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THE

Scots Magazine,

AND

EDINBURGH LITERARY MISCELLANY,

For JULY 1812.

Description of COILSFIELD HOUSE, the Seat of the Right Hon. Lord Montgomery.

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OILSFIELD HOUSE, which has been recently erected by Lord Montgomery, is situated in the County of Ayr, about six miles to the east of the county town, and on the north bank of the water of Ayr. Though there are in Ayrshire one or two mansions larger in size, there are none superior to it in point of elegance. The principal house is 120 feet long and 60 feet wide. The main entry is under a portico in the centre, which is supported by six massy columns. The entrance hall, which is circular, is 25 feet diameter, and 16 feet high; the ceiling supported by eight pillars of stone, beautifully polished and varnished. The dining room on the left, and drawing room on the right are each, 40 feet long, 22 wide, and 16 feet high. The saloon in the centre of the house is an octagon 20 feet diameter, with 8 pillars supporting a balcony, from which the rooms in the attic story enter. The capitals are doric enta blature, with enriched mouldings.The whole height of the saloon is 47

feet, formed into groin arches above, and enriched with composite mouldings. The breakfast parlour and billiard room, 32 feet long by 20 feet wide each, are in the back projection or bow; and the upper story is formed into sixteen bed rooms, with dressing closets to each.

A wing, 50 feet by 20, is added to each end of the house. That on the north is formed into a place of business, apartments for a principal servant, &c. and that on the south into an orangery, on the end of the drawing room; the orange trees and other plants being seen from it thro' a glass door and two large windows. At the opposite end of the drawing room, a reflecting mirror rises from the floor 13 feet, and 5 feet broad, which shows the room and orangery double. When day light is excluded, and the room and orangery lighted by two superb crystal lustres in each, hung from the ceiling, and the brilliancy of the room and orangery reflected double in the mirror, the whole seems to be an enchanted grove, or corner of the Elysian fields. The whole furniture, and every thing about this delightful residence, is most superb.

Monthly

Monthly Memoranda in Natural His- others which were in flower in the beginning of this month, we may mention two, which we have never

tory.

July. DURING the first half of before seen in this country; viz. Sa

the month the weather was generally dry and warm, and much hay was made, in this neighbourhood, without a shower. After the 18th a good deal of rain fell, at intervals, till near the close of the month. The different kinds of crops have come on pretty rapidly, but must un avoidably be later than usual. Straw berries were more than a fortnight behind the ordinary time; the middle of the strawberry season being so late as 23d or 24th July, when strawberries were sold at 10d. a Scots pint. Roses have this year been nearly a month later than they commonly are. The cabbage-rose is only now (27th July) in perfection.

Botany. The Royal Botanic Garden here still remains in the depressed state, for want of funds, which we have formerly, more than once, taken occasion to describe; with one hot-house absolutely in ruin, and another verging to it; and scarcely a sufficient command of hands to throw water on the flower-pots. In these most unfavourable circumstances, it is certainly very creditable, both to the botanical Professor and to the practical Superintendant, that the garden should still maintain a respectable character. The personal exertions of the superintendant, or head gardener, Mr MACNAB, we believe to be unremitting; and it seems a public disgrace that they should not be better rewarded, and that his abilities and zeal should not be seconded, by a small grant of the public money for the improvement of the garden. Notwithstanding this discouraging state of matters, Mr Macnab has lately introduced many new or very rare plants into the garden. He has, in particular, carried the culture of exotic aquatics to a pitch hitherto unknown in Scotland. Among several

