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OBSERVATIONS

ON

VEGETABLES.

TREES, ORDER OF LOSING THEIR LEAVES.

ONE of the first trees that becomes naked is the walnut; the mulberry, the ash, especially if it bears many keys, and the horse-chestnut come next. All lopped trees, while their heads are young, carry their leaves a long while. Apple-trees and peaches remain green very late, often till the end of November: young beeches never cast their leaves till spring, till the new leaves sprout and push them off: in the autumn the beechenleaves turn of a deep chestnut colour. Tall beeches cast their leaves about the end of October.*

SIZE AND GROWTH.

MR. MARSHAM of Stratton, near Norwich, informs me by letter thus: "I became a planter early; so that an oak which I planted in 1720 is become now, at 1 foot from the earth, 12 feet 6 inches in circumference, and at 14 feet (the half of the timber length) is 8 feet 2 inches. So if the bark was to be measured as timber, the tree gives 116 feet, buyer's measure. Perhaps you never heard of a larger oak while the planter was living. I flatter myself that I increased the growth by washing the stem, and digging a circle as far as I supposed the roots to extend, and by spreading sawdust, &c., as related in the Phil. Trans. I wish I had begun with beeches (my favourite trees as well as yours,) I

Perhaps the weeping willow is the latest of all deciduous trees to shed its leaves, retaining its verdure sometimes even to December; it is also one of the earliest in spring to push forth, though from the small size of its leaves it is generally a long while becoming green. Of this tree, we have at present only the female sex in this country; the male is more generally seen in Italy, which, at the time of blossoming, is extremely ornamental; so much so, that I cannot but wonder that it has never been imported.-ED.

might then have seen very large trees of my own raising. But I did not begin with beech till 1741, and then by seed; so that my largest is now at five feet from the ground, 6 feet 3 inches in girth, and with its head spreads a circle of 20 yards diameter. This tree was also dug round, washed, &c." Stratton, July 24th, 1790.

The circumference of trees planted by myself at 1 foot from the ground, 1790.

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The great oak in the Holt, which is deemed by Mr. Marsham to be the biggest in this island, at 7 feet from the ground, measures in circumference 34 feet. It has in old times lost several of its boughs, and is tending to decay. Mr. Marsham computes, that at 14 feet length this oak contains 1000 feet of timber.

It has been the received opinion that trees grow in height only by their annual upper shoot. But my neighbour over the way, whose occupation confines him to one spot, assures me that trees are expanded and raised in the lower parts also. The reason that he gives is this: the point of one of my firs began for the first time to peep over an opposite roof at the beginning of summer; but before the growing season was over, the whole shoot of the year, and three or four joints of the body beside, became visible to him as he sits on his form in his shop. According to this supposition, a tree may advance in height considerably, though the summer shoot should be destroyed every year.

FLOWING OF SAP.

If the bough of a vine is cut late in the spring, just before the shoots push out, it will bleed considerably; but after the leaf is out, any part may be taken off without the least inconvenience. So oaks may be barked while the leaf is budding; but as soon as they are expanded, the bark will no longer part from the wood, because the sap that lubricates the bark and makes it part, is evaporated off through the leaves.

RENOVATION OF LEAVES.

WHEN oaks are quite stripped of their leaves by chaffers, they are clothed again soon after Midsummer with a beautiful foliage: but beeches, horse-chestnuts and maples, once defaced by those insects, never recover their beauty again for the whole season.

ASH TREES.

MANY ash trees bear loads of keys every year, others never seem to bear any at all. The prolific ones are naked of leaves and unsightly; those that are sterile abound in foliage, and carry their verdure a long while, and are pleasing objects.

BEECH.

BEECHES love to grow in crowded situations, and will insinuate themselves through the thickest covert, so as to surmount it all: are therefore proper to mend thin places in tall hedges.

SYCAMORE.

MAY 12. The sycamore or great maple is in bloom, and at this season makes a beautiful appearance, and affords much pabulum for bees, smelling strongly like honey. The foliage of this tree is very fine, and very ornamental to outlets. All the maples have saccharine juices.

GALLS OF LOMBARDY POPLAR.

