To the Editor of the Farmers' Register.

EXHAUSTING AND IMPROVING CULTIVATION.

Powhatan, April 13th, 1834.

I then, with a couple of large two-horse drags, harrowed the land the same way it was broken up, which smoothed the surface, although the weather was very dry. On the 27th of September, I have, for some time, desired that some one following, I commenced sowing upon this lot about would undertake to correct the evils prevailing in twenty-five bushels of wheat, harrowing it the our county, to the devastation and entire destruc- same way that the land was ploughed, and lapping tion of the value of our lands, by hard and exces-about half the width of the harrows, by which sive culture, and which ought to have opened the means the land was gone over twice, the lapped eyes of more gentlemen who are really practical part finishing the work as it went on; the hoe farmers, well-informed, and influential in many hands followed, chopped over, cleared out the laudable things, but who appear to me, to have water-furrows, and grips, and broke up all the yielded without a struggle to this ruinous system clods. The prospect for a crop is, at this time, of management. By pursuing this course, detrimental to their own interest and diminishing the wealth of our beloved commonwealth, they have already caused, and will continue to produce that abandonment of their native state and emigration to the west, which has been forced upon our people by their increasing necessities. That this diminution in the value of our lands is too much owing to neglect and bad management, and that an improved plan of cultivation will, with but little additional industry, effect a very great and desirable change in the present gloomy appearance of our lands, must, I think, be evident to all who bestow even a slight degree of attention on this important subject. To reclaim our exhausted lands, is not so impracticable as it has been considered: but it requires the dissemination of information acquired by experience, and the free interchange of opinion on agricultural subjects. The work in which you have engaged, is a proper channel for the communication of this mutual instruction, which I look upon as a safeguard of our happiness, and a harbinger of our future prosperity: and I consider it the duty of each subscriber to the Register,' to contribute all in his power to the general stock of information. Under a sense of this duty, and not with a vain expectation of imparting any material benefit to my brother farmers, I have been induced to address you; and I have been the more encouraged to do so, from having already observed the good which has resulted from the communications of some of your earlier correspondents. Having for eight or ten years past, been in the thirty acres is to be fallowed in the course of this habit of partially grazing my land, and having summer, and laid down in wheat this fall; and in found, as I supposed, an improvement therefrom, the spring ensuing the whole of this part will be I took up an idea that by pursuing this course, sown in clover. I have no standing pasture, but with the addition of all my manure, (a scanty por- use a tract of rented land for grazing; and should tion however,) I could restore my farm to its origi-be pleased to learn what kind of grass would be nal productiveness. But the period within which most profitable, and prosper best, if sown in the I had hoped to effect this desirable change passed woods for a standing pasture, the undergrowth away, and instead of improving, I had impoverished being first cleared up, the brush cleaned off, and my land. I determined, therefore, to resort to clover; the leaves raked up and hauled away. and in 1831 I sowed a lot of about twenty-four The production of my farm in small grain, has acres with twenty gallons of clover seed. Upon been moderately increasing for several years, by about one-third of this lot, immediately after sow-its having been a little more nursed than some ing, I scattered the chaff of three crops of wheat, others. I have for some time been in the habit of which had a very happy effect: for although the top-dressing. I have top-dressed clover one year whole of the seed took tolerably well, it came up old with wheat straw, put on in the fall. This much thicker upon this portion of the lot, and plan is well adapted to produce a vigorous growth would have produced more than twice the quan- of clover in the ensuing spring. I have also used tity, by weight, had it been cut and tried. The ashes on the surface, at the rate of one bushel to clover here lodged. It should be mentioned how-thirty feet square, well spread, upon wheat and ever, that the land on this part of the lot was better than the rest. In April, twelve months after the clover was sown, I had plastered it with one ton of plaster to the whole. This clover was turned under last August, (1833) with double ploughs, breaking the land to the depth of six or eight inches. VOL. II.-2

very promising, and I shall not be much mistaken in my calculation when I say that the product will be more than seventy-five per cent. greater than I have ever made from the same land. I am confident that I have added to the fertility of this land more in two years than could have been done in six, in the way I at first attempted its improvement; and that by some similar course of culture, land may be so highly improved, that a crop of small-grain will lodge upon it, and render the cultivation of other crops necessary to reduce its exuberant fertility.

