was depending thereon. Feeling considerable interest in whatever concerns forest timber and vegetable physiology, and wondering how such a matter could have got before the Court of Chancery, I took some pains to ascertain the nature of the disease to which the attention of the public was thus attracted; and as the subject is of importance, and the circumstances not altogether uninteresting, I avail myself of the opportunity afforded by your excellent Magazine of laying before your readers the result of my enquiry; the publication of it may possibly save some of them a suit in Chancery. For much of the detail I ought to say that I am indebted to the gentleman who inserted the advertisement, but of the facts I have satisfied myself.

It appears, that in July, 1825, some newly established Gas Company at Bankside began to lay down mains and erect posts, in the usual way, at Camberwell, in Surrey, preparatory to the lighting the village with gas; and that on the 23d of August following, the whole village was, for the first time, illumined with that elegant and unequalled light. Amongst the roads thus lighted was Camberwell Grove; a place well known to Cockneys as the reputed spot where George Barnwell is said to have murdered his uncle; and to a higher class of persons as the hospitable residence, for many years, of the cele

brated Dr. Lettsom. To those who do not know the place of which I am speaking, it is necessary to say that Camberwell Grove is a road not quite two-thirds of a mile in length, forming a gentle ascent to its summit, about 30 feet wide, and having a row of trees on each side, consisting of elms, limes, poplars, and chesnuts of considerable age and size, closely planted, especially towards the upper part of the road. In the month of October following, a period of about six weeks from the introduction of the gas, several of the elm trees were noticed to have lost or been stripped of their bark, for about three, four, and five feet from the base of the trunk; and the evil appearing to increase, a gentleman residing on the spot, interested in the preservation of the trees, offered a reward of two guineas for the apprehension of the persons supposed to have thus mischievously barked them. Several months, however, passed by, and though watchmen were employed to sit up during the night, no persons were discovered. Still the evil was not diminished; the bark fell, or was stripped off, in greater quantities than before, and almost every person who walked up the Grove, or was attracted by the novelty of the circumstance, undesignedly added somewhat to the mischief, by ripping off a little bit in wantonness, or a curious desire to discover the cause. The trees presented a lamentable appearance, and were the subject of general conversation in the neighbourhood. Some time in January, in the present year, a bill was filed in Chancery against the Gas Company by the gentleman before alluded to, a solicitor in large practice, and an application made to the Court for an injunction to restrain the Company from laying on or conducting any gas through the mains laid down by them in Camberwell Grove. The application was founded upon affidavits of gardeners and others, who deposed that, in their opinion, the disease in the trees was occasioned by the escape of the gas from the mains, which impregnated the earth and poisoned the roots. The application, when made, was postponed, upon the ground of some defect in the plaintiff's proceedings, for a few days, and ultimately renewed during several periods, in which a great number of scientific men were consulted, who made affidavits as to their belief in the cause of the disease; and the matter was finally brought before the Vice-Chancellor on the 8th of April last, and the injunction refused; but leave was given to the plaintiff to bring an action, by which he might establish, before a jury, the alleged connection between the introduction of the gas and the disease in question, if any such really existed; and also to decide another question as to the right

of the trustees for lighting the village to lay down the mains in the Grove under their act of Parliament. Upon this question I need not trouble your readers, as it is of no public interest. I am informed that no such action has been brought, and, moreover, that the plaintiff has subsequently moved to dismiss his bill, which can only be done upon payment of costs. From this circumstance, and from the legal ability and well-known perseverance of the plaintiff in all cases where success is attainable by talents, such as he is admitted to possess, I am justified in concluding that he satisfied himself, as, I confess, I am satisfied, and all those with whom I have conversed, that there was no connection whatever between the introduction of the gas and the decortication of these old elm trees. I have, by permission of the solicitor for the defendants, perused carefully all the depositions, as well those upon which the application for an injunction was founded as those upon which it was resisted. In support of the application, the reasoning that appears most powerfully to have influenced the judgment of the deponents, is the mere fact of the coincidence, as to time, between the introduction of the gas and the appearance of the disease. I am informed that, since the application to the Court, an individual has been found, who noticed the partial decortication of the elms prior to the introduction of the gas: this, though it would have. settled the question between the contending parties, had it been known in time, does not elucidate the nature or cause of the disease, both of which are interesting to all whose observation has been directed to the constitution of plants.

By two of the gentlemen who were consulted by the defendants, I find the decortication of the trees was attributed to the ravages of the little insect called the Scolytus destructor, whose amazing powers of destruction are so ably treated of by Mr. W. S. M'Leay in his report upon the state of the elms in St. James's and Hyde Parks. * The ultimate result is certainly the same, for in both diseases the bark falls off and the tree perishes, and there are a great number of trees in Camberwell Grove unquestionably infested and destroyed by this astonishing little insect; and even at this moment, if you strip off a piece of the bark, you will find myriads of larvæ feeding on the soft inner bark, the surface of which presents to the view (as described by Mr. M'Leay) innumerable impressions, which may be compared to large and broad scolopendræ,

* See Edinourgh Philosophical Journal, No. xxI. July 1. 1824, art. xii. ; also No. cccvi. of Tilloch's Philosophical Magazine for October, 1823, art. li. signed "Dendrophilos."

and the outer bark is perforated with innumerable holes, as with a brad-awl.

But still, I confess, it appears to me, as well from the other affidavits and depositions upon the subject as from my own observation, that the elm trees, in the present case, are visited with a distinct and independent disease; which I learn was prevalent last summer, and may yet be seen in many other parts of the country where no gas has ever been, and where the Scolytus does not appear to have been noticed.

In Camberwell Grove the mains were laid close to the trees, on the left-hand side of the road as you ascend, and equally near to all the trees on that side, and yet the elms on the right-hand side, at a distance of thirty feet from the mains, were equally and in the same manner affected, and no other species of tree was thus visited. The disease is thus described by Mr. Lindley, the garden secretary of the Horticultural Society, in his deposition: "The outer or indurated bark of such of the said elm trees as present the unhealthy appearance aforesaid is detached and easily separable from the inner bark thereof, and very considerable quantities have fallen or been stripped off from the said trees. The inner bark exhibits the appearance of considerable extravasation of the juices having taken place, thereby giving to the surface thereof an unusually humid appearance, which, in the opinion of the deponent, indicates an approach to putrefaction; and, in one instance, the extravasation of the juices had become so copious as to flow from the tree in the form of foul putrid matter." Mr. Lindley then proceeds to detail at length the arguments and reasonings upon which he is convinced that the disease in question is in no way arising from, or connected with, the gas; and he makes it clear almost to demonstration, by an illustration of a particular case, that if the trees had really absorbed poisonous or deleterious matter, a general aridity would have been the result, in consequence of which the bark would have adhered more closely than usual to the wood, and no extravasation of the juices and decòrtication, as in the case of the trees in Camberwell Grove. I lament that I have not room to copy from his deposition the description of the manner in which the circulation of the sap of the tree takes place, from which he proves that the leaves and the ends of the branches, and not the trunk, would have been the first parts affected, supposing that the gas had exercised any specific influence upon the trees. He concludes by quoting from, and referring to, the works of several learned and able writers, who have treated upon these diseases as incident