THE stalks and ribs of the leaves of the Lombardy poplar are embossed with large tumours of an oblong shape, which by incurious observers have been taken for the fruit of the tree. These galls are full of small insects, some of which are winged, and some not. The parent insect is of the genus of cynips. Some poplars in the garden are quite loaded with these excres

cences.

CHESTNUT TIMBER.

JOHN CARPENTER brings home some old chestnut trees which are very long; in several places the wood-peckers had begun to

bore them. The timber and bark of these trees are so very like oak, as might easily deceive an indifferent observer, but the wood is very shakey, and towards the heart cup-shakey (that is to say, apt to separate in round pieces like cups) so that the inward parts are of no use. They are bought for the purpose of cooperage, but must make but ordinary barrels, buckets, &c. Chestnut sells for half the price of oak; but has sometimes been sent into the king's docks, and passed off instead of oak.

LIME BLOSSOMS.

DR. Chandler tells, that in the south of France, an infusion of the blossoms of the lime tree, tilia, is in much esteem as a remedy for coughs, hoarsenesses, fevers, &c., and that at Nismes, he saw an avenue of limes that was quite ravaged and torn in pieces by people greedily gathering the bloom, which they dried and kept for these purposes.

Upon the strength of this information we made some tea of lime blossoms, and found it a very soft, well-flavoured, pleasant, saccharine julep, in taste much resembling the juice of liquorice.

BLACKTHORN.

THIS tree usually blossoms while cold N. E. winds blow; so that the harsh rugged weather obtaining at this season is called by the country people, Blackthorn winter.

IVY BERRIES.

Ivy berries afford a noble and providential supply for birds in winter and spring; for the first severe frost freezes and spoils all the haws, sometimes by the middle of November ;* ivy berries do not seem to freeze.

HOPS.

THE culture of Virgil's vines corresponded very exactly with the modern management of hops. I might instance in the perpetual diggings and hoeings, in the tying to the stakes and poles, in pruning the superfluous shoots, &c., but lately I have observed a new circumstance, which was a neighbouring farmer's harrowing

* I imagine, however, that they are by no means spoiled, but, on the contrary, rendered more nutritious, after freezing.-ED.

between the rows of hops with a small triangular harrow, drawn by one horse, and guided by two handles. This occurrence brought to my mind the following passage.

-"ipsa

Flectere luctantes inter vineta juvencos."

Georgic II.

Hops are diécious plants: hence perhaps it might be proper, though not practised, to leave purposely some male plants in every garden, that their farina might impregnate the blossoms. The female plants without their male attendants are not in their natural state hence we may suppose the frequent failure of crop so incident to hop-grounds; no other growth, cultivated by man, has such frequent and general failures as hops.

Two hop gardens much injured by a hail-storm, June 5, show now (September 2) a prodigious crop, and larger and fairer hops than any in the parish. The owners seem now to be convinced that the hail, by beating off the tops of the binds, has increased the side-shoots, and improved the crop. Query. Therefore should not the tops of hops be pinched off when the binds are very gross, and strong?

SEED LYING DORMANT.

THE naked part of the Hanger is now covered with thistles of various kinds. The seeds of these thistles may have lain probably under the thick shade of the beeches for many years, but could not vegetate till the sun and air were admitted. When old beech trees are cleared away, the naked ground in a year or two becomes covered with strawberry plants, the seeds of which must have lain in the ground for an age at least. One of the slidders or trenches down the middle of the Hanger, close covered over with lofty beeches near a century old, is still called strawberry slidder, though no strawberries have grown there in the memory of man. That sort of fruit did once, no doubt, abound there, and will again when the obstruction is removed.*

BEANS SOWN BY BIRDS.

MANY horse-beans sprang up in my field-walks in the autumn,

* In like manner, when the woods are cleared in many parts of North America, a thick growth of red cedar, a species of juniper, makes its appearance, though none had been previously noticed in the neighbourhood, from which it appears that seeds may lie dormant for an indefinite period, till circumstances induce them to germinate. So also soil, turned up from some depth, generally produces plants not eviously observed in the vicinity.-ED.

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