in countries far to the north, than in the tr pics. In Lapland and on Hudson's Bay, the full leaf is unfolded in one or two weeks, when spring begins, although it requires six or eight weeks in the south. Nature makes up in despatch for the want of length in her seasons, and this enables us to cultivate the annual plants very far to the north, in full perfection. The beans, pumpkins, potatoes, peas, cabbages, lettuce, celery, beets, turnips, and thousands of others, seem to disregard climate, and grow in any region or latitude where man plants and cherishes them. The fig is becoming common in France; the banana, pineapple, and many other plants, have crossed the comforts, and whose pleasures connect him with them, carries their choice seeds, slips, and scions, far and wide. His interests foster their growth, his attentions enrich their products, and his skill and science preserve their existence, and adapt them to their new condition. In an improved community, man's wants multiply; he has occasion for the more varied and rich fruits; more abundant and luxurious clothing, and furniture of vegetable growth; odours to regale his senses, vegetable flavours to pamper his appetites, and all the medicinal plants to heal his various diseases, and invigorate his shattered constitution. He attaches himself to agriculture and horticulture plants become his companions, he car-line of the tropics, and thousands of the plants ries a creative resource into those departments, and by his attentions, forms new varieties and excellences, unknown to the wild state of vegetable existence. Such are the means nature has provided for the propagation and extension of plants; such are the indirect locomotive powers they possess. We must no longer, therefore, consider vegetables such inert and sluggish beings. Human care, and the providences of nature, have given to many plants a great extent of climate and latitude, an enlarged growth, and an increased and improved product. Let us bring together such instances as are within the knowledge of all, and which ought to stimulate our cultivators to greater efforts. The valley of the Euphrates was doubtless he native region of all those fine and delicious fruits which enrich our orchards, and enter so largely into the luxury of living. We thence derived all the succulent and nutritious vegetables that go so far to support life; and even tie farinaceous grains appertain to the same region. The cereal productions began in that same valley to be the staff of life. Our corn, our fruit, our vegetables, our roots, and oil, have all travelled with man from Mesopotamia up to latitude 60°, and even farther, in favourable situations. The cares of man have made up for the want of climate, and his cultivation atoned for this alienation from their native spot. The Scandinavians of Europe, the Canadians of North America, and the Samoides of Asia, are now enjoying plants which care and cultivation have naturalize in their bleak climes. Melons and peaches. with many of the more tender plants and fruits, once almost tropical, have reached the 45th degree of latitude in perfection, and are found even in 50°. Rice has travelled from the tropics to 36°, and that of North Carolina now promises to be better than that of more southern countries. The grape has reached 50°, and produces good wine and fruit in Hungary and Germany. The orange, lemon, and sugar-cane, strictly tropical, grow well in Florida, and up to 3140, in Louisiana, and the fruit of the former much larger and better than under the equator. valuable for food, clothing, and medicine, and such as are cultivated for their beauty, fragrance, or timber, are extending their climates, and promise much comfort and resource to man. Plants lately introduced, whose cultivation has not run through many ages or years, have acquired but little latitude in their growth, and show but little capacity to bear various climates, because time has not yet habituated them to such changes, and human cares have not imparted to them new habits and new powers. Nothing can be effected by suddenness in acclimating plants; too quick a transition would shock them; it must be a very gradual process, embracing many years, and many removals. The complete success that has attended the plants first named, the earliest companions of man, proves this. In the more recent plants, success is exactly in proportion to the length of time that a plant has been in a train of experimental culture. The most striking method of testing the effect of climate on plants, is to carry suddenly back to the south, such as have been extended far, and become habituated to a northern