I therefore made a wooden flue, to fix on the sixteen-inch piece, when it completely stopped the smoke. I then fixed it in a sloping direction (g), when a little smoke came out; I then took it completely away, as I was convinced the sixteen-inch flue answered the best. I have made a stop to put on the sixteen-inch flue, as the chimney draws well when it is not frosty weather, and no smoke in the least comes out at the tube (b) when it is not frost." 5 On the Winter Management of Bees, by a Clergyman, in Morayshire. Communicated by Miss ANN DINGWALL. Dated Feb. 9th. IN a severe winter, bees are for the most part asleep, and do not eat much of their honey; in a mild winter they are in motion, and eating, and have not an opportunity of renovating their stores from flowers. Keeping these facts in view, and the winters in Morayshire being remarkable for mildness, Miss Dingwall's friend put his bees to rest in the month of October, by burying them in a peat-stack; and did not restore them to motion till the willows were in blossom, in the following April. The success was most complete, and the practice worthy of imitation in other districts, by placing the hives in cold dark cellars, or ice-houses. 6. Historical Notice of two Varieties of the Garden Pea. By Mr. T. H. MASTERS, Eden Nursery, Stoke Newington. Dated Feb. 25. MASTER'S Imperial Marrow Pea was raised a few years since by Mr. W. Masters, seedsman, Canterbury. Among some green marrow-fat peas which he was saving for seed, he observed one or two very different from the rest, which were carefully preserved, and they have proved a valuable addition to our list of peas; they are hardy, and grow about five feet high; their size, dark green colour, and richness of flavour, will always recommend them at table. The Dwarf Knight's Marrow Pea was raised by a gentleman's gardener, in the vicinity of Sittingbourne, Kent, and is a newer variety than the preceding one. This pea attains nearly the same height as the Blue Prussian Pea, but never higher; in all other respects, even to the shrivelly appearance of the seed, it resembles the very excellent pea raised by the indefatigable President of the Horticultural Society. 7. On the Cultivation of Pear Trees for Perry. By RusTICUS, of Kent. Dated Feb. 25th. RUSTICUS observes, that in many orchards, containing apple and pear trees, the apples will be found cankered and un healthy, while the pears are sound and vigorous. The pear, he says, is naturally less capricious than the apple, both in regard to soil and situation. For this reason, he suggests, that pear trees, especially those kinds whose fruit is adapted for perry, should be more frequently planted than at present. In every orchard he would have both apples and pears, in such quantities as to admit of making the fruit into cider or perry; and as the pear crop often succeeds when the apple crop fails, when cider could not be made, perry might be had. 8. Remarkable Specimens of Paeonia Papaveracea, Madras Citron, and Magnolia Conspicua, in the Gardens of Wormleybury, in Hertfordshire. Communicated by Sir ABRAHAM HUME, Bart. F. R. S. H. S. &c. the Proprietor. Dated March 18. Paonia Papaveracea is in a house 16 feet long, 10 feet wide, and 8 feet high, and is entirely filled with the plant, so that its circumference may be estimated at 39 feet; and it would be still larger if the tree had sufficient space. There are on it at this time 630 buds. The Madras Citron is 21 feet in height, and 15 feet in width, trained on the wall and partly on the glass roof of the conservatory. It bore last year between three and four dozen of fruit, some of which weighed above five pounds. Magnolia Conspicua (fig. 31.) is 20 feet in height, and spreads 20 feet on the wall, and 5 feet above it. It requires no protection, and produced a year or two ago above 900 flowers; this year 730 are coming out. PART II. REVIEWS. ART. I. Systematic Botany. Caroli Linnæi Systema Vegetabilium, editio decima-sexta curante CURTIO SPRENGEL. Vols. 1. & 2. Gottinge, 1825, 8vo. THE HE physical sciences are generally supposed to depend almost entirely upon the powers of human observation for their perfection and final developement, and it was formerly admitted as an incontrovertible axiom, that philosophical induction or metaphysical classification had little or no effect upon the actual amount of ascertained facts, or, which is the same thing, upon the elements of science. It has been a common belief that the classification of natural objects had no other end than that of forming a sort of index to the science of natural history, and that systems bore the same relation to sciences as alphabets to languages. With regard to botany, the description of a plant, with a detail of its qualities in medicine or art, actual or supposed, was the utmost which was attempted by the most celebrated writers, and it certainly was never by such persons for a moment supposed that an acquaintance with the mutual relations and affinities of the vegetable kingdom, would in any degree influence the discovery of new objects. But the experience of modern times has shown that directly the reverse of this opinion is consonant with facts, and that so long as the mind remained occupied in no other manner than in the acquisition of new plants, without knowing in what way to appreciate their respective peculiarities, discoveries continued to be made slowly, and to be of little value when made. As soon, however, as botanists arrived at the art of arranging, upon philosophical principles, the materials which they