Having abandoned the three-shift system altogether, and pursuing now a different mode of cultivation, I may hereafter give you the results of my experience, when I have acquired more than I now possess. In the mean time, it may be not uninteresting, to give you some account of the present state of my little farm. It consists of about two hundred and thirty acres, divided by a fence running nearly through the middle of the plantation. On one side of this fence is the fresh land, being the smallest portion, and containing about one hundred acres, which is already sown in wheat and clover; (the clover up tolerably well:) on the opposite side are one hundred and thirty acres of land, much more lean. Each of these divisions will be subdivided by turning-rows, so as to make two fields of fifty acres on one side, and two of sixty-five on the other side of the fence. It is not my intention, however, to commence with corn upon any one of my fields until the year 1836: in the meantime the division of one hundred and

clover, then covered with litter from the stable; consisting principally of wheat straw, thrown out every morning into a pen, and allowed to go through a fermentation. This I think the best top-dressing I have ever tried.

I have top-dressed land too poor to bring a crop

of any kind, with leaves from the wood, mixed are neglected and abandoned to destruction: with wheat straw, which I think answers well, if whereas, if our lands were cultivated in grain and fallowed afterwards for wheat. The most abun- clover, with other valuable grasses, they would dant manure we have is that from the farm pen, present a very different aspect, with much more the top-dressing with which should be done in a valuable returns. careful manner; great regularity should be maintained in spreading it to prevent the tender plants from being stifled: other advantages also will result from this care: the manure will cover a greater surface, and the land will be regularly benefited, whereas, if it is carelessly spread, the crop will be uneven, unseemly to the eye, and much less productive.

I am now trying an experiment in the cultivation of new-ground corn, which I had heard of some time ago, as well as more recently. The land is not cleared of the leaves, trash, sticks, &c., which are not too much in the way of the plough or coulter; and after the operation of the coulter, the ground is hilled up five and a half feet apart one way, and two and a half the other, chopping down the hills low, opening holes at the same time, into which four or five grains of corn in a hill are dropped. The crop is cultivated with coulters first, and then with bar-share ploughs, and should be laid by just before harvest. Once hilling will be sufficient, and that when the corn is about twelve inches high; taking care to chop out the bushes after harvest. A preparation of this kind is exactly calculated to add to the natural fertility of the land, and must, I think, be the best plan to preserve the productiveness of the maiden soil: it saves, besides, the labor of hauling off the litter, unless it is intended, by collecting and burning it, that the first blow in the destruction of the soil should be struck by the hand of the owner, instead of his adding to his land whatever may repay him for his labor in its cultivation.

In some instances, however, a farmer might make a small crop of tobacco with advantage. If he owned only a small tract of land, and too many hands to find employment in the cultivation of a crop of small grain, and was unwilling to hire out any part of his negroes, he might, by resorting to a tobacco crop, keep them profitably employed for a few years."

ORIGIN AND USE OF TOBACCO.

S. B.

From the London Penny Magazine. Tobacco was introduced into Europe from the province of Tabaca in St. Domingo, in 1559, by a Spanish gentleman, named Hernandez de Toledo, who brought a small quantity into Spain and Portugal. From thence, by the means of the French ambassador at Lisbon, Jean Nicot, from whom it derived its name of Nicotia, it found its way to Paris, where it was used in the form of a powder by Catherine de Medici. Tobacco then came under the patronage of the Cardinal Santa Croce, the pope's nuncio, who, returning from his embassy at the Spanish and Portuguese courts, carried the plant to his own country, and thus acquired a fame little inferior to that which, at another period, he had won by piously bringing a portion of the real cross from the Holy Land. Both in France and in the Papal States it was at once received with general enthusiasm, in the shape of snuff; but it was some time after the use of tobacco as snuff, that the practice of smoking it commenced. This practice is generally supposed to have been introduced into England by Sir Walter Raleigh; but Camden says, in his Elizabeth,' that Sir Francis Drake and his companions, on their return from Virginia 1585, were "the first, as far as he knew, who introduced the Indian plant, called Tabacca or Nicotia, into England, having been taught by the Indians to use it as a remedy against