cli. mate. Such plants have so much vigour, and the habit of a quick and rapid growth so firmly fixed on them, by a long residence in the north, that when suddenly taken to the south, although the season be long and ample, they continue, from habit, to grow and mature quick, and obtain the name of rare-ripe; because they do not take half of the time to mature, that those of the same family require, which have never been so changed. Gardeners give us early corn, peas, fruit, and turnips, by getting seed from places far to the north; and cotton growers renew the vigour of the plant by getting the most northern seed. This practice is common in the case of most plants, and is founded on the supposition that plants do, and can acquire habits. The fact supported in the first number of the American Journal of Geology and Naturai Science, "that plants are most productive near the northern limit in which they will grow," that they bear more seed or fruit, and have more vigour of constitution, offers much enAnnual plants grown for roots and vegeta-couragement to agriculturists. This proves bles, and grain, go still farther north in pro- that it is not a meager, stinted existence, deportion, than the trees and shrubs, because void of profit or productiveness, that we give their whole growth is matured in one summer; to plants, by pushing their culture far north, and we know that the developement of vegeta- but a strong and healthful growth, one that tion is much quicker when spring does open repays the labour and attention, by a greater product than belongs to more southern situ- | acids do not always exist in a free state, being ations. Every view that we can take of this interesting subject, every fact within our knowledge, whether drawn from the actual state of cultivation, or from physiological investigations into the habits, nature, and construction of plants, goes to show that plants do become acclimated, both in the natural and artificial way, to a great extent. Enough has been witnessed to prove that plants have a physical conformation, that does accommodate itself to circumstances, and have capacities more extensive than are generally ascribed to them enough has been realized to encourage farther efforts, and to give us hopes of much future benefit." As allied to this subject see Climate, in fluence of, on the Fruitfulness of Plants.] ACCOUNTS, FARM. See FARM ACCOUNTS. ACER. The Roman name for a genus of trees, comprehending different species of the large deciduous kind, as the sycamore, &c. See MAPLE TREE. ACETIC ACID, and ACETUM, terms employed to signify Vinegar, which see. ACETOSA. See SORREL. generally combined with some of the alkalies or alkaline substances, such as potash, soda, lime, and magnesia. "These bases evidently regulate the formation of the acids, for the diminution of the one is followed by a decrease of the other: thus, in the grape, for example, the quantity of potash contained in its juice is less, when it is ripe, than when unripe; and the acids, under the same circumstances, are found to vary in a similar manner. Such constituents exist in small quantity in those parts of a plant in which the process of assimilation is most active, as in the mass of woody fibre; and their quantity is greater in those organs whose of fice it is to prepare substances conveyed to them for assimilation by other parts. The leaves contain more inorganic matters than the branches, and the branches more than the stem. The potato plant contains more potash before blossoming than after it. "Now, as we know the capacity of saturation of organic acids to be unchanging, it follows that the quantity of the bases united with them cannot vary, and for this reason the latter sub stances ought to be considered with the strict. est attention both by the agriculturist and physiologist. "We have no reason to believe that a plant in a condition of free and unimpeded growth pro duces more of its peculiar acids than it requires for its own existence; hence, a plant, ACHILLEA. A genus of plants consisting of sixty or seventy species, found exclusively in the colder climates of the northern hemisphere. They are all herbaceous, perennial weeds of little importance, except to botanists, and are only seen in cultivation in the collec-on whatever soil it grows, must contain an intions of the curious. ACIDS (Lat. acetum; Goth. aceit; Sax. aeced). Liquids and other substances are called acids, which commonly, but not always, affect the taste in a sharp, piercing, and peculiar manner. The common way of trying whether any particular liquor hath in it any acid particles is by mixing it with syrup of [blue] violets, when