Mackenzie's Ten Thousand Receipts

and the seeds to mould in bad seasons. When. ever they are thought ripe, or sooner in wes weather, they should be removed to an airy shed or loft, gradually dried and rubbed or beat out at convenience. When dried wrap them up in papers or in tight boxes containing powdered charcoal. To improve all sorts of Seeds.

Charles Miller, son of the celebrated botanist, pint of rain-water. Thus, in the month of Feb-published a recipe for fertilizing seed, and tried it ruary, fruits or roses will appear; and, with respect to flowers in general, if they are sown in pots at or before Michaelmas, and watered in a similar manner, they will blow at Christmas.

To preserve Wood from Insects.

In the East Indies aloes are employed as a varnish to preserve wood from worms and other insects; and skins, and even living animals, are anointed with it for the same reason. The havoc committed by the white ants, in India, first suggested the trial of aloe juice to protect wood from them, for which purpose the juice is either used as extracted, or in solution by some solvent. To preserve Young Shoots from Slugs and Earwigs. Earwigs and slugs are fond of the points of the young shoots of carnations and pinks, and are very troublesome in places where they abound; to prevent them they are sometimes insulated in water, being set in cisterns or pans. If a pencil dipped in oil was drawn round the bottom of the pots once in two days, neither of these insects or ants would attempt them. Few insects can endure oil, and the smallest quantity of it stops their progress. Vegetable Liquor to hasten the Blowing of BulbousRooted Flowers.

Take nitre, 3 ounces; common salt, 1 ounce ; potash, 1 ounce; sugar, ounce; rain-water 1 pound. Dissolve the salts in a gentle heat, in a glazed earthen pot, and when the solution is complete add the sugar, and filter the whole. Put about eight drops of this liquor into a glass jar, filled with rain or river-water. The jars must be kept always full, and the water removed every ten or twelve days, adding each time a like quantity of the liquor. The flowers also must be placed on the corner of a chimney-piece, where a fire is regularly kept. The same mixture may be em. ployed for watering flowers in pots, or filling the dishes in which they are placed, in order to keep the earth, or the bulbs or plants which they contain, in a state of moisture.

To restore Flowers.

Most flowers begin to droop and fade after being kept during twenty-four hours in water; a few may be revived by substituting fresh water, but all (the most fugacious, such as poppy, and perhaps one or two others excepted,) may be restored by the use of hot water. For this purpose place the flowers in scalding hot water, deep enough to cover about one-third of the length of the stem; by the time the water has become cold the flowers will have become erect and fresh; then cut off the coddled ends of the stems and put them into cold

on wheat, by mixing lime, nitre and pigeon's dung in water, and therein steeping the seed. The produce of some of these grains is stated at sixty, seventy and eighty stems, many of the ears five inches long, and fifty corns each, and none less than forty.

To preserve Seeds for a long time. When seeds are to be preserved longer than the usual period, or when they are to be sent to a great distance, sugar, salt, cotton, saw-dust, sand, paper, etc., have been adopted with different degrees of success. Chinese seeds, dried by means of sulphuric acid, in Leslie's manner, may be afterwards preserved in a vegetating state for any necessary length of time by keeping them in an airy situation in any common brown paper, and occasionally exposing them to the air on a fine day, succeed with all the larger mucilaginous seeds. especially after damp weather. This method will Very small seeds, berries and oily seeds may probably require to be kept in sugar, or among currants or raisins.

To preserve Exotic Seeds.

Five years ago, says a correspondent of the Monthly Magazine, I had a collection of seeds sent me from Scrampoore, in the East Indies, which have been since that period kept in small bottles in a dry situation, without corks; last spring some of them were sown, and produced strong, healthy plants, under the following system; but if taken from the bottles and sown in the ordinary way I have found them either to fail altogether or to produce germination so weak that the greatest care can never bring them to any perfection.

I have long observed that oxygen is necessary to animal and vegetable life, and that soil which has imbibed the greatest proportion of that air or gas yields the strongest germination, and with the least care produces the best and most healthy plants; under that impression I prepare the soil by adding to it a compost made from decayed vegetables, night soil and fresh earth, well mixed together and turned several times; but should the weather be dry I have generally found the compost better by adding water to keep it moist. On the evening before I intended to sow the seeds I have immersed them in a weak solution of chlorine, and suffered them to remain until they begun to swell.

By pursuing this treatment even with our English annual seeds, I am gratified with an earlier germination and with generally stronger and more healthy plants.

To dry Flowers.

