observes, that the metal of the horses of the Carrousel, taken as it is, yields copper, tin, lead, gold, and silver. If the surface be filed, so as to remove all the gilt part, nothing is found but copper, tin, and lead. If a piece perfectly free from cracks be taken, and thoroughly cleaned by the file, it yields copper and tin alone: but it is difficult to procure such pieces, for the copper is full of flaws, and the mixture of lead and tin, with which the horses were partly filled, has insinuated itself into every crack. On analysing some select pieces, he found copper 99 177, tin 0-823: but as sulphuric acid disturbed the transparency of the solution, he supposes a little lead was present, and that part of the tin might come from the alloy of tin and lead, which had covered the inside of the pieces he used. He could not procure a piece well gilt, to examine in what way the gold was applied; but he observes, that the brittleness of the metal seems to indicate that quicksilver was employed. From these passages, and from that of Pliny, in which he tells us that Tiberius, who was fond of cucumbers, had then in his garden throughout the year by means of (specularia) stoves, where they were grown in boxes, wheeled out in fine weather, and replaced in the nights or in cold weather, [From the Transactions of the Horticul- Pliny, book xix. sect. 23, we may tural Society.] On the Forcing-Houses of the Ro- mans. Bart. K. B. P.R.S. Mr. A. Knight was the first person among us members of the Horticultural Society, who observed in reading Martial, strong traces of the Romans having en joyed the luxury of forcing-houses. I shall cite the principal passages upon which he has founded this safely infer that forcing-houses were not unknown to the Romans, though they do not appear to have been carried into general use. Flues the Romans were well acquainted with; they did not use open fires in their apartments as we do, but in the colder countries at least, they always had flues un der der the floors of their apartments. Mr. Lysons found the flues, and the fire place from whence they received heat, in the Roman villa he bas described in Gloucestershire; in the baths aiso, which no good house could be without, flues were used to communicate a large proportion of beat for their sudatories, or sweating apart ments. The article with which their windows were glazed, if the term may be used, was talk, or what we may call Muscovy glass (lapis specularis). At Rome, the apart ments of the bettermost classes were furnished with curtains (vela) to keep away the sun; and windows (specularia) to resist cold; so common was the use of this material for windows, that the glazier, or person who fitted the panes, had a name, and was called specularius. On the epigrams the following remarks present themselves. The first in all probability described a peach-house, the word pale, which is meant as a ridicule upon the practice, gives reason for this supposition; we all know, that peaches grown under glass cannot be endowed either with colour or with flavour, unless they are exposed by the removal of the lights, from the time of their taking their second swell, after stoning, to the direct rays of the sun: if this is not done, the best sorts are pale green when ripe, and not better than toraips in point of flavour; but it is not likely that a Roman hot house should, in the infancy of the invention, be furnished with moveable lights as ours are. Romans bad peaches in plenty, The both hard and melting. The flesh of the hard peaches adhered to the stones as ours do, and were preferred in poiut of flavour to the soft ones. The second epigram refers most plainly to a grape-house, but it does not seem to have been calculated to force the crop at an earlier period than the natural one; it is more likely to have been contrived for the purpose of securing a late crop, which may have been managed by destroying the first set of bloom, and encouraging the vines to produce a second. The last line of the epigram, which states the office of the house to be that of compelling the winter to produce autumnal fruits, leads much to this option. Hot-houses seem to have been little used in Eugland, if at all, in the beginning of the last century. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, on her journey to Constantinople, in the year 1716, renrarks the circumstance of pine-apples being served up in the dessert, at the electoral table at Hanover, as a thing she had never before seen or heard of. See her Letters. Had pines been then grown in England, her ladyship, who moved in the highest circles, could not have been ignorant of the fact. The public have still much to learn on the subject of hot-houses, course the Horticultural Society have much to teach. of 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 halt 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 orauge, 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 thein, perhaps in less than half a century, be offered for sale on every maiket 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 (melimala) 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 them among his plus. Martial valued the little, as appears by his epigran, xiii. 40. Cherries were introduced inte Rome in the year of the city OSO, 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 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 received 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. Apricockes. Barberries. Boollesse, black and white Cherries, red and black. Damisens, white and black. 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 imported 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 |