estates, by the only way in which this can be done, viz. by improving the agriculture practised on them. There are some excellent articles in the present part; and perhaps the most valuable is one by Philip Pusey, Esq., M.P., entitled Experimental Inquiry on Draught in Ploughing. Our countrymen in the North will be not a little astonished to find that there is a plough, of English origin and construction, and with one wheel (!), which is easier drawn, and makes a better furrow than the most improved form of Scotch ploughs sent out by Messrs. Drummond of Stirling, in the proportion: trial 1., of 14 to 19; trial 2., of 43 to 51: trial 3., of 11 to 17; and trial 4., of 23 to 34. The implement is called Hart's improved Berks Onewheeled Plough. We cannot spare room to go into details, but we most strongly recommend the article to all Scotch farmers and bailiffs. The great fault of us Scotchmen is, our strong prejudices in favour of whoever or whatever is Scotch; so general and powerful are these prejudices, that, when a Scotch bailiff or farmer first comes to England, he generally finds nothing good there in the way of agriculture, but what corresponds with what he has seen in Scotland; making no allowance for difference of climate and other circumstances. We do not say that there are not many exceptions among the more enlightened Scotch bailiffs and stewards; we merely assert that this is the general feeling. Nothing will tend so much to obliterate every prejudice of this kind, as English proprietors taking up the subject of agriculture, and experimenting and thinking for themselves. How incomparably more rational, useful, and honourable, to be occupied, as Mr. Pusey has been, in superintending experiments, and afterwards giving an account of them and reasoning on them, than in fox-hunting or shooting; mere relics of the occupations of barbarous times, and which, with the progress of society, will as completely disappear from the catalogue of gentlemanly amusements, as bear-beating, badger-drawing, and the other brutalities which once held place amongst them!

The part of the Journal now before us is by far the best that has yet appeared; containing, as it does, a number of papers, scientific, experimental, and practical. We cannot help recommending the articles on subsoil-ploughing, and on thoroughdraining, though the subject occupied a considerable part of the preceding number. One excellent feature in this Journal is, that there is not a single paper in it, nor even a foot-note, that has not the authority of a real name appended.

ART. VI. The Surveyor, Engineer, and Architect; or, London Monthly Journal of the Physical and Practical Sciences. By a Committee of Practical Surveyors, Engineers, and Architects, of much Experience, and in active Employment. Robert Mudie, Literary Conductor. No. I. 4to, pp. 24, one steel engraving, and some woodcuts. London, 1840.

THE preliminary address enlarges on the influence which the surveyor and the engineer have had in promoting civilisation, by exploring new countries, by planning and executing improvements upon the great scale, with knowledge of all the eircumstances, and for national objects. Such objects, and such means brought to the execution of them in the best, the most useful, the most elegant, the most durable, and, at the same time, the cheapest manner, form the joint province of surveyors, engineers, and architects; but it is not always possible, neither is it necessary, though it were possible, to draw the lines of demarcation between them, and assign to each his department. The following principle, which next occurs, deserves the especial attention of the gardener, and on it is founded our practice of occasionally introducing subjects not directly horticultural :

"In so far as manual operations are concerned, there must be a division of labour in those higher branches of art, as well as in branches which are more humble; but the division of labour is one thing, and a good; while the division of knowledge and thought is another thing, and an evil.” (p. 3.)

The first article is on the Reform Club-House, of the front elevation of which there is a very handsome steel engraving. Some of the critical remarks given under this article are good; but others are, as we think, in bad taste. We give first an example of the latter :

"The Union [club-house] is at once poor, patched up, and tawdry, entirely out of keeping, being plain even to meanness in some respects, finical in others. The United Service has so far more consistency, in as much as its architecture is very poor throughout. It may be called Italian, because it cannot be described as being of any other style; but, then, it is Italian in the last stage of consumption: the style is thoroughly impoverished and enfeebled; and its spirit and gusto are there quite evaporated." (p. 6.) And, again:

"Take care to roast the ends of your pig well," says the cookery book, "and the middle will roast itself;" so, too, in architecture, be careful to study diligently all those points, whether of minutiæ or not, which others are in the habit of overlooking, because you cannot very well, through sheer heedlessness, neglect what you are aware the merest novice in the art instantly directs his attention to. As it appears to us, it is in following such maxims, that the secret of Mr. Barry's generally acknowledged superiority in great measure lies; not entirely, because there must be the feeling for art, which stimulates to that industry, in which all the faculties are cheerfully devoted to the task; and industry of this nobler kind, be it observed, is very different from plodding diligence, which, satisfied with doing the 'passably well,' is unambitious of the better."" (p. 6.)