possessed, their attention was strongly directed towards supporting their respective systems by the addition of new objects and of new facts. Their minds were excited by the hope of undiscovered forms, enabling them to fill up chasms which, they could not fail to perceive, existed in the most perfect methods known to them; and the strenuous investigations instituted on this account, naturally brought them acquainted with an abundance of subjects, the existence of which the imperfection of their previous knowledge could not. have led them to suspect. Thus we perceive, that during the space of more than 5,500 years, from the creation of the world, to the time of Casalpinus, a period during the greater part of which botany was an humble art, necessarily, from its intimate connection with the wants of mankind, the study of physicians, the whole number of recorded plants of all descriptions scarcely equalled the quantity now produced, under the auspices of science, by the investigations of a twelvemonth. This will be placed in a stronger point of view, by a glance at the history of botany up to the appearance of the work which stands at the head of this article. In the early ages of the world, the science which is now called botany, consisted of a collection of names, and exceedingly imperfect descriptions of plants, either entirely unarranged, or combined according to their supposed qualities in medicine, or in human economy. The first race of botanists were, therefore, physicians, or mere simplers, who cared for no classification beyond that which enabled them to arrive at a knowledge of the powers and effects of the few herbs which were imported for pharmacy, or which grew in their vicinity. Even after the revival of learning in Europe, the same ideas were entertained, and a proportionate progress was made in the acquisition of knowledge. The second race of botanists, or those who existed after the dark ages of Europe had passed away, were the commentators upon the writings of the first race; men of some learning, indeed, but in the deepest ignorance of the subject they undertook to illustrate; monks, whose practical knowledge extended not beyond the walls of their monastery, and who depended for all the information they found necessary to their purposes upon the assistance they could derive from the few copies of the Arabian physicians which their own or their monastic libraries might chance to possess. Science, in the hands of such men, would, it may be easily believed, retrograde rather than make advances towards improvement. So that up to the time of Vincentius Bellovacensis, who has been called the Pliny of the middle ages, and whose Speculum Quadripartitum was published in 1494, the second volume of which is devoted to the subject of Natural History, it may be safely affirmed that no progress whatever in modern times had been made in botany; the whole of this author's materials having been borrowed from Aristotle, Dioscorides, Isidorus Macer, Pliny, Avicenna, Platearius Actor, and Cassius Felix, an obscure writer, whose works are lost. But the practical ignorance of the monks was not the only evil which impeded the advance of physical knowledge. They were in many instances deplorably unlearned in the languages from which they borrowed their opinions. With Arabic, the only source to them of new ideas, they were in most instances imperfectly acquainted; and the degree of knowledge which they possessed, even in the Greek language, was so low, that they were led into the commission of continual errors, even in translating the fables of classical writers into the dreams of themselves. Another, and a more serious consequence than the decline of science, was the result of this deplorable state of botanical learning, which, as a modern writer has justly observed, was so desperate, that it is not more surprising that it should ever have arrived at such a condition than that it should ever have been extricated from it. By a frequent misinterpretation of the Arabic writers it not unfrequently came to pass that properties were ascribed to plants which were directly the reverse of those which the original authors attributed to them; a curious instance of which occurred with respect to the cinnamon. This was for a long time considered a deadly poison, in consequence of Nicolaus Myrepsicus, a Greek physician who flourished in the thirteenth century, having translated Dar-sini, the name given to the cinnamon by the Arabians, by the word agrévixov. The time, however, arrived, when some truly learned men undertook the exposition, not only of the blunders of their contemporaries, but of the ignorance of those original authors in whom a blind confidence had for so many ages been reposed. The bold attack of Hermolaus Barbarus upon Pliny, and of Nicolaus Leonicenus upon Serapio, and the Arabian writers, the one published at the end of the fifteenth century, the latter at the commencement of the sixteenth, put an end to the delusion under which the world had laboured for so long a time. These men fearlessly tore the mask from before the face of the impostors of their day, and boldly succeeded in convincing the world that the ignorance of antiquity had been mistaken for the experience of ages; and a new impulse was given to the pursuits of naturalists, not only by these writers, but also by the declaration of Collenuti, an earnest defender, indeed, of the originality of Pliny, that " non satis esse ad herbariam perdiscendam tradendamque, herbarios scriptores legere, plantarum videre picturas, Græca vocabula |