to it; you take them off the tree long before they are ripe, and experience has taught us that they will keep much longer, and eat much fresher, than those suffered to grow ripe upon the tree: the same is the case with the potatoes taken up before ripe. Placing the potatoes upon the gravel, or any dry but not grass walk, in the sun, has the effect of stopping the circulation in the tuber, in which nature has provided resources to carry it on to an extraordinary degree, unless so stopped.

If you will examine the potato stem or plant, when the tubers are beginning to be formed, you will find that the potatoes are placed upon the runners pushed or issuing out from the plant or stem above the set: the functions of the set are to push out roots to gather food from the soil to supply the plant and leaves with that food; and from the leaves the blood or fruitsap flows down to form the runners and new potatoes; and the more you earth up the plant or stem, the more runners are formed higher up on the stem, and the more potatoes are produced.

Permit me to add, that all the best farmers in the warm and rich soils and warm climates find their account in changing their seed-wheat; for that they send to the poor soils and cold climates, often to the poor cold chalk-hills in Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire; and what is the sample of the wheat they obtain from thence? — notoriously the most shrivelled, from being cut before ripe. If farmers on rich soils would reap their wheat, preserved for seed, before ripe, they need not be at the expense, trouble, and inconvenience of sending 100 miles for their seed-wheat, which is often the case.

The present season of the year being favourable to you and your readers putting my observations in this and my former letter to the test, viz. earthing up the potatoes, causing them to be later; earthing them up, after taking away a few of the earliest, causing them to throw out new runners and produce more potatoes; the top or eye-cuts producing potatoes a fortnight earlier than the bottoms of the same tubers, &c.; I trust that I shall see the results of their observations in the ninth Number of your interesting publication.

Writing for plain, unlearned men like myself, I deem it unnecessary to hunt in dictionaries, and other such learned books, for scientific or philosophical terms to garnish my tale, the want of which, I trust, will not render it less useful, or less acceptable to you and your readers. I am Sir, &c.

March 29. 1827.

A DENBIGHSHIRE Gardener.

ART. XXV. Description and Use of a Horticultural Memorandum Book, By a COUNTRY Clergyman.

Sir,

IN reading your Magazine, and other horticultural works, I have found great benefit from the adoption of a plan, which I venture to recommend to the notice of others, through the medium of your useful publication.

It frequently happens, and particularly at this season of the year (January), that the account of some process, or of some experiment, strikes you as worthy of being put into practice, but the time for so doing is not yet arrived: the consequence too often is, that either the matter is entirely forgotten, or else it is jotted down amidst a heap of other memoranda, and probably escapes observation at the required season.

To obviate these difficulties, I have provided myself with a memorandum book, in which I have appropriated a certain number of pages to each month in the year; and by a contrivance similar to that used in the indexes of ledgers, I am able at once to turn to any particular month. The two first pages of all these twelve divisions are each of them divided by a line into two parts, by which means I can arrange the work to be done into separate weeks, and the remainder of every monthly portion is left for miscellaneous entries.

As an instance of the manner of carrying this plan into effect, I refer you to Mr. Borrowdale's article (p. 35.) on growing figs in pots. Supposing this an experiment which I wished to try, I should first turn in my memorandum book to March, and in the portion assigned for the second week in that month I should write, " Figs in pots (cuttings), L. G. M. ii. 35. ;" and then, in like manner, make the proper entries in the first weeks of January and June respectively; adopting such a system of abbreviation as I can well understand. By thus noting down every particular which occurs to you in your general reading in its proper place, and referring to the work in which the full description of the process is given, you are sure to be reminded at the right season of what ought to be done, and directed at the same time where to seek the proper information.

From the simplicity of this plan, it very probably has been already adopted by others; but as I have mentioned it to several amateurs like myself, who had never heard of it before, but who, at the same time, approved much of it, I am induced to send it to you, hoping that by being published in the

Gardener's Magazine, it may prove of the same advantage to others that it has proved to me.

January 11. 1827.

I am, Sir, &c.

A COUNTRY CLERGYMAN.

ART. XXVI. Abridged Communications.

1. Cultivation of the Cucumber at Thoresby Gardens, Nottinghamshire. By Mr. THOMAS PARKIN, Foreman to Mr. Bennet, C.M.H.S.

Mr. P., with a commendable modesty, professes not to write for the instruction of practical gardeners, but for the information of such readers of our Magazine as have not the advantage of professional advice or assistance. The management of the cucumber frames at Thoresby Gardens is conducted with so much ability and success, that it is more than probable but few practitioners could desire a better return for their labour: 1024 fruit from 14 lights between the 13th March and the end of August; 5 of the lights not worked till the beginning of June. Mr. P.'s method is stopping the leading shoots early; again stopping wherever the fruit appears; compost, a light sandy maiden soil, mixed with decayed oak leaves or rotten dung; temperature of the frames from 75° to 95°; watering plentifully with warmed water as soon as the sun is off the plants.