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On the other hand, the following passage is an example of judicious criticism, and such as, unlike our first quotation, will be understood both by the general reader and the architect. Comparing the Reform Club-House with Whitehall, the critic says: Though both are Italian in style, they belong to very different schools, and are designed upon very different principles. In the one, the introduction of two moderate-sized orders occasions what ought to be principal, namely, the columns and entablatures, to appear rather insignificant, both in relation to the space over which they are scattered, and the windows likewise; while as decorative accessories they are too much, as essential parts of the structure they are not enough. In proportion to the entire mass, the upper entablature looks puny and inefficient; well enough adapted to that particular division of the elevation, but not to the

whole. Altogether, such an application of the orders, to say nothing of the defects of detail, produces a dryness and littleness of manner, precisely the reverse of the character of classical architecture. In this new club-house by Mr. Barry, on the contrary, and the remark applies also to his former one, instead of the composition being cut up into distinct divisions, finishing and then commencing again, it is made to form one consistent ensemble, crowned by a magnificent cornicione, proportioned, not to a part, but to the whole; while sufficient decoration, in other respects, is derived from essential features and members, windows, string-courses, &c., which are allowed to display themselves with a boldness and effect hardly attainable where windows are introduced between straggling columns, the result generally being, that the design looks rather confused and crowded up than rich. Here we perceive both richness and simplicity: the windows are very properly treated as indispensable features, not as indifferent ones, or what it would be desirable, if possible, to get rid of, but as important in the design, equally necessary in themselves, and valuable as regards decoration. Neither do we here meet with that very offensive disparity of character in regard to them, which is frequently allowed to take place, where no consistency of style is kept up between the windows on different floors, but the lower ones are positively mean and poor, in comparison with the others; not only without dressings or architraves, but without that degree of finish they are susceptible of as apertures in a basement, whether that part of the elevation be rusticated or plain." (p. 7.)

The remaining articles are: on Architectural Competitions; Stove for the new Houses of Parliament; Pressure of Earth against sustaining Walls; projected Tunnel through the Alps; Branch Railroads; Remarks on measuring the Angle subtended between two Base Lines; great Care necessary in building Arches; the Oscillating Steam-engine; Mr. Telford's Scale of Proportions for Bridges on the Highland Roads; Suspension Railway; Lock-Gates of the Thames and Medway; Canal at Rochester, by Mr. Collier; the Coal Fields of Belgium; French Academy of Sciences; Navigation of the Medina; the Maidenhead Bridge on the Great Western Railway; Adam's Patent Railway Carriage ; New Soldering Apparatus; the recent Land Slip in Dorsetshire; Railway Intelligence; Miscellaneous Facts and Remarks; and List of Patents granted during January.

The tunnel through the Alps is projected by M. Volta, an engineer of talent and experience. It is to pass through the Splugen, and the time estimated for its completion is 30 years. Possibly an open cutting might be completed in less time; because the two sides of the mountain might be formed into two inclined plains for a certain width, and thus thousands of men set to work instead of hundreds; but the expense would be greater, and the road would require to be arched over after all, to prevent its being choked up by snow. The Splugen once penetrated by a tunnel, the practice will, doubtless, be imitated in other parts of the world, from which advantages in the way of intercommunication will occur, the bare contemplation of which is sublime. How much better for nations to incur immense debts in this way, than in wars of aggrandisement ! "Half the expense of one of the great battles which were fought during the late war, for objects of small importance, as compared with the Splugen tunnel, would complete the works, and leave for those who promoted them a far more noble monument, than ever was obtained by even the most illustrious of warriors." (p. 13.)

MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE.

ART. I. Domestic Notices.

ENGLAND.

CEDAR of Lebanon, its Varieties. In walking through the park at Garnstone, a few days since, I was much struck with the great variety of character

observable in a grove of the Cèdrus Libàni. In some individuals the young branches spread out more or less horizontally, while in others the head assumes a compact and almost a cone-like form; they likewise vary greatly in tint, some being of a dead cypress-like hue, and others of a much brighter shade. Some of the trees, also, grow much more freely than others in the same soil and situation.-J. B. W. Jan. 14. 1840.

Rhizomorpha subterrànea Pers. (Encyc. of Plants, p. 1038.) — A very singular and rare fungus was lately found in a well in Back Street, Hertford, attached to the under surface of an oaken slab. Some account of it was given us by our esteemed Hertford correspondent, Mr. Wilds, and we have since seen the specimen on Dr. Lindley's table, at the Horticultural Society's Rooms. The most remarkable circumstance attending this fungus is, its strong resemblance in external appearance to ordinary roots, and by which all the species of these interesting plants are peculiarly characterised; a resemblance so strong, that some botanists have described many of them as being merely the deformed roots of flowering plants. The analogy, however, is very superficial, for, on a careful observation, it is evident from their peculiar mode of ramification, from their occasional anastomosis, and, lastly, from the absence of spongioles at their extremities, that the branches of these very curious plants have no very close resemblance to roots; and, on a more minute investigation, it is found that these root-shaped ramifications possess a structure differing essentially from that of the roots of both exogenous and endogenous plants; that they contain no woody fibre, nor any of the modifications of vasiform tissue, so invariably present in each individual of these two great classes of the vegetable kingdom; but that they consist entirely of cellular tissue, elongated into extremely fine filaments in the white elastic axis, but of a coarser and more condensed character in the dark brown inelastic and fragile integument.

