352 New Method of Making Butter.-Preservation of Flowers. [Nov. 1, RURAL ECONOMY. The following directions contained in a Flemish Journal, we apprehend will be found worthy of trial in this country. The recent drought, by depriving almost all kinds of vegetables of their natural moisture, has given rise in several districts to epizooties, not epidemic, but endémic, which may be simply ranked among inflammatory diseases. The following treatment is the result of a long series of observation, and of its efficacy no doubt can be entertained. Ist. To the cattle attacked with the disease, water whitened with barley meal or fine bran, sharpened by a little nitrate of potash, and slightly acidulated, should be administered three or four times every day. 2d. As most of the diseases of ruminating animals have a tendency to putridity, although they live entirely on vegetables, it is proper to put, evening and morning, into their drink, a little vinegar, and one glass of an infusion of aromatic plants, as wormwood, sage, rue, camomile, rosemary, angelica, juniper-berries, &c. to each animal. Care should be taken to rub and exercise them; but those barbarous scarifications which are sometimes employed, should be avoided. A seton may however be made in the dew-lap with black hellebore or perriwinkleleaf. In consequence of the great deficiency of straw this year, Mr. Curwen has dried the stalks or haums of his extensive crop of potatoes, and they are stated to make comfortable litter for the cattle. New Method of Making Butter.Put the cream intended for butter into a strong linen cloth, tie it up with a string, dig a hole in the earth fifteen inches deep, and let the bottom of it be sufficiently capacious to allow the cream in the linen cloth to lie about four inches deep all over it. Put another around that which contains the cream, to keep the dirt from it. When deposited in the hole, cover it up with earth (but not to tread it down) and let it remain twentyfour or twenty-six hours; then take it out, and pour the cream, which will be very thick, into a bowl, or other vessel, and stir it well from five to ten minutes with a wooden spoon, when the butter will be completely formed, and may be taken out and washed as usual. The advantages of this mode of making butter are as follow, viz.-1st. The cream yields a larger quantity of butter, or an addition of about one pound in ten; 2d. In hot weather butter is obtained without a tedious process, and is free from the rancid taste that long and hot churned butter generally possesses; and, 3d. A very small stock of cream may be operated upon equally as well as a larger quantity.-Durham Advertiser. The Preservation of Flowers by means of warm water.-The following facts are not new, but as they are very little known, they deserve to be communicated; partly as a curious addition to our previous knowledge of the vegetable kingdom, and partly as an easy means by which the lovers of flowers may enjoy them longer. Most flowers fade and wither after having been in water for four and twenty hours; some may be revived by renewing the fresh water; but all (with the exception of the most tender ones, such as the Poppy and perhaps a few others) become quite refreshed by putting them in warm water. For this purpose it is necessary to dip the flowers in the warm water to about the third part of the stalk. While the water is cooling, the flowers revive and resume their freshness; afterwards the end of the stalks is cut off and put in fresh water. 66 M. Aubert Petit-Thouars mentions in his Essays on Vegetation (Essais sur la Vegetation) some experiments made known in the year 1808, which are nearly connected with the preceding. Speaking of Layers, he expresses himself thus: Others affirm that by burning the end of the branch put in the earth, the success of the layer may be secure. Kolben, the traveller, first recommended this method; he says, that the new colonists at the Cape of Good Hope had attempted the planting of the vine without success, till a German hit upon the thought of burning the end of the suckers which he intended to plant; the consequence was, that in the sequel they all succeeded. The experiments that I have hitherto made have failed. We, however, do something similar when we put flowers into water to preserve them; the lower end of the stalk is drawn through a candle, and I have been assured that even flowers which were withered became quite refreshed." The bark of the willow tree burnt to ashes and mixed with strong vinegar, forms a lixivium which effectually era dicates, by repeated application, warts, corns, and other cutaneous excres cences, 1818.] FRANCE. Foreign