gittaria lancifolia, introduced from the East Indies about ten years ago, and Zizania aquatica, or Canada Rice. This last has been recommended to the Board of Agriculture under the title of Canadian Marsh Corn; and because Mr Pinkerton, (who is evidently no botanist,) has eulogized this "cereal gramen" as "probably intended by nature to become, at some future period, the bread-corn of the north," it has been concluded, in a recent Agricultural Report, that it "promises to be an object of important interest in the cold and moist climate of Scotland, where oats and barley cannot be advantageously cultivated." The Zizania is an annual plant; and, we fear, requires, to bring it to perfection, a degree of steady warmth not to be expected from a Scottish summer. We are aware, that a few plants have, for several years past, annually ripened their seeds in a pond in Sir Joseph Banks's garden at Hounslow; but the seeds have been regularly saved with care, kept in jars of temperate water over winter, and sown in the pond in spring, when the severe frosts were over; and it must be allowed, that there is a considerable difference of climate between Hounslow, west from London, and the Highlands of Scotland. The Zizania has now flowered for the first time in Scotland in the stove of the Botanic Garden.

To the list of rare native plants to be found within a day's excursion from Edinburgh †, may be added a new species of Orobanche, O. rubra, or Red fragrant Broom-rape, first described by Dr Smith about four years ago, as having been found near Bel

* Modern geogrophy, iii. 380.
+ Memoirs of Wernerian Society, vol. 1.
Sowerby's English Botany, t. 1786.

Belfast in Ireland. It grows on dry banks, where the rocks are basalt and amygdaloid, by the sea-shore near the ruins of Seafield Tower, between Kinghorn and Kirkcaldy in Fife.Both the stamina and pistillum in this species are set with glandular hairs. In the former, the hairs are numerous at the base of the filaments, and nearly pellucid; in the latter, they abound at the summit of the germen and style, and are purplish. The flower smells somewhat like honeysuckle. It was in bloom on 18th July.

Canonmills, 27th July 1812.

N.

Memoirs of the Progress of Manufactures, Chemistry, Science, and the Fine Arts.

THOM

HOMAS ANDREW KNIGHT, Esq. has published a New and Expeditious Mode of Budding. "The luxuriant shoots of peach and necta rine trees," says he," are generally barren; but the lateral shoots emitted by them in the same season, are often productive of fruit. The bearing wood is afforded by the natural buds of the luxuriant shoots; but I thought it probable that such might as readily be afforded by the inserted buds of another variety under appropriate management. I therefore, as early as June 1808, as the luxuriant shoots of my peach trees were grown sufficiently firm to permit the operation, inserted buds of other varieties into them, employing two distinct ligatures to hold the buds in their places. One ligature was first placed above the bud inserted, and upon the transverse section through the bark; the other, which had no further office than that of securing the bud, was applied in the usual way. As soon as the buds (which never fail under the preceding circumstances) had attached themselves, the ligatures last

applied were taken off, but the others were suffered to remain. The passage of the sap upwards was in consequence much obstructed, and the inserted buds began to vegetate strongly in July; and, when these afforded shoots about four inches long, the remaining ligatures were taken off, to permit the excess of sap to pass on, and the young shoots were nailed to the wall. Being there properly exposed to light, their wood ripened well, and afforded blossoms in the succeeding spring."

Arthur Young, Esq. secretary of the Board of Agriculture, lately published a letter recommending an extended cultivation of potatoes. Half an acre in every hundred, added to the present space under this crop, would (he says) produce human food sufficient to answer the purpose of all the foreign corn imported into this country, at an expence, for the last twelve years, of above thirty millions sterling; one acre of potatoes being estimated as equal to two of wheat. This root being also applicable to the use of horses, cattle, and hogs, no farmer need be apprehensive of the culture proving disadvantageous at any time, should the price of wheat happen to be cheap, and potatoes consequently low in price. In regard to those landlords who consider the culture of potatoes as detrimental to the land, he recommends that they should permit their tenants to plant a certain portion of ground with potatoes, on condition that the latter lay on each acre so planted, a certain quantity of manure or lime.

Sir Joseph Banks, observing lately the motion of a snake along the floor, discovered that it was assisted by its ribs, which served the purpose of feet, the points of them touching the ground, and by those means facilitating its motions.

Lord Dunmore, who resides at Dunmore Park, on the Firth of Forth, has thirteen acres laid out in garden.

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