Astrapæ a Wallichi, from Mrs. Marryatt.

Testudinària elephantipes, camellias, and Banksia serràta, from Wm. Wells, Esq.

From the Garden of the Society. Flowers: Chimonanthus fràgrans and var. grandiflorus.-Fruit. Apples: Alfriston, Reinette du Canada, Court pendu plat, Bedfordshire foundling, Hormead pearmain, Rymer, Royal Reinette, Belledge pippin, Raboulink, Ross nonpareil, Baldwin, London pippin, Dutch mignonne, Parmentier, New rock pippin, Baxter's pearmain, Redding's nonpareil. Pears: Easter Beurré, Glout morceau, Bezi de Caissoy, Bon Chrétien Turc, Ne plus Meuris. Downton nonpareil apple, from T. A. Knight, Esq.

Note relating to the Grapes sent to the Meeting, Nov. 6. 1832. Schloss Johannisberger, Rudesheimerberger, and Gräfenberger: these appear to be the same. Raisin rouge de Schlossberg à Kreutznach is a white grape. Steinberger, and No. 1. unnamed, are the same.

DIED, on September 9. 1832, at Bury St. Edmunds, Mure Hogg, aged 58 years, florist and market-gardener in that town. Mr. Hogg's father was a native of Scotland, and settled at Bury St. Edmunds, in the capacity of florist and market-gardener, and for many years rented the ground which, in 1820, a few years after his death, was converted into the botanic garden. In the house in this garden, his son, Mure Hogg, was born, and continued the occupancy of the house, garden, and business, until 1820, when the premises were let to N. S. Hodson, Esq., who formed them into a subscription botanic garden. Mr. Hogg then removed into a property of his own, with a garden attached; and here, and on additional ground hired, carried on his business as usual. His remains were carried to the grave by six young gardeners, and his pall supported by six old ones; and very many old and respectable neighbours and tradesmen followed. The deceased has left a widow, four sons, and a daughter. The widow, and two sons, who have almost reached manhood, will carry on the business. H. I.

Died, about the middle of 1832, at the house of his father, at Wandsworth, Surrey, J. Nicolles, for some years past flower-gardener to Roger Pettiward, Esq., of Great Finborough Hall, Suffolk. We are not informed of Mr. Nicolles's age, but, from once seeing him, believe it was about 30 years. Mr. Turner, of the botanic garden, Bury St. Edmunds, briefly notices (Vol. VII. p. 498.) the garden under Mr. Nicolles's management; and in Vol. VIII. p. 160. is a communication from Mr. Nicolles himself; and there is also another from him, in the Magazine of Natural History, Vol. IV. p. 449., consisting of a list of 46 species of birds, which he had collected in the neighbourhood of Finborough Hall, and preserved; and from the same communication we learn that Mr. Nicolles, at the time of making it, had also preserved some insects, and was then forming a hortus siccus. Mr. Turner, in a letter lying by us, dated April 15. 1832, thus speaks of Mr. Nicolles: -“I have just finished a note of introduction to you for Mr. Nicolles. Poor fellow! he has completely killed himself by intense study by night and hard work by day. I pity him sincerely: he is every thing I wish for in a friend. He is clever, he is persevering, and in his little person carries a great deal of knowledge. The garden and houses at Finborough do him great credit; he took great delight in having them neat, and by almost incessant labour he accomplished his object." J. D.

THE

GARDENER'S MAGAZINE,

APRIL, 1833.

ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS.

ART. I. Notes and Reflections made during a Tour through Part of France and Germany, in the Autumn of the Year 1828. By the CONDUCtor.

(Continued from Vol. VII. p. 264.)

HAVING Completed the general results of our late British tour, before we recur to its details, we shall complete our Continental notes, made in 1828 and 1829; and, as the time is now so long gone by, we shall greatly shorten them.

In our last we were proceeding to examine the principal market-gardens, and had noticed those of Cadet de Mars, and the fig gardens at Argenteuil. We visited a great number of others in every direction in the neighbourhood of Paris, but we cannot now take time to describe them. We were much gratified by the cherry gardens in the Vale of Montmorency, over which we were conducted by Baron Hamelin, an enthusiastic collector of exotic bulbs. The cherry trees are thinly scattered over the surface; sometimes in rows, and sometimes irregularly; and on the ground are cultivated vines, and between these potatoes and other vegetables. The cultivation is careful, in point of stirring the soil and manuring it, but there is a want of regularity and neatness, which is probably owing to the entire absence of fences and of regular paths. Where deaths occur in the lines of vines, it does not appear that they are regularly filled up. An English artist admired the effect of this, as rendering the scenery most picturesque; of which, as a proof, he furnished

us with a sketch, which we have had engraved. (fig. 20.) It may be very picturesque, but it is certainly not gardenesque.