They should be dried off as speedily as possible, the calyces, claws, etc., being previously taken off; when the flowers are very small the calyx is left, or even the whole flowering spike, as in the greatest portion of the labiate flowers; compound flowers with pappous seeds, as coltsfoot, ought to be dried very high and before they are entirely opened, otherwise the slight moisture that remains would develope the pappi, and these would form a kind of cottony nap, which would be very

To gather Vegetables.

section on the living plant. Gathering with the hand ought to be done as little as possible.

hurtful in infusions, by leaving irritating partieles in the throat. Flowers of little or no smell This is, in part, performed with a knife, and in may be dried in a heat of 75° to 100° Fahr.; the part by fracture or torsion with the hand. In all succulent petals of the liliaceous plants, whose cases of using the knife, the general principle of odor is very fugaceous, cannot well be dried; sev-cutting is to be attended to, leaving also a sound eral sorts of flowering tops, as those of lesser centaury, lily of the valley, wormwood, mellilot, water germander, etc., are tied up in small parcels and hung up, or exposed to the sun, wrapped in paper cornets, that they may not be discolored. The color of the petals of red roses is preserved by their being quickly dried with heat, after which the yellow anthers are separated by sifting; the odor of roses and red pinks is considerably inereased by drying.

To dry Tops, Leaves, or Whole Herbs. They should be gathered in a dry season, cleansed from discolored and rotten leaves, screened from earth or dust, placed on handles covered with blotting paper and exposed to the sun or the heat of a stove, in a dry, airy place. The quicker they are dried the better, as they have less time to ferment or grow mouldy; hence they should be spread thin and frequently turned; when dried they should be shaken in a large meshed sieve to get rid of the eggs of any insects. Aromatic herbs ought to be dried quickly with a moderate heat, that their odor may not be lost. Cruciferous plants should not be dried, as in that case they lose much of their antiscorbutic qualities. Some persons have proposed to dry herbs in a water bath, but this occasions them, as it were, to

be half boiled in their own water.

To dry Roots.

They should be rubbed in water to get rid of the dirt and also some of the mucous substance that would otherwise render them mouldy; the larger are then to be cut, split, or peeled, but in most aromatic roots, the odor residing in the bark, they must not be peeled; they are then to be spread on sieves or hurdles and dried in a heat of about 120° Fahr. either on the top of an oven, in a stove, or a steam closet, taking care to shake them occasionally to change the surface exposed to the air. Thick and juicy roots, as rhubarb, briony, peony, water-lily, etc., are cut in slices, strung upon a thread and hung in a heat of about 90° to 100° Fahr. Squills are scaled, threaded and dried round the tube of a German stove, or in a hot closet. Rhubarb should be washed to separate that mucous principle which would otherwise render it black and soft when powdered. Pota

toes are cut in slices and dried.

To preserve Roots.

These are preserved in different ways, according to the object in view. Tuberous roots, as those of the dahlia, pæonia, tuberose, etc., intended to be planted in the succeeding spring, are preserved through the winter in dry earth, in a temperature rather under than above what is natural to them. So may the bulbous roots of commerce, as hyaeinths, tulips, onions, etc., but for convenience, these are kept cither loose, in cool dry shelves or lofts, or the finer sorts in papers, till the season of planting.

Roots of all kinds may be preserved in an icehouse till the return of the natural crop.

After stuffing the vacuities with straw, and covering the surface of the ice with the same material, place on it case boxes, casks, baskets, etc., and fill them with turnips, carrots, beetroots, and in particular potatoes. By the cold of the place vegetation is so much suspended that all these articles may be thus kept fresh and uninjured till they give place to another crop in its natural season.

To preserve Vegetables.

This is effected in cellars or sheds, of any temperature, not lower nor much above the freezingpoint. Thus cabbages, endive, chicory, lettuce, etc., taken out of the ground with their main roots, in perfectly dry weather, at the end of the season, and laid on, or partially immersed in sand or dry earth, in a close shed, cellar, or ice-cold room, will keep through the winter, and be fit for use till spring, and often till the return of the season of their produce in the garden.

Time for Gathering Fruits.

This should take place in the middle of a dry day. Plums readily part from the twigs when ripe; they should not be much handled, as the bloom is apt to be rubbed off. Apricots may be accounted ready when the side next the sun feels a little soft upon gentle pressure with the finger. They adhere firmly to the tree, and would overripen on it and become mealy. Peaches and nectarines, if moved upwards, and allowed to descend with a slight jerk, will separate, if ready; and they may be received into a tin funnel lined with velvet, so as to avoid touching with the fingers or bruising.