Like others of the fungaceous tribes, the plants belonging to this genus increase by the addition of new filamentous tissue deposited in their interior, and the function of reproduction is accomplished by means of sporules developed at irregular intervals (not in indefinite situations or thalli, as in lichens, &c.) in this internal filamentous tissue, the sporules being ultimately emitted in vast numbers by the rupture of the integument by which the stems are surrounded. The situations in which such dehiscences have occurred, in the specimen just discovered, appear to be indicated by the presence of numerous small tufts of brownish filaments attached to the external surface of the main stem of the plant. Like many of the fungi, the rhizomorphas affix themselves to organic matters undergoing decomposition, rather than to organised beings in a living state: moreover, they generally vegetate in a pendent position, in moist and cool situations, and shunning assiduously the action of the solar rays; hence, in dark mines, in wells, in clefts of rocks, &c., or in the hollow trunks of decaying trees, especially those of the willow tribe. This genus is farther remarkable for the luminous properties possessed by, perhaps, all its included species; many of them emit a phosphorescent light of great intensity, sufficiently powerful to enable a person to read or write; and, in one instance recorded by Nees von Esenbeck, this property was observed to be retained, in a specimen kept in a bottle, for nine days after its separation from its natural attachments. It may be remarked, that no luminosity has been observed in the specimen which has occasioned these remarks; but it should be stated that none was sought for till seven days after its discovery. By far the greater number of these plants, hitherto known to us, have been discovered on the Continent, in the mines of Sweden and Germany; indeed, it has even been stated that they are never found in England. Some of the species attain a length of many hundred feet, and vegetate so luxuriantly, that the roofs, walls, and pillars of the mines in which they are found are entirely covered with their branches; the brilliant light which they emit, often dazzling and enchanting the beholder, converting the dark and gloomy aspect of those subterranean passages into a splendid scene of grandeur and magni

ficence. From the anatomical and physiological characters of these various species of Rhizomórpha, it is evident that Linnæus was perfectly justified in placing them amongst the cryptogamous, or flowerless, plants; a division corresponding nearly to the Cellulares, or Acrogens, of natural systems: but the exact position which this genus ought to occupy in the scale has been a fertile subject of dispute; in illustration of it may be mentioned, that Rhizomorpha subterrànea itself was placed by Linnæus among the lichens, and designated Lìchen radicifórmis. And although these curious and highly interesting productions of vegetable creation have, by succeeding botanists, been elevated to the rank of a distinct genus, still their precise relations of affinity to other genera of cellular plants have not been satisfactorily ascertained, even at the present day.

The specimen alluded to in the foregoing observations has been presented by Mr. R. R. Shillitoe, of University College, London, to Dr. Lindley, Professor of Botany in that College; to the botanical museum of which establishment it will, from its extreme rarity, form a most desirable and valuable acquisition. (Hertford Reformer, Oct. 19. 1839.)

State of Knowledge of the Middling Classes, in a Village in Suffolk.-You can hardly suppose how ignorant some of them are of everything beyond the precincts of the village. I have induced a few to belong to a Friendly Society, instead of the usual pot-house club, and I mean that they should come to the Rectory once a quarter, and spend a quiet evening with me, when I propose to teach them draughts and chess, two games they had never heard of. I think that by teaching a few, I form so many centres of instruction by which others pick up a little. Now that I am become a constant resident, I propose confining my lectures to once per month, at least to one subject per month, for I shall occasionally have to repeat them. Next Tuesday my subject is "Quartz and Glass."-J. Sept., 1839.

ART. II. Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society.

THE Winter General Meeting of this Society was held on Thursday the 5th December, 1839.

The secretary, Dr. Neill, stated that several interesting communications had of late been made to the Society; and, in particular, he read a portion of a horticultural tour, made by Mr. M'Nab, the superintendant of the garden, during the month of October last; a letter from Mr. Anderson, Maryfield, on striking cuttings while still attached to the live plant, by partially dividing the stem and surrounding it with damp hypnum-moss; a description of a new epiphyte pot, a specimen of the pot, containing a fine plant of Stanhopea insígnis, being placed on the table; and a letter from M. Réné Langelier of the Clarendon Nurseries, Jersey; with a report by Mr. M'Nab, relative to a splendid collection of pears sent to the meeting by that eminent nurseryman. This was an important communication. It appears that about twenty of the kinds were previously in the Society's Garden, but at least a dozen were new to it. Of these novelties, grafts will soon be procured, they having been proffered by the liberal cultivator. The new pear called Van Mons Leon le Clerc was found to be melting, and of musky flavou. Some of the stewing pears were of uncommon size; a specimen of the Doublefleur weighing 1 lb. 4 oz.; and a Cadillac 1 lb. 1 oz. It is remarkable, however, that, among the dessert pears, the Duchesse d'Angoulême, from Hopetoun Garden, was considerably larger than that from Jersey, although the latter was more mellow and of richer flavour.

The show of Scottish pears and apples on this occasion was not extensive, but the specimens were in general excellent. The chrysanthemums were also good; but the greatest display was in the article celery, the cultivation and