INTRODUCTION.

MANY and great are the improvements of this aspiring age, and perhaps nothing has made more rapid strides or produced greater interest than gardening. This may be fairly inferred from the multitude of new publications on the subject which have appeared within the last few years, the avidity with which they have been purchased, and the evident improvement apparent in almost every garden, from that of the humblest Cottager to the most extensive of any Peer in the realm. Three hundred years ago, gardening in this country was of a very different description from what it is in the present day. The varieties of fruits were few, and greatly inferior to those which now occupy their places. Forcing was either wholly unknown, or it was accomplished by some of the most rude contrivances. Forcing plants, it is true, have been nurtured with great care, from time immemorial, but it is only within these few years, that they have become so conspicuous and ornamental in our conservatories, stoves, or borders. Besides, when we recollect what numbers are annually added to the original stock, it is easy to perceive that in a few years, these additions being continued, our present collections, splendid as they are, will appear but scanty and meagre. During the last year, nearly two hundred new introductions have been figured by the various botanical periodicals in course of publication, some of which are exceedingly beautiful. And vegetables, notwithstanding their value has been long acknowledged, are also progressing, for every year brings something new to our tables, surpassing in quality that which previously occupied its place. Nor is the operator now any longer contented with being a mere "digger and delver," for every one who makes any pretensions to the name of gardener, endeavours in some degree to search into nature's secrets. Their efforts are not

now petrified by what was formerly considered "fate," and consequently inevitable; they endeavour to trace effects to causes, and when any discoveries are made, they, through the medium of the press, communicate such results to their fellow-labourers in the same occupation, and thus the knowledge disseminated, makes thousands of what appeared insurmountable obstacles, sink into insignificance. Gardening, let it also be remembered, is so closely connected with VOL. III. No. 31.

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natural history, that to make any proficiency in the one, the student must, in some degree, become familiar with the other. Botany, for instance, is not now the same thing it was little more than two hundred years ago :—a mere recollection of the names or medical qualities of plants-it enters minutely into their structure, habit, and peculiarities, without a knowledge of which, many of our valuable introductions would soon be irrecoverably lost. When these are well understood, in connection with a knowledge of their native country, the cultivator has a pretty correct idea of the temperature they require, the soil in which they will best thrive, and the most proper mode of propagation. A gardener, however, should not stop here; if the nature of the food of plants be chemically considered, the constituents of soils and water, conclusions the most beneficial and interesting will be the result; indeed, a gardener should have recourse to science for every thing. Since the nature and habits of insects may now be studied with facility, they should by no means be lost sight of, particularly such as commit the greatest depredations in our orchards and gardens. It is too late now to sit down contented with the supposition that they are generated by an eastern or southern wind, and that therefore to prevent their ravages, is beyond the reach of human means.

All insects originate in parents, and the greater part come from eggs, which by an extraordinary instinct are deposited by the parents, when in the perfect state, upon the plants most suited for their future existence. These are generally called caterpillars or grubs, according as they possess or are destitute of legs. Caterpillars which have legs, feed, for the most part, upon leaves and fruits; grubs, or those without legs, attack the roots. It is an object of importance to the gardener, that he be able to distinguish, by the appearance of the eggs or caterpillars he sees, the nature and habits of the insect to which they belong. This will, doubtless, assist him greatly in the means he may adopt to destroy them effectually. Another class of depredators, are the mollusca, or different kinds of snails; some of these feed upon our choicest fruits, others upon the leaves of our most valuable plants, whilst others attack the roots; others again are totally inoffensive. To elucidate these subjects, and to spread general knowledge amongst all who delight in the occupation of gardening, we commence the third volume of the Horticultural Register, feeling assured, that our readers will enjoy a secret pleasure in disseminating the knowledge of every useful discovery they may make, and a still greater pleasure if they be the means of augmenting the happiness of human life.

THE

HORTICULTURAL REGISTER,

JANUARY 1ST, 1834.

PART I.

ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS.

HORTICULTURE.-ARTICLE I.

ON CHEMISTRY, AS CONNECTED WITH THE DEVELOPEMENT AND GROWTH OF PLANTS.

By the Author of the Domestic Gardeners' Manual.

I MIGHT, perhaps, be acting more in conformity with custom and routine, were I to enter, at once into the investigation of Earths and Soils. These are the supporters of almost every individual subject of the vegetable kingdom, they form the matrix wherein the embryos of life are developed, and in which the materials of terrene nutriment are so laborated and distributed as to supply the advancing radicles with appropriate food. Again, they are substances upon which the art of the chemist has been legitimately exerted; and whose nature and components he has, by experiments and analysis, pretty accurately determined.

But I greatly prefer postponing the enquiry into the constitution and offices of the earths, until I have excited the reader's attention to those mighty natural agents which are constantly at work, night and day, and during every moment of the existence of the vegetable vital being. These agents are Water, Air, and Light; the last is perhaps the most directly influential, but the first, I conceive, has a prior claim to consideration, in as much as in all probability it stands before the others in the order of creation. I shall therefore make the subject of this paper, an enquiry into the nature and agency of WATER. HOW trifling a period of time has elapsed since water

was believed to be a pure, simple, uncompounded element; and yet its decomposition and re-formation have been going on without interruption or cessation throughout nature, ever since the developement of the first ray of light. The compound nature of water was determined beyond a doubt, by several philosophers, about the year 1781, when the immortal Lavoisier detailed his discovery, in the Memoires of the French academy.

A series of experiments, analytical as well as synthetical, were decisive, not only of the real components of the fluid, but of the proportions, by weight and measure, almost to exactitude, in which they unite to produce it.

By Analysis, from two greek words, ava and Avis, (a dissolution of, or bringing any substance or thing back to its first principles,) chemists express those processes which separate and repeal the parts or components of bodies; and by Synthesis, from σ and b, a placing or bringing close together, they designate the re-uniting of the parts or constituents separated by analysis, so as to re-produce or form afresh the original substance that had been operated upon.

I shall not multiply chemical authorities, but confine my quotations chiefly to the elements of Lavoisier, that great father of modern chemistry; who, though doubtless in error upon some points, may safely be ranked with Newton, Boyle, or Linnæus. What they were in philosophy and botany, Lavoisier was in chemistry, for he laid the foundation of all the new and brilliant discoveries which have added lustre to the present century.

The first analytic experiment that led to a decisive result is described in the 137th page of the first volume of the edition of 1802. It may thus be abbreviated; for I cannot pretend to refer to the detail of the plates and machinery, figured and described. The reader is earnestly requested to obtain a view of the work itself.

A glass tube was fixed across a furnace for holding ignited charcoal; a slight inclination was given to the tube; and to the superior extremity of the tube, was fixed by lute, a glass retort, containing a determinate quantity of distilled water. Into the tube, twenty-eight grains of charcoal, broken into smallish pieces, and which had previously been exposed for a long time to a red heat in a close vessel, were introduced. To the inferior extremity, a worm (or spiral pipe of a still,) was firmly fastened and luted. This worm was adapted to a doubly tubulated bottle; to one tubulure or orifice of which, another bent tube was fixed in such a manner as to convey any aëriform fluids or gases that might be disengaged into a proper apparatus for determining their quantity and nature.