A certain rule for judging of the ripeness of figs is to notice when the small end of the fruit becomes of the same color as the large one.

The most transparent grapes are the most ripe. All the berries in a bunch never ripen equally; it is therefore proper to cut away unripe or decayed berries before presenting the bunches at

table.

Autumn and winter pears are gathered, when dry, as they successively ripen.

which nearly approaches maturity. Winter apImmature fruit never keeps so well as that ples should be left on the trees till there be danger of frost; they are then gathered on a dry day.

To gather Orchard Fruits.

In respect to the time of gathering, the criterion of ripeness, adopted by Forsyth, is their be ginning to fall from the tree. Observe attentively when the apples and pears are ripe; and do not pick them always at the same regular time of the year, as is the practice with many. A dry season will forward the ripening of fruit, and a wet one retard it so that there will sometimes be a month's difference in the proper time for gathering. If this is attended to the fruit will keep well, and be plump, and not shrivelled, as is the case with all fruit that is gathered before it is ripe.

The art of gathering is to give them a lift, so as to press away the stalk, and if ripe, they readily part from the tree. Those that will not come off easily should hang a little longer; for when they come off hard they will not be so fit to store; and the violence done at the foot-stalk may injure the bud there formed for the next year's fruit.

Let the pears be quite dry when pulled, and in handling avoid pinching the fruit, or in any way bruising it, as those which are hurt not only decay themselves, but presently spread infection to those near them; when suspected to be bruised, let them be carefully kept from others, and used first; as gathered, lay them gently in shallow baskets

shrubs, being taken up in the spring, at the time when they are about to bud, with some of their own soil carefully preserved among the roots, must be placed upright in a cellar till Michaelmas; when, with the addition of fresh earth, they are to be put into proper tubs or vessels, and placed in a stove or hot-house, where they must every morning be moistened or refreshed with a solution of half an ounce of sal-ammoniac in a pint of rain-water. Thus, in the month of February, fruits or roses will appear; and, with respect to flowers in general, they are sown in pots at or before Michaelmas, and watered in a similar manner, they will blow at Christmas.

To preserve Wood from Insects.

Rooted Flowers.

Take nitre, 3 ounces; common salt, 1 ounce; potash, 1 ounce; sugar, ounce; rain-water 1 pound. Dissolve the salts in a gentle heat, in a glazed earthen pot, and when the solution is complete add the sugar, and filter the whole. Put about eight drops of this liquor into a glass jar, filled with rain or river-water. The jars must be kept always full, and the water removed every ten or twelve days, adding each time a like quantity of the liquor. The flowers also must be placed on the corner of a chimney-piece, where a fire is regularly kept. The same mixture may be em. ployed for watering flowers in pots, or filling the dishes in which they are placed, in order to keep the earth, or the bulbs or plants which they contain, in a state of moisture.

To restore Flowers.

and the seeds to mould in bad seasons. When ever they are thought ripe, or sooner in wes weather, they should be removed to an airy shed or loft, gradually dried and rubbed or beat out at convenience. When dried wrap them up in papers or in tight boxes containing powdered charcoal. To improve all sorts of Seeds.

Charles Miller, son of the celebrated botanist, published a recipe for fertilizing seed, and tried it on wheat, by mixing lime, nitre and pigeon's dung in water, and therein steeping the seed. The produce of some of these grains is stated at sixty, seventy and eighty stems, many of the ears five inches long, and fifty corns each, and none less than forty.

To preserve Seeds for a long time. When seeds are to be preserved longer than the usual period, or when they are to be sent to a great distance, sugar, salt, cotton, saw-dust, sand, paper, etc., have been adopted with different degrees of success. Chinese seeds, dried by means of sulphuric acid, in Leslie's manner, may be afterwards preserved in a vegetating state for any necessary length of time by keeping them in an casionally exposing them to the air on a fine day, airy situation in any common brown paper, and ocespecially after damp weather. This method will succeed with all the larger mucilaginous seeds. Very small seeds, berries and oily seeds may probably require to be kept in sugar, or among cur

rants or raisins.

To preserve Exotic Seeds.

Monthly Magazine, I had a collection of seeds Five years ago, says a correspondent of the

sent me from Scrampoore, in the East Indies, which have been since that period kept in small bottles in a dry situation, without corks; last spring some of them were sown, and produced strong, healthy plants, under the following system; but if taken from the bottles and sown in the ordinary way I have found them either to fail altogether or to produce germination so weak that the greatest care can never bring them to any perfection.

By pursuing this treatment even with our English annual seeds, I am gratified with an earlier germination and with generally stronger and more healthy plants.