it will turn of a red colour; but if it contains alkaline or lixivial particles, it changes that syrup green. [The blue liquor obtained by steeping purple cabbage leaves in hot water, is also a convenient test liquor for acids as well as alkalies.] They combine with various earths, alkalies, and metallic oxides, and form the peculiar class of bodies called salts. (Todd's Johnson.) [In agricultural chemistry, the acids are divided into the inorganic and organic. The first kind, or inorganic, are derived from sources wholly mineral. The second kind, or organic, are derived from animal or vegetable organized substances. The sulphuric acid, or oil of vitriol, is one example of a mineral or inorganic acid. It exists abundantly in nature, combined with mineral bases, as in plaster of Paris, where it is combined with lime, forming the sulphate of lime, or gypsum. Muriatic acid is another very abundant inorganic or mineral acid, and abounds in sea-salt, combined with soda, forming the muriate of soda or common salt. Nitric acid, or aquafortis, is another of this class of acids, existing abundantly in the well known substance called saltpetre, or nitrate of potash. These three constitute the principal inorganic or mineral acids. As all vegetables contain acids, these may be regarded as essential to their life. But these variable quantity of alkaline bases. Culture alone will be able to cause a deviation. "In order to understand this subject clearly, it will be necessary to bear in mind, that any one of the alkaline bases may be substituted for another, the action of all being the same. Our conclusion is, therefore, by no means endangered by the existence of a particular alkali in one plant, which may be absent in others of the same species. If this inference be correct, the absent alkali or earth must be supplied by one similar in its mode of action, or in other words, by an equivalent of another base. "Of course, this argument refers only to those alkaline bases, which, in the form of organic salts, form constituents of the plants. Now, those salts are preserved in the ashes of plants, as carbonates, the quantity of which can be easily ascertained. "From these considerations we must perceive, that exact and trustworthy examination of the ashes of plants of the same kind growing upon different soils would be of the greatest importance to vegetable physiology, and would decide, whether the facts above mentioned are the results of an unchanging law for each family of plants, and whether an invariable number can be found to express the quantity of oxygen which each species of plant contains in the bases united with organic acids. In all proba bility, such inquiries will lead to most important results; for it is clear, that if the production of a certain unchanging quantity of an organic acid is required by the peculiar nature of the organs of a plant, and is necessary to its existence, then potash or lime must be ta ken up by it, in order to form salts with this acid that if these lo not exist in sufficient quantity in the soil, other bases must supply their place; and that the progress of a plant must be wholly arrested when none are present. These are the chief vegetable acids. There are others which have been detected occasionally; such as the moroxylic, in the Morus alba, or white mulberry; the boletic, in the "Seeds of the Salsola Kali, when sown in Boletus pseudo-igniarius; [a species of mush common garden soil, produce a plant contain- room,] the meconic, in opium; the kinic, in ing both potash and soda; while the plants the bark of the Cinchona officinalis; the camgrown from the seeds of this contain only salts phoric from camphor; the suberic from cork, of potash, with mere traces of muriate of soda. &c.; but none of these are of that importance (Cadet.) to the cultivator to require a particular notice "The existence of vegetable alkalies in com- in this place. The composition of the princi bination with organic acids gives great weight pal vegetable acids is much more similar than to the opinion, that alkaline bases in general, are connected with the developement of plants. "If potatoes are grown where they are not supplied with earth, the magazine of inorganic bases, (in cellars for example,) a true alkali, called Solanin, of very poisonous nature, is formed in the sprouts which extend towards the light, while not the smallest trace of such a substance can be discovered in the roots, herbs, blossoms, or fruits of potatoes grown in fields. (Otto.) "When roots find their more appropriate base in sufficient quantity, they will take up less of another."