CUCKOO-FLOWER.

black tipped with white; whole length of the bird about twelve inches: his form elegant. (Yarrells Brit. Birds. Vi p.179-189.)

CUCKOO-FLOWER, or MEADOW LADY'S SMOCK. (Cardamine pratens This very pretty wild plant is a guy and agreeable decoration to our fields in Ari May, and June. It rises a foot high: the

growing upon it are small and stand sing Those leaves which rise from the rom are winged regularly, and spread in a circular manner. The flowers grow in little clusters and are large and white, frequently tinged with pale red. The fresh leaves are pues sant in salads. The juice of the leaves is diuretic and anti-spasmodic. Cuckooflowers were formerly given in epilepsy. and some other spasmodic diseases: but they are now rarely prescribed; and were, when in vogue, more praised than they merited They are of no value in scurvy. CUCKOO BREAD. A name for the common wood sorrel. CUCKOO LAMBS.

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The early short prickly is about four inches long, and is often preferred for the first crop as beng a very piemtiful bearer. quick n commg mit production and the hardest of al the varieties. The entir long prickly is about seven inches long: i

is a hardy, abundantly bearing variety, but not quick in coming into production. It is generally grown for main crops. The longest prickly is about nine or ten inches in length; it is a hardy, good bearer. There is a white sub-variety. The early green cluster is a very early bearer. Its fruit is about six inches long. It is chiefly characterised by its fruit growing in clusters. The whole plant grows compact, and is well suited for hand-glass crops. The white Dutch prickly is about six inches long, it has an agreeable flavour, though differing from most of the others. It comes quickly into bearing.

The other varieties are slow in coming into production, and are chiefly remarkable for their great size. The Nepal often weighs twelve pounds, being occasionally eight inches in diameter and seventeen in length. It is a native of Calcutta. The snake cucumber is very small in diameter, but attains the length, it is said, of several feet.

A fresh loam, rather inclining to lightness than tenacity, as the top-spit of a pasture, is, perhaps, as fine a soil as can be employed for the cucumber. It will succeed in any open soil of the garden, for the hand-glass and natural ground crops.

Open ground crops.-The sowings for these crops must be performed at the close of May, or early in June. A rich southwest border, beneath a reed or other fence, is peculiarly favourable, as they then enjoy a genial warmth without suffering from the meridian sun. The border being dug regularly over, and saucer-like hollows, about fifteen inches in diameter and one or two deep, formed five feet apart, the seed may be sown six or eight in each. Seed may also be sown beneath hedge of similar aspect, and either trained to it or bushy branches placed perpendicular; this is said greatly to improve their growth and flavour. If the weather is dry it is requisite to water the patches moderately two or three days after sowing. In four or five, if the season is genial, the plants will make their appearance, and until they have attained their rough leaves, should be guarded from the small birds, who will often destroy the whole crop by devouring the seminal leaves. (G. W. Johnson's Kitchen Garden.)

CUD. In cattle, the food in the first stomach, which is to be chewed over again and passed into the second to be digested. See CHEWING the Cud.

CUDWEED. (Gnaphalium.) A vast genus of plants, overburdened with species, among which there is great diversity of habit; and the exotic ones, chiefly African, undoubtedly require skilful investigation;

roots annual, or more generally perennial; herbage cottony; stem shrubby. Smith describes ten native species. The common cudweed (G. germanicum) is found in almost all pastures, fields, and waste ground on a barren gravelly soil; stems from six to eighteen inches high; whole herb grey and cottony. (Eng. Flora, vol. iii. p. 418.) This is a somewhat singular wild plant, and has many varieties; all of which were formerly regarded as medicinal, particularly that variety called the "herb impious;" a name derived from the circumstance of the young flowers rising above the old ones, — suggesting the idea of children contemning and discarding their parents. Cudweed is a low plant, seldom rising to a foot high. Its stalks are white, slender, and upright thickly covered with leaves, which are small, white, pointed at the ends, and oblong in form. The flowers are yellowish, standing at the tops and in the division of the stalk. A decoction of the herb in small beer is a remedy among the poor in many places for quinsies. The herb laid among linen, &c. prevents the breeding of moths.

CULLEY. The name of a distinguished family of farmers, to whom the agriculture of England is under very considerable ob ligations. Two brothers of the family, Matthew and George Culley, were seated originally on their paternal property of Denton, at Gainsford near Darlington (now, 1841, in the possession of Mr. Matthew Culley), whence they migrated in June 1767, to Fenton, in Glendale, county of Northumberland; and "On the 4th of August in that year, on my road to a fair at Kelso," says Mr. George Culley, in a letter to Arthur Young (Ann. of Agr. vòl.xx. p. 162.), "I first saw a field of drilled turnips." "They carried with them into Glendale," says Mr. John Grey (Journ. of Roy. Agr. Soc. vol. ii. p. 152.) "superior knowledge and intelligence, which they at once brought to bear in their extensive undertakings with unremitting application and perseverance.