To dry Flowers.

To gather Vegetables.

hurtful in infusions, by leaving irritating particles in the throat. Flowers of little or no smell This is, in part, performed with a knife, and in may be dried in a heat of 75° to 100° Fahr.; the part by fracture or torsion with the hand. In all succulent petals of the liliaceous plants, whose cases of using the knife, the general principle of odor is very fugaceous, cannot well be dried; sev-cutting is to be attended to, leaving also a sound eral sorts of flowering tops, as those of lesser censection on the living plant. Gathering with the taury, lily of the valley, wormwood, mellilot, wa-hand ought to be done as little as possible. ter germander, etc., are tied up in small parcels and hung up, or exposed to the sun, wrapped in paper cornets, that they may not be discolored. The color of the petals of red roses is preserved by their being quickly dried with heat, after which the yellow anthers are separated by sifting; the odor of roses and red pinks is considerably increased by drying.

To dry Tops, Leaves, or Whole Herbs. They should be gathered in a dry season, cleansed from discolored and rotten leaves, screened from earth or dust, placed on handles covered with blotting paper and exposed to the sun or the heat of a stove, in a dry, airy place. The quicker they are dried the better, as they bave less time to ferment or grow mouldy; hence they should be spread thin and frequently turned; when dried they should be shaken in a large meshed sieve to get rid of the eggs of any insects. Aromatic herbs ought to be dried quickly with a moderate heat, that their odor may not be lost. Cruciferous plants should not be dried, as in that case they lose much of their antiscorbutic qualities. Some persons have proposed to dry herbs in a water bath, but this occasions them, as it were, to

be half boiled in their own water.

To dry Roots.

dried round the tube of a German stove, or in a hot closet. Rhubarb should be washed to separate that mucous principle which would otherwise render it black and soft when powdered. Pota

toes are cut in slices and dried.

To preserve Roots.

These are preserved in different ways, according to the object in view. Tuberous roots, as those of the dahlia, pæonia, tuberose, etc., intended to be planted in the succeeding spring, are preserved through the winter in dry earth, in a temperature rather under than above what is natural to them. So may the bulbous roots of commerce, as hyacinths, tulips, onions, etc., but for convenience, these are kept cither loose, in cool dry shelves or lotts, or the finer sorts in papers, till the season of planting.

Roots of all kinds may be preserved in an icehouse till the return of the natural crop.

To preserve Vegetables.

Time for Gathering Fruits.

A certain rule for judging of the ripeness of figs is to notice when the small end of the fruit becomes of the same color as the large one.

The most transparent grapes are the most ripe. All the berries in a bunch never ripen equally; it is therefore proper to cut away unripe or decayed berries before presenting the bunches at

table.

dry, as they successively ripen.
Autumn and winter pears are gathered, when

Immature fruit never keeps so well as that which nearly approaches maturity. Winter apples should be left on the trees till there be danger of frost; they are then gathered on a dry day. To gather Orchard Fruits.

rion of ripeness, adopted by Forsyth, is their beIn respect to the time of gathering, the criteginning to fall from the tree. Observe attentively when the apples and pears are ripe; and do not pick them always at the same regular time of the year, as is the practice with many. A dry season will forward the ripening of fruit, and a wet one retard it so that there will sometimes be a month's difference in the proper time for gathering. If this is attended to the fruit will keep well, and be plump, and not shrivelled, as is the case with all fruit that is gathered before it is ripe.

To preserve Green Fruits.

Green fruits are generally preserved by pickling or salting, and this operation is usually performed by some part of the domestic establish

ment.

To preserve Ripe Fruit.

Such ripe fruit as may be preserved is generally laid up in lofts and bins, or shelves, when in large quantities, and of baking qualities; but the better sorts of apples and pears are now preserved in a #ystera of drawers, sometimes spread out in them; at other times wrapped up in papers, or placed in pots, cylindrical earthen vessels, among sand, moss, paper, chaff, hay, saw-dust, etc., or sealed up in air-tight jars or casks, and placed in the fruit-cellar.

To preserve Pears.

Having prepared a number of earthen-ware jars, and a quantity of dry moss, place a layer of moss and pears alternately till the jar is filled, then insert a plug, and seal around with melted rosin. These jars are sunk in dry sand to the depth of a foot; a deep cellar is preferable for keeping them to any fruit-room.

Another Method.