It is insisted that the next crop after the corn should be tobacco, by which the planter may avoid the labor of hauling off or burning the leaves, and may, at the same time, improve his new land. But upon estimating the profit and loss upon the cultivation of tobacco for a century past, (not half the time from its commencement,) am disposed to think the planter a loser to no little amount. It indigestion. And from the time of their return," is owing, in my opinion, to that crop principally, says he, "it immediately began to grow into very that the face of our country presents so melancholy general use, and to bear a high price; a great many an aspect. Take a glance at the states to the persons, some from luxury, and others for their north of us, and see if it requires a Solomon to health, being wont to draw in the strong-smelling judge the difference of the two countries. Theirs smoke with insatiable greediness through an is a grain and grass growing country, and quad- earthenware tube, and then to puff it forth again ruples ours in the product of small grain to the through their nostrils; so that tabacca-taverns, acre: here, to the unsuccessful culture of grain and (tabernæ tabaccante) are now as generally kept grass, we add a tobacco crop, the worst of all in all our towns, as wine-houses or beer-houses." others to impart any benefit to the soil on which it No doubt the tobacco-taverns of Queen Elizagrows. The labor in cultivating tobacco, can beth's times were not unworthy predecessors of scarcely, at any time, be intermitted longer than the splendid cigar divans of the present day. It three days; and all other crops whatever, except appears from a note in the Criminal Trials, vol. i. in time of harvest, (and I have seen thousands of p. 361, that in 1600, the French ambassador, in plants topped in harvest,) must wait for the to- his despatches, represented the Peers, on the trial bacco; and after it is made, it frequently remains of the Earls of Essex and Southampton, as smokupon hand for twelve months or longer, because ing tobacco copiously while they deliberated on the price it can command, will not more than half their verdict. Sir Walter Raleigh, too, was acrepay the cost of the labor bestowed upon it; and cused of having sat with his pipe at the window when at length it is sold, not one hogshead in a of the armoury, while he looked on at the executhousand, perhaps, commands ten dollars. The tion of Essex in the Tower. Both these stories remainder is sold at from three to five dollars per are probably untrue, but the mere relation of cwt. and during the numerous operations requisite them by contemporaneous writers shows that they in its cultivation and preparation for market, gul-were not then monstrously incredible, and they leys are forming and increasing; and the fences therefore prove the generality of the practice of

smoking at that time amongst the higher class of English Dictionary of Francis Holy-oke. The copy society. After a time, however, the practice of before us was printed in 1659, the last year of the life smoking tobacco appears to have met with stre- of Oliver Cromwell; but as it is the seventh edition, it nuous opposition in high places, both in this coun- is probable that the whole of this account of "Tatry and other parts of Europe. Its principal op- bacco" is much older than the book itself, and was ponents were the priests, the physicians, and the

Sovereign princes; by the former its use was de- probably copied without alteration from the first, clared sinful; and, in 1684, Pope Urban VIII. pub-through every successive edition of the dictionary. lished a bull, excommunicating all persons found "Tabacco herba ab insula Tabaco, &c. A kind of herbe guilty of taking snuff when in church. This bull called Tabacco, it is like henbane, and may be called was renewed in 1690, by Pope Innocent; and, the Indian henbane, hot and dry in the third degree about twenty-nine years afterwards, the Sultan (as I take it.) The juyce of the greene leafe is good Amurath IV. made smoking a capital offence. to cure any greene wound, though it be poysoned, the For a long time smoking was forbidden in Russia, syrup is good for divers diseases, the smoake of the under pain of having the nose cut off; and in some leafe dryed and taken in a pipe, is used as in old time parts of Switzerland, it was likewise made a sub- Tussilage was, for the cure of the Tissike, the cough ject of public prosecution-the police regulations of the lungs, distillations of Rheumes, cold, toothach, of the Canton of Berne, in 1661, placing the pro-headach, and in fine whatsoever disease commeth of a hibition of smoking in the list of the Ten Com-cold and moyst cause, and good for all full bodies, that mandments, immediately under that against adultery. Nay, that British Solomon, James I., did are cold and moyst of constitution, if it be moderately not think it beneath the royal dignity to take up his pen upon the subject. He accordingly, in 1603, published his famous Counterblaste to Tobacco, in which the following remarkable passage occurs: "It is a custom loathesome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmfull to the braine, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless." But notwithstanding this regal and priestly wrath, the use of the plant extended itself far and wide; and tobacco is at this moment, perhaps the most general luxury in existence. The allusion to the practice in the following lines, taken from the Marrow of Compliment,' written in 1654, seems to show the prevalence of smoking at that period:

used, and taken upon an empty stomacke, and that it

"Much meat doth Gluttony procure
To feed men fat as swine;
But he's a frugal man indeed,

That on a leaf can dine!