2. Setting the Blossoms of the more shy-bearing Kinds of Pears. By Mr. JAMES MICHIE, Gardener to Sir Charles Hulse, Breamore House, near Fording Bridge, Hampshire.

A Gansell's Bergamot, twenty years old, on a wall with a S.W. aspect, which seldom bore any fruit, bore abundantly after being stuck over in the flowering season with sprigs of blossom from a standard Swan's Egg Pear. Some shoots of an adjoining Chaumontelle, trained in among the shoots of the G. B., had the same effect on that part of the tree. This mode of artificial fecundation Mr. M. has followed for several years with complete success.

321

PART II.

REVIEWS.

ART. I. 1. Essay on the beneficial Direction of Rural Expenditure. By ROBERT SLANEY, Esq.

(Concluded from p. 184.)

2. Colonies at Home: or, the Means for rendering the industrious Labourer independent of Parish Relief; and for provid ing for the Poor Population of Ireland by the Cultivation of the Soil. London. Pamph. 8vo. pp. 27. 2 Plates.

3. Thoughts on the Expediency of a General Provident Institution for the Benefit of the Working Classes; with Tables and Examples of Contributions and Allowances. By JAMES CLEGHORN, Accountant in Edinburgh. Edin. Pamph. 8vo. pp. 43.

WE are now to enquire whether there are any means by which the superfluous agricultural population can be supplied with work. If such work, at the same time that it gave them employment, added to the capital of their employers, it would then embrace all that is, at any time, or from any cause, aimed at, in employing the poor; if, while it afforded them employment, it added, not to the profits, but merely to the gratification of their employers, still it is desirable and useful both to the poor and their masters: and in the present state of the country, we would almost go the length of embracing the opinion of a late statesman, that employing the poor to carry stones from one place to another, and to put them back again, is better for them than sheer idleness.

Let us enquire into the different species of these three kinds of employment. First; that kind which, while it gives work to the idle, increases the profit of their masters. We are afraid much cannot be done in this way: the complaint is, that all kinds of labour and trade are overstocked. Still something may be done we confine our suggestions to agricultural labour. Is there an estate in the kingdom which may not be improved and benefited by having its bare and unfertile spots planted; by having its plantations, already made, kept cleaner or better drained? Are there no private roads to noblemen and gentlemen's houses, by repairing, levelling, and new formVOL. II. No. 7.

Y

ing which, access to their houses might be gained with less wear of horses and carriages? We merely throw out these hints a little reflection on them, we have no doubt, will suggest various other modes in which noblemen and gentlemen, or their stewards, may employ, with small and indirect profit indeed, but still with profit, some of the idle poor in their neighbourhood. Farmers also may employ them, so as to repay themselves for the wages they give them, at least in part. The very best farmed lands would admit of hedges being kept much more clean than we ever saw them: of alterations in the soil, by mixing the clay of the strong and wet part with the sand of the too light portions; and by various other modes, which will not fail to present themselves to an intelligent farmer, actuated at the same time by a wish to improve his farm and give employment to the poor.

But it will be said at once, in the present state of agriculture, farmers cannot afford to spend money even on improvements which would be certain to repay them; and even landed proprietors have little to spend in this manner. As this objection, if it cannot be obviated, must apply with still greater force to those modes of employing the poor which cannot yield profit, it will be proper to consider it before we proceed further.

Suppose a farmer pays in poor rates 5s. in the pound on his rental, and rents a farm of 500 acres, at 30s. an acre, his poor rates in this case will amount to about 1877.: in return for this money he gets nothing. He sees round him a number of idle people, whom he is obliged to contribute to support. If, by any means, he could obtain for his 1877. even one-half of the profit which that sum would yield in the regular way of his farming, would it not be preferable to throwing it away? Let us suppose, then, that he takes of these poor as many as he can employ and pay at the rate of 10s. a week, in the modes we have pointed out, or others similar, that will suggest themselves his outlay is not increased, and from this outlay of 1877. he derives some profit. But his gain is not merely direct, such as we have pointed out. Can any one doubt, that if the idle poor of a parish were employed, there would be less immorality of all kinds; and, what is to our present purpose, less depredation ― less breaking of gates and hedges -less trespassing on fields and farm-yards, than there is at present?

The benefit to the poor, from these modes of employing them, might be extended to a greater number, and at the same time increased, without any expence to the farmer, if he,