Choice apples and pears are preserved in glazed jars, provided with covers. In the bottom of the jars, and between each two layers of fruit, put some pure pit-sand, which has been thoroughly dried. The jars are kept in a dry, airy situation, as cool as possible, but secure from frost. A label on the jar indicates the kind of fruit, and when wanted it is taken from the jar and placed for some time on the shelves of the fruit-room.

In this way Colmarts, and other fine French pears may be preserved till April; the Terling till June; and many kinds of apples till July, the skin remaining.

To preserve Apples and Pears. The most successful method of preserving apples and pears'is by placing them in glazed earthen vessels, each containing about a gallon, and surrounding each fruit with paper. These vessels being perfect cylinders, about a foot each in height, stand very conveniently upon each other, and thus present the means of preserving a large quantity of fruit in a very small room; and if the space between the top of one vessel and the base of another be filled with a cement composed of two parts of the curd of skimmed milk, and one of lime, by which the air will be excluded, the later kinds of apples and pears will be preserved with little change in their appearance, and without any danger of decay, from October till February or March. A dry and cold situation, in which there is little change of temperature, is the best for the vessels; but the merits of the pears are greatly increased by their being taken from the vessels about ten days before they are wanted for use, and kept in a warm room, for warmth at this, as at other periods, accelerates the maturity of the pear.

To preserve various sorts of Fruit.

way grapes may be gathered every day in the year. Another Method.

But the true way to preserve keeping-fruit, such as the apple and pear, is to put them in airtight vessels, and place them in the fruit cellar, in a temperature between thirty-two and forty degrees. In this way all the keeping sorts of these fruits may be preserved in perfect order for eating for one year after gathering.

To store Fruit.

Those to be used first, lay by singly on shelves or on the floor, in a dry southern room, on clean dry moss or sweet dry straw, so as not to touch one another. Some, or all the rest. having first laid a fortnight singly, and then nicely culled, aro to be spread on shelves or on a dry floor. But the most superior way is to pack in large earthen, China or stone jars, with very dry long moss at the bottom, sides, and also between them if possible. Press a good coat of moss on the top, and then stop the mouth close with cork or otherwise, which should be rosined round about with a twentieth part of beeswax in it. Baked saw-dust will do as well. As the object is effectually to if earthen, may be set on dry sand, which put also keep out air (the cause of putrefaction), the jars, between, round and over them, to a foot thick on the top. In all close storing, observe there should be no doubt of the soundness of the fruit. Guard in time from frost those that lie open. Jars of fruit must be soon used after unsealing.

To keep Apples and Pears for Market. Those who keep their fruit in storehouses for the supply of the London and other markets, as well as those who have not proper fruit-rooms, may keep their apples and pears in baskets or hampers, putting some soft paper in the bottoms and round the edges of the baskets, etc., to keep of fruit, and over that another layer of paper; and the fruit from being bruised; then put in a layer so on, a layer of fruit and of paper alternately, Cover the top till the basket or hamper be full. with paper three or four times thick to exclude the air and frost as much as possible. Every different sort of fruit should be placed separately; and it will be proper to fix a label to each basket or hamper, with the name of the fruit that it contains, and the time of its being fit for use. Another Way.

Another way of keeping fruit is to pack it in glazed earthern jars. The pears or apples must be separately wrapped up in soft paper, then put a little well-dried bran in the bottom of the jar, and over the bran a layer of fruit; then a little more bran to fill up the interstices between the fruit, and to cover it; and so on, a layer of fruit and bran alternately, till the jar be full: then shake it gently, which will make the fruit and bran sink a little; fill up the vacancy at top with a piece of bladder to exclude the air; then put on the top or cover of the jar, observing that it fits as closely as possible. These jars should be kept in a room where there can be a fire in wet or damp weather.

Nicol considers it an error to sweat apples pre

By covering some sorts of cherry, plum, gooseberry and currant trees, either on walls or on bushes with mats, the fruit of the red and white currant, and of the thicker-skinned gooseberry-viously to storing them. The fruit ever after retrees, may be preserved till Christmas and later. Grapes, in the open air, may be preserved in the same manner; and peaches and nectarines may be kept a month hanging on the trees after they are ripe.

Arkwright, by late forcing, retains plump grapes on his vines till the beginning of May, and even later, till the maturity of his early crops. In this

tains a bad flavor. It should never be laid in heaps at all; but if quite dry when gathered should be immediately carried to the fruit-room, and be laid, if not singly, at least tain on the shelves. If the finer fraits are placed on anything else than a clean shelf, it should be on fine paper. Brown paper gives them the flavor of pitch. The fine larger kinds of pears should not

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Mackenzie's Ten Thousand Receipts: In All the Useful and Domestic Arts ...