-(Liebig's Organic Chem.)] Vegetable acids abound in most plants; thus, the Acetic acid (vinegar) is found in the chick pea (Cicer arietinum), in the elderberry (Sambucus nigra), in the date palm tree (Phoenix dactylifera), and in numerous others. The Oxalic acid is found combined with potash in the Oxalis Acetosella, or wood-sorrel (whence its name), and many other plants; united with lime, it is detected in the root of the rhubarb, in parsley, fennel, soapwort, squills, &c.; and in an uncombined state in the liquid which exudes from the Cicer arietinum, [chick pea, or Spanish Garbanza.] Tartaric Acid [or Cremor tartar] is commonly procured from tartar or tartrate of pot ash (whence its name). It has been detected in many plants, such as in grapes, tamarinds, bilberries, white mulberries, the Scotch fir, couch grass, dandelion, &c. &c. Citric Acid has been found in oranges and lemons, cranberries, red whortleberry, birdcherry, woody nightshade, the hip, and the onion. Malic Acid is the only acid existing in the apple, [pear,] barberry, plum, sloe, elder, service, &c. It is found with the citric acid in the gooseberry, currant, bleaberry, cherry, strawberry, raspberry, &c.; combined with lime, it is found in the house-leek, wakerobin, &c.; and with potash and lime, in rue, garden purslane, madder, spinach, lilac, mignionette, &c. Benzoic Acid.-This acid is found in benzoin, balsam of Tolu, storax, &c.; and in marjoram, clary, chickpea, Tonkin bean, &c. The Prussic, or Hydrocyanic Acid, exists in laurel leaves, peach blossoms, bitter almonds, flowers of the sloe, leaves of the bay-leaved willow, &c.; there is little doubt but that all the bitter almond kernels contain this acid. Gallic Acid abounds in the barks of many plants, such as the elm, oak, chestnut, beech, willow, elder, plum tree, sycamore, birch, cherry tree, sallow, mountain ash, poplar, hazel common ash, sumach, &c. the intelligent farmer might be inclined to suspect, as will be readily seen from a com parison of the following table of their composi tion, chiefly by M. Berzelius: Acetic acid Tartaric acid Benzoic acid Hydrogen. Carbon. Oxygen 46 83 46.82 0.244 33.222 66-534 like [The organic acids of animal origin are, those obtained from vegetables, very numerous. As examples, there are, the formic acids, first obtained from ants, but now ascertained to exist in sugar and some other vegetable substances: Lactic acid, obtained from milk;— Uric acid, procured from human urine, and Hippuric acid, from the urine of the horse and other animals when stall-fed: Margaric and Stearic acids from fat, etc. The Phosphoric acid, though found combined with minerals, is very abundant in the animal system, being combined with lime to form the bones, and existing in the urine and other fluids and solids, in union with alkaline bases, forming phosphates of soda, potash, lime, and magnesia. Phosphoric acid has also been found in all plants, the ashes of which have been examined by chemists, always, however, in combination with potash, soda, magnesia, or lime. Most seeds contain certain quantities of the phosphates formed by the union of phosphoric acid with some one or more of the alkalies just named. In the seeds of differinds of grain, there is abundance of phosphate of magnesia. Phosphoric acid, in one or other of its combinations, plays indeed an important part in agriculture, and is an indispensable constituent of all good land. "The soil in which plants grow furnishes them with phosphoric acid, and they in turn yield it to animals, to be used in the formation of their bones, and of those constituents of the brain which contain phosphorus. Much more phosphorus is thus afforded to the body than it requires, when flesh, bread, fruit, and husks of grain are used for food, and this excess in them is eliminated in the urine and the solid excrements. We may form an idea of the quantity of phosphate of magnesia contained in grain, when we consider that the concretions in the cum of horses consist of phosphate of magnesia and ammonia, which must have been obtained from the hay and oats cou sumed as food. Twenty-nine of these stones were taken after death from the rectum cf a horse belonging to a miller in Eberstadt, the total weight of which amounted to 3 lbs. "It is evident that the seeds of wheat could however; every farmer collecting his own, or not be formed without phosphate of magnesia, letting his pigs feed upon them. which is one of their invariable constituents; Some care is necessary to be taken when the plant could not, therefore, under such circumstances attain its proper developement, so far as its fructification was concerned."] The Crenic, is another organic acid lately