Varieties. Several interesting experiments have lately been made in France, to ascertain the relative quantity of nutritive matter contained in the vegetables of most common use. The object of these experiments was to determine a certain basis to be adopted in those public establishments where there is a great consumption of leguminous plants. The quantity of those used in the Maison de Detention, for example, was formerly fixed by the price of the potatoe; but it has been found necessary to take, as a point of comparison, not the prices of substances, but their nutritious qualities: accordingly three questions have been submitted to the Faculty of Medicine, tending to determine what quantities (with reference to the nutritive principle) of wheaten bread, meat, dry grain, rice, oatmeal, or vegetables, such as cabbages, turnips, spinach, beans, peas, &c. may be substituted for 45 kilograms of po tatoes. M. M. Percy and Vauquelin were appointed to make the experiments on which the solution of these questions rested, and they have published the results in an interesting report on domestic economy. They have ascertained that bread contains 80 nutritive parts in 100; meal 34 in 100; French beans, 92 idem; common beans, 89 idem; peas, 93 idem; lentils, 94 idem; cabbages and turnips, the most aqueous of all the vegetables compared, produced only eight pounds of solid matter in 100 pounds; carrots and spinach produced 14 in the same quantity; whilst 100 pounds of potatoes contain 25 pounds of dry substance. It must be recollected, that the solid parts, when separated from the aqueous or humid parts, may contain a small quantity of extractive or ligneous matter probably unfit for food; and next, that the same substances do not act uniformly on all stomachs, and are relatively more or less nutritious. But as a general result, the learned reporters estimate that one pound of good bread is equal to two pounds and a half, or three pounds of potatoes; that 75 pounds of bread and 30 of meat, may be substituted for three hundred pounds of potatoes. The other substances bear the following proportions: four parts of cabbage to one of potatoes; three parts of turnips to one idem; two parts of carrots and spinach to one idem; and about three parts and a half of potatoes to one of rice, lentils, beans, French beans, and dry peas. NEW MONTHLY MAG.-No. 58. 353 Field Rats have multiplied so greatly in some districts in France, that to put a stop to their ravages, all proprietors în the environs of Landau were ordered to deliver in, every day, two rats for every florin of rent they pay. It is said that the inhabitants of the village of Offenbach alone, who were extremely active in the execution of this order, gave in 47,300 rats in three days. The following notice is given in the Moniteur:-" Navigators are informed that a new Light-house, erected on the Tower of the city of Calais, will be illuminated on the evening of Tuesday, the 1st of December, 1818, and will continue from that time to be kept lighted from sun-set to sun-rise. The flame of the Light-house will be white, revolving, and, in consequence subject to eclipses. It will produce during one revolution of the system, of which the duration will be about three minutes, two returns of light, increasing and decreasing, whose greatest intensity will be after about a a space of thirty seconds; these times of light will be separated by an eclipse of about a minute." A vessel has lately been exhibited on the Seine near Paris, which is impelled by wheels, like those attached to our steam-boats, but the wheels, instead of being moved by steam, are turned like a hand mill, by the strength of two men. M. Auguste Sainte-Hilaire, a young French naturalist, who is at present travelling in Brazil for scientific purposes, has lately transmitted to the Jardin du Roi, at París, a number of valuable curiosities, namely, 24 mammalia, 131 birds, 255 crustaceous animals and insects, 5 reptiles, and two packets of seeds. They are all in excellent condition, and, with the exception of the seeds, will be arranged in the galleries of the Jardin du Roi. It is ascertained that upwards of one third of the abovementioned curiosities were not hitherto to be found in any French collection, and many of them have never been described. MM. Biot and Arago, Members of the Institute, and the Bureau of Longitude, are gone to Dunkirk, where they intend, in concert with several English philosophers, to terminate their astronomical observations for the measurement of the earth. The West Indian plant, known by the name of the Caribbee-cabbage, ( Arum colocassia, L.) has lately been successfully cultivated in the