them with their natural flavour we have begun, however, to apply them to their proper use; we have peach-houses built for the purpose of presenting that excellent fruit to the sun, when his genial influence is the most active. We have others for the purpose of ripening grapes, in which they are secured from the chilling effects of our uncertain autumns; and we have brought them to as high a degree of perfection here as either Spain, France, or Italy can boast of. We have pine-houses also, in which that delicate fruit is raised in a better style than is generally practised in its native intertropical countries; except, perhaps, in the well-managed gardens of rich individuals, who may, if due care and attention is used by their gardeners, have pines as good, but cannot have them better, than those we know how to grow in England. The next generation will no doubt erect hot-houses of much larger dimensions than those to which we have hitherto confined ourselves, such as are capable of raising trees of considerable size; they will also, instead of heating them with flues, such as we use, and which waste in the walls that conceal them, more than half of the warmth they receive from the fires that heat them, use naked tubes of metal filled with steam instead of smoke. Gardeners will then be enabled to admit a proper proportion of air to the trees in the season of flowering; and as we already are aware of the use of bees in our cherry-houses to distribute the pollen where wind cannot be admitted to disperse it, and of shaking the trees when in full bloom, to put the pollen in motion, they will find no difficulty in setting the shyest kinds of fruits. It does not require the gift of prophecy to foretell, that ere long the aki and the avocado pear of the West Indies, the flat peach, the mandarine orange, and the litchi of China, the mango, the mangostan, and the durion of the East Indies, and possibly other valuable fruits, will be frequent at the tables of opulent persons; and some of them, perhaps in less than half a century, be offered for sale on every market day at Covent Garden. Subjoined is a list of those fruits cultivated at Rome, in the time of Pliny, that are now grown in our English gardens. Almonds, both sweet and bitter, were abundant. Apples 22 sorts at least: sweet apples (melinala) for eating, and others for cookery. They had one sort without kernels, Apricots. Pliny says of the apricot (Armeniaca) quæ sola et odore commendantur, lib. xv. sect. 11. He arranges then among his plums. Martial valued them little, as appears by his epigram, xiii. 46. Cherries were introduced into Rome in the year of the city 680, 73 A. C. and were carried thence to Britain 120 years after, A. D. 48. The Romans had eight kinds, a red one, a black one, a kind so tender as scarce to bear any carriage, a hard fleshed one (duracina) like our bigarreau, a small one with a bitterish flavour (laurea) like our 1 our little wild black, also a dwarf one not exceeding three feet high. Chestnuts. They had six sorts, some more easily separated from the skin than others, and one with a red skin: they roasted them as we do.. Figs. They had many sorts, black and white, large and small, one as large as a pear, another no larger than an olive. Medlars. They had two kinds, the one larger, and the other smaller. Mulberries. They had two kinds of the black sort, a larger and a smaller. Pliny speaks also of a mulberry growing on a brier: Nascuntur et in Rubis, 1. xv. sect. 27; but whether this means the raspberry or the common blackberry does not appear. Nuts. They had hazle-nuts and filberds (has quoque mollis protegit barba) 1. 15, sect. 24: they roasted these nuts. Pears. Of these they had many sorts, both summer and winter fruit, melting and hard, they had more than 36 kinds, some were called Libralia: we have our pound pear. Plums. They had a multiplicity of sorts (ingens turba prunorum), black, white, and variegated one sort was called Asinina, from its cheapness; another Damascena, this had much stone and little flesh: from Martial's epigram, xiii. 29, we may conclude that it was what we now call prunes. Quinces. They had three sorts, one was called Chrysomela from its yellow flesh; they boiled them with honey, as we make marmalade. See Martial, xiii. 24. Services they had, the appleshaped, the pear-shaped, and a small kind, probably the same as we gather wild, possibly the azarole. Strawberries they had, but do not appear to have prized: the climate is too warm to produce this fruit in perfection, unless in the hills. Vines. They had a multiplicity of these, both thick-skinned (Duracina) and thin-skinned: one vine growing at Rome produced 12 amphora of juice, 84 gallons. They had roundberried and long-berried sorts; one so long that it was called Dactylides, the grapes being like the fingers on the hand. Martial speaks favourably of the hard-skinned grape for eating, xiii. 22. Walnuts. They had soft-shelled and hard-shelled, as we have. In the golden age, when men lived upon acorns, the gods lived upon walnuts, hence the name Juglans, Jovis glans. As a matter of curiosity, it has also been deemed expedient to add a list of the fruits cultivated in our English gardens in the year 1573: it is taken from a book entitled Five Hundred Points of good Husbandry, &c. by Thomas Tusser. Thomas Tusser, who had re-. ceived a liberal education at Eton School, and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, lived many years as a farmer in Suffolk and Norfolk: he afterwards removed to London, where he published the first edi tion of his work, under the title of One Hundred Points of good Husbandry, in 1557. In his fourth edition, from whence this list is taken, he first introduced the subject of gardening, and has given us not only a list of the fruits, but also of all the plants then cultivated in our gardens, either for pleasure or profit, under the following heads. Seedes and herbes for the kychen, herbes and rootes for sallets and sawce, herbes and rootes to boyle or to butter, strewingherbes of all sorts, herbes, branches and flowers for windowes and pots, herbes to still in summer, necessarie herbes to grow in the gardens for physick not reherst before. This list consists of more than 150 species, besides the following fruits: FRUITS. Apple trees of all sorts. Boollesse, black and white Cornet plums. Peaches, white and red. Peer plums, black and yellow. Quince