discovered by Berzelius. From its containing nitrogen and being a constituent in all fertile soils, it is believed to exercise a beneficial action on vegetation. It is always accompanied by the Apocrenic acid, changed from the crenic by oxydation. ACINUS. The stone of any berry. ACORNS. The seed or fruit of the oak; cenn, Saxon, from ac, an oak, and corn, corn or grain; that is, the grain or fruit of the oak. The Greeks had a tradition, that the oak was the first created tree; and hence, having a similar idea as to the Arcadians being the first created men, they compared them to the oak. Virgil tells us to --"Thresh the wood, For masts of oak, your father's homely food." "Content with food which nature freely bred, Turner, who is the earliest English author on this subject, writes, "Oke, whose fruit we call acorn, or an eykorn (that is, the corn or fruit of an cyke), are hard of digestion, and nourish very much, but they make raw humores. Wherefore, we forbid the use of them for meates." They were long the food of the early Greeks, as they are of the lower order of Spaniards, even to this day; but then it must be remembered, that the acorns of Spain are more sweet and nutritious than those of England. And yet the early Britons certainly eat them their priests, or Druids, taught them, that every thing that was produced on the oak, even to the parasitical mistletoe, was of heavenly origin, a superstition which was common, also, to the Persians and the Massagetæ. The Saxons valued them chiefly for fattening swine. Their king Ina, in the seventh century, gave them a law, respecting the fattening of their swine in the oak woods, which privilege was called a pawnage, or pannage. The oak is often mentioned in Holy Writ, as the oak of Ophra, Judges vi. 11; of Shechem, Gen. xxxv. 4; and of Deborah's Grave, Gen. XXXV. 8. See OAK. Although acorns are said to have been the primitive food of mankind, at present they are only used in raising young oaks, or for the purpose of fattening deer and hogs, for which last they are said to be a very proper and useful kind of food. In Gloucestershire, according to Mr. Marshall, they are in high esteem among the farmers, who seem to be as anxious about them as their apples. They consider them as the best means of fatting hogs, and think they make the bacon firm, and weigh better than bean-fed bacon. The price of acorns there is from 1s. 6d. to 28. per bushel, according to the season and the price of beans. Few are sold, hogs are fed upon acorns, for otherwise they will be subject to constipation, and the disease called the garget. These may, however, be avoided, by mixing laxative substances with them, and not allowing them to have too many at a time; at first a few, twice a day is often enough; afterwards three times a day. The hogs, while they eat this food, should not be confined to the stye, but be suffered to run at large; for if their liberty be too much abridged, they never thrive well, or grow fat on this sort of food. In Hertfordshire, and the New Forest in Hampshire, it is no uncommon thing, with the management above directed, and the assistance of a little wash, and a few grains now and then, for a farmer to kill several hogs in a season, which weigh from eight to ten score, and sometimes even more. Hogs fed in this way make very good well-flavoured meat; but it is not thought by some so fine as when they are taken up, and four or five bushel of pease or barley-meal given to each to complete their fattening. "The pigs are gone acorning," is a very coinmon provincialism (see Mr. Wilbraham's Che shire Glossary); and the expression is also confirmed by Shakspeare's "full-acorn'd boar." Acorns are sometimes given to poultry, and would be found an advantageous food for them, when dried and ground into meal. Tusser, speaking of acorns, says, "Some left among bushes shall pleasure thy swine, For fear of a mischief, keep acorns from kine " They are considered injurious to cows, because they swell in their stomachs, and will not come up to the cud again; which causes them to strain as it were, to remit, and to draw their limbs together. In medicine, a decoction of acorns is reput ed good against dysentaries and colics. Pliny states, "that acorns beaten to powder, and mixed with hog's lard and salt, heal all hard swellings and cancerous ulcers; and when reduced into a liniment, and applied, stays hæmorrhage." (Phillip's Fruits.) When employed for raising oak timber from, the method of planting the acorns, which is practised by some, is to make holes to receive them, at the distance of 12 or 15 inches from each other, in an oblique direction, so as to raise up a tongue