South of France. Its roots supply the place of the patatos VOL. X. 2 Z 354 Foreign Varieties. in the Egyptian markets, and in India and China its leaves form the principal food of the common people. The Caribbee - cabbage thrives best in damp places. It grows up in tufts between four and five feet high; its leaves are two feet long, and about eighteen inches wide. The Louvre has been enriched with statues, vases, bas-reliefs, and inscriptions, to the amount of about 60,000 francs, from the collection of the late M. de Choiseuil Gouffier. ITALY. Lord BYRON still continued at Venice late in September last, pursuing his poetical labours with indefatigable ardour. He devotes his mornings entirely to study, and spends his evenings chiefly at the Theatre, receiving the visits of his friends in his private box. THE STUART PAPERS.-A very extraordinary discovery of curiosities, literary, political, and historical, was lately made at Rome, by Dr. R. Watson, author of the lives of Fletcher and "Gordon. This gentleman went to Italy to search for any manuscripts or reliques of the House of Stuart, which might have been left in the hands of strangers by the last survivors of that family After much trouble, he discovered that the executor of the executor of the Cardinal York, or Henry IX. as he is often called, was in possession of a vast collection of papers, on which he placed so little value, that he suffered them to remain in a garret without windows, exposed to every shower of rain. He therefore readily sold the whole to Dr. W. who took possession of them, and removed them in carts to his own apartments, where they were seen by many distinguished English visitors in Rome. Dr. W. employed some time in assorting and arranging them, and he found that they consisted of nearly 400,000 separate articles, of which about 250,000 possessed various degrees of interest. Among these were several original letters of Fenelon, many of Bolingbroke, Pope, Swift, Atterbury, and other English writers, and a series of letters, continued through a period of nearly 100 years, of every potentate and statesman in Europe, and of most of the English nobility. The contents of many of these documents were of the most extraordinary character, developing the plans which were adopted at different times for the restoration of the Stuarts, and the names of the promoters and par [Nov. 1, tisans in Britain and abroad. Of course the contents excited much interest at Rome, and the Papal Government took alarm in regard to the exposure of its in consequence sent for by the Papal seown projects and policy. Dr. W. was cretary of state, who, from overtures to took forcible possession of the whole, repurchase, adopted threats; and finally and put the owner under arrest. He appealed in vain to the British resident and ministers, who appeared covertly to take part with the Papal Government; and it appears, that after the Pope's mithey caused a tender to be made of thei nisters had duly examined the whole, gate was actually sent to convey them to the Prince Regent: and a British friin Carlton-house, and Dr. W. who, on to England. Accordingly they are now being enlarged at Rome, set off for England to reclaim them, has obtained mission has been appointed to investisome temporary recompence. A comgate his further claims, and it is to be supposed that, however they were overruled by arbitrary power in Rome, they will be duly respected in England. Florence, for a monument to be erected A subscription has been opened at in honour of Dante. It is well known that the prince of Italian poets, when in banishment, like Gibelin, was reduced to beg for shelter and a morsel of bread in foreign countries. The monument will be erected in the church of Santa-Croce, the Pantheon of Tuscany. At Franconi, Circus Paris, Macbeth and Othello are converted into Pantomimes! "To what base uses may we come at last.” At an exhibition of the Fine Arts at Florence, July 15, were displayed the casts of the Marbles which Lord Elgin brought from the Temple of Minerva at Athens, called the Parthenon. These casts are a present from the Prince Regent of England. In return for which several of the finest statues of that eelebrated gallery are to be modelled and forwarded to England; among them is the group of Niobe and her children. RUSSIA. The Imperial Economical Society of St. Petersburgh has proposed the following questions and prizes for the years 1818 and 1819:-The Gold Medal of 50 ducats value, for the discovery in Finland, of the substance called “Kuolin," fit for the fabrication of porcelain or "China."- For a method of refining sugar without bullocks' blood, a Gold Medal of 20 ducats. |