trees. Raspis. Reisons. Small nuts. Strawberries, red and white. Though the fig is omitted by Tusser, it was certainly introduced into our gardens before he wrote. Cardinal Pole is said to have im ported from Italy that tree which is still growing in the garden of the Archbishop's Palace, at Lambeth. Account of ancient Customs in Cheshire. [From Messrs. Lysons' Magna Britannia, Vol. II. Part II.] Of the customs and ceremonies peculiar to certain parts of the kingdom, Cheshire has its full share; we shall notice some of those which are most remarkable. There is a custom among the young men, of placing, on the first of May, large birchen boughs over the doors of the houses, where the young women reside to whom they pay their addresses; * and an alder-bough is often found placed over the door of a scold. Another singular custom which prevails in this county, is that of lifting at Easter. On Easter Monday, the young men deck out a chair with flowers and ribbands,. Mr. Owen, in his Welch Dictionary, under the word bedw, birch, says, that it was an emblem of readiness, or complacency, in doing a kind act. If a young woman accepted of the addresses of a lover, she gave him the birchen-branch, mostly formed into a crown; but if he was rejected, she gave him a collen, or hazel.' and ANTIQUITIES. Inquiry into the Composition of some Weapons and Utensils of ancient Bronze. By M. Klaproth. fail to observe all the advantages of this metal, both with respect to the richness of its produce, and the facility with which it might be forged. Iron, on the contrary, [From Mr. Nicholson's Journal of Nawas not so obvious to men's eyes; tural Philosophy]. and the distinguishing of its vaE know from ancient au- rious ores, with the art of work WE know from ll is from ing them, and forming weapons weapons and utensils dug up in modern times, that men in the carliest ages, and even those that succeeded them, employed copper in preference for the fabrication of metallic utensils and weapons. Thus what Herodotus says of the Massagetæ, who used no iron, and whose weapons and utensils were of copper, is more or less applicable to all the nations of antiquity. The great difference in the exterior characters of the two metals in their crude state leaves no doubt, that men were sooner acquainted with copper, and the method of adapting it to their purposes, than iron. It is probable that they found copper in large masses, and nearly prepared by nature, as we still meet with it in countries, the mineralogical wealth of which has been little explored. Accordingly in treating the ore by fire they could not and instruments of them, could only be the fruit of long experience. I shall not avail myself of the numerous testimonies of ancient authors to prove, that copper has been employed in preference to iron, as it is sufficient to appeal to Homer. All weapons, both offensive and defensive, as swords, spears-heads, helmets, and shields, as well as various domestic utensils, were of copper, (xaλxos), though in Homer's time iron (σongos) was used, but less frequently, and hardened by plunging red-hot into water. Even when the advantages of iron, and the modes of fabricating it, were well known, men used copper for their weapons; for instance, in the last ages of the republics of Greece and Rome. We know that copper is not fit for the purposes for which the ancients employed it. When cast it is porous and brittle; and, when forged, too soft. The ancient weapons and utensils being of a hardness which this metal does not possess, it was long supposed that the ancients had some method of hardening copper, as we do iron and steel. But chemical analysis has shewn the falsity of this opinion, and demonstrated, that these weapons and instruments were not pure copper, but an alloy of this metal with tin, which we call bronze, and which was the œs, brass, of the Romans. The weapons, instruments, and statues, which have been dug out of the ground, evidently prove, that the property of tin to impart hardness and density to the metal alloyed with it, was known and employed by the most ancient nations. All these objects occur of bronze, but none of pure copper. It is astonishing, that this prace tice of imparting to copper, by alloying it with a certain portion of tin, a hardness sufficient for sword-blades and other cu ting instruments, should have been so generally followed by the ancients, notwithstanding the want of tinmines. All the tin they used they were obliged to procure from the Cassiterides, the present Cornwall, and the trade was exclusively in the hands of the Phenicians. Having had an opportunity of assaying several fragments of metallic antiquities, I conceive it may be of some utility to make public the results, as a supplement to the few accurate analyses hitherto made. The fragments to be analysed, being first weighed, were put into a phial, into which were poured six or eight parts of nitric acid of the specific gravity of 122, and digested in a sand-heat till completely dissolved. The contents of the phial were then diluted with a sufficient quantity of water, and the mixture left to stand till all the oxide of tin had fallen down, and the azure liquid appeared quite clear. This being poured off, the oxide of tin was collected, washed repeatedly with water, dried, heated red-hot, and weighed. It was found, that 100 parts of calcined oxide of tin equalled 80 parts of tin in the metallic state. The nitric solu, tion was tested in the usual way for silver, iron, lead, and zinc. When it was found free from these metals, as in all the follow ing inquiries it proved, it was easy to calculate, by deducting the quantity of tin found, the proportion of copper, which was likewise obtained by the common methods. 1. Analysis of an antique sword. In a collection of antiquities at Berlin, found on digging into some ancient graves in the march of Brandenburg, among several articles of bronze, as spear-heads, knives, ornaments, &c. are twe swords: but the place where they were found is not known. One of these swords was broken, the other entire. Their composition is the same: they are both covered with the green shining rust called patina. The sword in question weighs seventeen ounces, and is twenty inches long: the blade sixteen and a half, and the hilt, which is rivetted, three and a half. The blade is two-edged, and one inch and a quarter' broad for two U u 4 thirda |