of turf under which they are to be deposited, and where they require no farther kind of nursing. In the course of from twenty to thirty years, in this mode of planting, the spot, it is said, will be fit to be coppiced, that is, partially cut down as underwood, leav. ing the most healthy plants. The thinnings may be sold for railing, and generally fetch a good price. A better method is, however, to dibble them on land that has been properly prepared by ploughing or digging, which may be done by women, three or four within a square yard; or they may be sown broad-cası, when the surface is fine and moist, and rolled in with a light roller. The former is probably the better practice. They may likewise be set about the middle of November, by a land chain, The following Table shows the comparative quantity of each of the above measures: A. R. P. 120 3 20 Devonshire customary measure, Equal to a quarter of a rod asunder, and six inches | ells, and is equal to 1 acre, 1 rood, 2 poles apart in the rows; dibbling them in, zigzag, nearly, of English measure. alternately on either side a line stretched tightly on the surface, with blunt-pointed dibbles, letting a little mould fall down to the bottoms of the holes, to prevent water lodging round them, and burying them about two inches beneath the surface. Each square rod, when planted in this way, takes 132 acorns, nearly a pint, when they are middle-sized, 133 2 which is equal to two statute bushels and a half on an acre. The expense, in England, of planting acorns in this manner is about 5s. an acre. See PLANTING. ACORUS, from the Greek a, privative, and gn, the pupil of the eye. The botanical name of a plant of the thistle kind, that produces the drug called in the shop Calamus aromaticus. It is found abundantly in the neighbourhood of freshwater marshes. The ancient practice of strewing the floors with the leaves of these sweet rushes is still kept up in some of our cathedral churches upon certain high festivals. The plant, which belongs to the natural order Aroidea, flourishes luxuriantly in loose, moist soils, and sends forth many deep-green, long sword-shaped leaves from its perennial, creeping, and horizontal stems. It seldom flowers, but the blossoms which it sends forth are of a The root, or more properly greenish colour. the stem, is the part which, when dried, is used medicinally, occasionally as a stimulant. It is slightly acrid and aromatic. (Thomson's Dispensary.) ÁCRE (aeene, Sax. Acre, Lye says, is common to all the European languages. Sax. Dic.). He might have added further, that it is an Eastern word; and that agr, akoro, and akkoran, denote in the Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic, a field, a husbandman. So the Saxon aeccenmon, a husbandman. Wachter, in his Glossary, gives akerman, a day-labourer. (Todd's Johnson.) In Shakspeare's King Lear, we have "Search every acre in the high grown field, And bring him to our eye." The prevai ing and standard measure of land in Britain. An acre in England contains 4 square rood; a rood, 40 perches, rods, or poles, 5 yar is, or 16 feet each, according to the statute in the act passed in 1824, for the equalization of weights and measures throughout the United Kingdom, which is in this instance confirmatory of the old law of England. But in some parts of England there are other measures under the same designation of acre. For example, in Devonshire, and part of Somerset, 5 yards (instead of 5) have been reckoned to a perch; in Cornwall, 6 yards (anciently called the Woodland perch); in Lancashire, 7 yards; in Cheshire and Staffordshire 8 yards; in the Isle of Purbeck, and some parts of Devonshire, 15 feet and 1 inch. In the common fields of Wiltshire and the neighbouring counties, 120 poles, or 3 roods, were reckoned to an acre. 84 0 4 Cornish or Woodland ditto, 61 237 24 Cheshire and Staffordshire ditto, 100 statute acres. The French acre, or arpent, according to Mr. Greave's calculation, consists of 100 perches of 22 feet each, amounting to 48,400 squar French feet, which are equal to 51,691 square English fleet, or very near one acre, and three quarters of a rood, English measure. Strasburg acre is about half an English acre. The Table exhibiting the Number of Plants which may be raised on a Perch of Land, at different distances: In a perch are 272 square feet, or 39,204 square inches. A perch will contain Trees or Inches Number of Inches Square Inches Plants. over. The Irish acre is 7840 square yards, and is equal to 1 acre, 2 roods, and 19 poles, nearly, 21,780 of English measure. 43,560 The Scotch acre contains 5760 square Scotch 4 8. 4343 2722 222211 2 2 5298654221 |