The best pine-apples which we saw in the market-gardens of Paris were those grown in pits by M. Decoufflé, M. Gallois, and M. Marie. The latter gardener takes the glass off his pits, night and day, during three months in summer; the leaves of the plants assume a rusty reddish hue in consequence, and they grow slowly, but they are much better able

to stand the winter.

Mushrooms, in the neighbourhood of Paris, are cultivated deep under ground, in the caverns formed by the exhausted lime quarries. These quarries are not generally open to the day, as in Britain. They are worked more like coal-pits, and the stones are brought to the surface, up a cylindrical well or shaft, by means of windlasses, turned by large vertical wooden wheels. (fig. 21.) When the quarry is exhausted,

and the bottom is not springy, or liable to be filled with water, it is let to a mushroom-grower, who generally contrives to

purchase a wheel and windlass that has become too frail to wind up stones, but which serves him as a means by which he descends and ascends; throwing down his stable dung, earth, and spawn; and managing them below much in the same way as in England. Mushrooms are also grown in cellars in Paris, and in market-gardens on the surface of the ground. There appear to be two distinct varieties of this fungus: one grown in very firm soil, the colour of which is of a whitish yellow; and the other, grown in very loose black rich soil and on dung ridges, which is of a small size and delicate white colour. We found both sorts in great perfection in the market-garden of M. Gallois, at the Abbaye Saint Antoine.

There are many points of practice in the horticulture of France which might be improved from the horticulture of other countries; and many in which other countries might derive improvement from France. In the forcing department, and in the culture of the pine-apple, the French have had little practice; and have consequently much to learn from the Dutch and the English, who have had a great deal. In the culture of salads during the winter, and in the growth of mushrooms throughout the year, the gardeners of Britain may learn a great deal from those of Paris. Fifty years ago, the pruning and training of fruit trees was better understood in France than in Great Britain; and we have nothing, even now, in the way of the culture of the vine in England, so simple and ingenious as the practice at Thomery. (See Vol. V. p. 287.) Perhaps, on the whole, considering the difficulties of climate to be overcome in France, the heat and drought in summer, and the great cold in winter, the French gardeners have more merit in producing or preserving the culinary vegetables at such seasons, in the open air, than those of Britain.

We shall now proceed to the villa gardens which we visited, and we shall take them in chronological rather than in geographical order.

The Park of Chantilly is of great extent, but of little beauty. The surface is nearly flat, the soil light and sandy, and the whole naturally a scattered forest of beech, hornbeam, birch, poplar, and other secondary deciduous trees. The house is a huge pile, which, however, has been diminished in size by the dilapidations of the Revolution. Near it is a large pond of artificial water, and a piece of ground laid out in the English manner Amongst the extraordinary things shown to strangers are the stables. These, the traveller Duppa observes, are magnificent, and in the highest degree unfit for their purpose. They are at least 40 ft. high, and 600 ft. long, without accommodation for a bushel of corn, or a single truss

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of hay; in the centre is an octagonal room, 60 ft. in diameter, and 90 ft. in height. Here the prince used to dine once in the course of the hunting season, with a large party of his friends of the chase. The old garden has not been restored, but here is a modern garden, laid out like an English gentleman's pleasure-ground." This modern garden we found to be a low moist meadow, the grass nearly destroyed by the mole cricket; the buildings about the palace were in a most dilapidated state, and the immense platforms of sand, unshaded by a single tree, were any thing but country-like. Every thing indicated an immense outlay on an ungrateful situation. The only source of relief is the natural woods; though these, growing on a flat surface, and the soil being uniformly sand, contain little variety of either trees or plants. Taking the demesne of Chantilly altogether, it is fit only for growing copse, or for the Flanders husbandry, viz. turnips, wheat, and clover.

Ermenonville in October, 1828.-The property was then to be sold, and was let in the mean time to the Prince de Condé, who made no other use of it than as a preserve for game. The tower of the fair Gabrielle was roofless, and going fast to decay; some of the other garden structures were wanting; all were more or less dilapidated, with the exception of Rousseau's tomb in the Island of Poplars, and what is called "La maison du Philosophe" (figs. 22. and 23.), which is still

pointed out to strangers as a place where Rousseau used to spend whole days, reposing on its heath benches (fig. 23. a a), having a fire of logs in the rude fireplace (b), and supplying himself with water from an adjoining spring. Bread and