- That they were successful in their efforts is an undoubted fact. Thus on the farm of Wark, near Coldstream, which they entered in May 1786, the crop was valued to them from the preceding tenant, and was estimated at 15 bushels per acre for oats, and 9 for wheat. But the crop on the same farm after being in their occupation for fifteen years, was estimated at 84 bushels per acre for oats, 62 for wheat, and 72 for barley. (Ibid. p. 158.) The rent of this farm of 1200 acres in 1786, was 800%.; in 1812, it was 32007. Matthew Culley died in 1805, in the 73d year of his age, and George in 1814, aged 79, both in Glendale. The Culleys were the warm friends and correspondents

The variety employed in this experiment was the early. An equal of whole, moderately sized potatoes, that had been treated in three different modes, were planted the last week of March. No. 1. twenty sets that had been carefully kept cold and dry throughout the winter, firm, unshrivelled, and with scarcely any symptoms of vegetation. No. 2. twenty sets that had been kept warm and moist, and from which the shoots, after attaining a length of six inches, had been thrice removed. No. 3. twenty sets which had been kept warm and moist for about half the time that No. 2. had, from which the shoots, three inches in length, had been removed only twice. All the sets were planted the same morning, each exactly six inches below the surface, and each with an unsprouted eye upwards. The spring was genial; of No. 1. nineteen plants came up. The twentieth seemed to have been removed by an accident. Of the nineteen, not one was curled. The produce of a full average crop of No. 2., all came up, but twelve days later than those of No. 1., and three of the plants sixteen days later. Fourteen of the plants were curled. Of No. 3. all came up, but from ten to fourteen days later than No. 1. Four plants were as severely curled as those in No. 2.; eight were less so and the remainder not at all. But of these the produce was below an average, and a full fortnight later in ripening.

Dickson, Crichton, Knight, and others (Caledonian Hort. Mem.; Hort. Trans.; Loudon's Gard. Mag. &c.), have found that tubers taken up before they are fully ripened, produce plants not so liable to the curl as those that have remained in the ground until completely perfected: and I believe, under ordinary treatment, this to be the fact, for it is rational. The process of ripening proceeds in the potato as in the apple. After it has been gathered, and until that is perfected, it is accumulating vigour, shows no appetency to vegetate, consequently is not exhausting its vitality,

which is a great point, considering the careless mode usually adopted to store them through the winter, for this energy commences its decline from the moment it begins to develope the parts of the future plant. Tubers taken from the soil before perfectly ripe, never are so early in showing symptoms of vegetation. Crichton, Hunter, and Young in some of the works before referred to, have also agreed, that ex posing the sets to light and air, allowing them to become dry and shrivelled, also induces the curl in the plants arising from them. This result of experience also confirms my conclusion that the disease arises from deficient vital energy; for no process more than this drying one of exposure to the light and air, tends to take away from a tuber altogether the power of vege tating. Mr. G. Maker, a farmer, residing in the same village that I do, employed in 1836 rather small sets, cutting a moderate sized potato into at least two pieces: unfavourable weather, other business, and a somewhat dilatory habit, caused him to leave those sets upon a barn floor drying for more than a week. He planted with them a two acre field, and not more than three-fifths vegetated, of which three-fifths, a fourth were in various degrees curled. Similar results were obtained in the experiments of Mr. Wright, a market gardener of Westfield. When the sets were allowed to ferment in a heap, and to sprout, &c. he had a crop, one-fifth of which was curled. (Gard. Mag. vol. x. p. 436.)

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Every one acquainted with the cultivation of the potato, is aware of the great difference existing in the varieties as to their early and rapid vegetation: those that excel in this quality, of course are the most easily excitable. A consequence of this is, that they are always planted earliest in the spring, before their vital power has become very active; and, of all crops, practice demonstrates these early ones are least liable to the curl. But what is the consequence on the contrary; if an early variety planted for a main crop later in the spring. when extraordinary pains in keeping them cold and dry have not been employed to check their vegetation, and consequent decrease of vital energy, such then, more than any other, are liable to the disease. The statements of a practical man in the Gardener's Magazine (vol. x. p. 433.) entirely support my views of the disease. He remarks that, in 1826, through the prevalence of rain, the late crop of potatoes never sufficiently ripened so as to be mar ketable. They were reserved for planting next season, and the consequence was, that the curl affected the crops that year to

crops