He needs no napkin for his hands,
His fingers' ends to wipe,
That hath his kitchen in a box,
His roast meat in a Pipe!"

be good Indian, and not sophisticated, Immoderatly taken, it dryeth the body, inflameth the blood, burteth [burneth?] the braine and intoxicateth, breedeth wind and crudity, and hath a bewitching facultie that when men use it overmuch they cannot leave it. See Weekerus and others; now of the syrupe of Tabacco they make a vomit."]

From the Library of Useful Knowledge.

AGE OF THE HORSE.

The method of judging the age of a horse is by examining the teeth, which amount to forty when complete; namely, six nippers, or incisors, as they are sometimes called, two tushes, and six grinders on each side, in both jaws. A foal, when first born, has in each jaw the first and second grinders developed; in about a week the two centre nippers make their appearance, and within a month a third grinder. Between the sixth and ninth month the whole of the nippers appear, completing the colt's mouth. At the completion of the first year, a fourth grinder appears, and a fifth by the end of the second year. At this period a new

[Before meeting with the foregoing article, we had marked several passages from old authors on this sub-process commences, the front or first grinder giv

ject, which will make a suitable addition.

King James in his Counterblaste says tobacco "makes a kitchen, also, often in the inward parts of men, soyling and infecting them with an unctious and oily kind of soote, as hath been found in some great tobacco takers, that after their death were opened:" and in his Witty Apothegms, after observing that "a tobacco pipe is a lively image of hell," the royal author specifies the things which he most abhorred, by saying that "were I to invite the devil to dinner, he should have three dishes-1st a pig; 2d a pole of ling, and mustard; and 3d a pipe of tobacco for digesture."

Old Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy, says of tobacco-"a good vomit I confesse; a vertuous herbe, if it be well qualified, opportunely taken, and med? cinally used; but as it is commonly used by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a mischiefe, a violent purger of goods, lands, health; hellish, develish, damned tobacco; the ruin and overthrow of body and soule."--Anatomy of Melancholy.

The following account of tobacco is from the Latin

ing way, which is succeeded by a larger and permanent tooth, and between two years and a half and three years the two middle nippers are displaced, and succeeded by permanent teeth. At three years old the sixth grinder has either made, year another pair of nippers and the second pair or is about making its appearance. In the fourth of grinders are shed; and the comer nippers, toward the end of the fifth year, are succeeded by permanent teeth, when the mouth is considered almost perfect, and the colt or filly becomes a horse or a mare. What is called the mark of the teeth by which a judgment of the age of a horse

for several years may be formed, consists of a portion of the enamel bending over and forming a little pit in the surface of the nipper, the inside and This soon begins to wear down, and the mark bottom of which becomes blackened by the food. becomes shorter and wider, and fainter. By the end of the first year the mark in the two middle teeth is wide and faint, and becomes still wider and fainter till the end of the third year, by which time the centre nippers have been displaced by.

the permanent teeth, which are larger than the others, though not yet so high, and the mark is long, narrow, deep, and black. At four years the second pair of permanent nippers will be up, the mark of which will be deep, while that of the first pair will be somewhat fainter, and that of the corner pair nearly effaced. At this age, too, the tushes begin to appear. Between the fourth and fifth year, the corner nippers have been shed, and the new teeth come quite up, showing the long deep irregular mark; the other nippers bearing evident tokens of increasing wearing. At six years the mark on the centre nippers is worn out, but there is still a brown hue in the centre of the tooth. At seven years the mark will be worn from the four centre nippers, and will have completely disappeared at eight years from them all. It may be added, that it is the lower jaw of the horse that is usually examined, and which is here described. The changes of the teeth taking place in both jaws about the same time, but the cavity of the teeth in the upper jaw being somewhat deeper, the mark lasts longer, though the exact period is a matter of controversy. According to what may be considered good authority, however, it may be stated that at nine years the mark will be worn from the middle nippers, from the next pair at ten,and from all the upper nippers at eleven. During all this time the tushes (the extremities of which are at first sharp-pointed and curved) become gradually blunter, shorter, and rounder.

Good Hope. A fort was erected, roads constructed, gardens planted, houses built, &c.

This island is of triangular shape, about twenty miles in circumference; being eight miles from north to south, and five miles and a half from east to west. It may be seen from the mast-head in clear weather at the distance of ten leagues, its appearance is uneven and rugged, being an assemblage of hills, with a mountain overlooking them from the south. This is called Green Mountain, and is about eight hundred yards in height. The best anchorage at this island is in Turtle Cove, in eight or ten fathoms of water, with the flag-staff on Cross-Hill bearing south-east-halfeast; Rat Corner, south-south-west. Distance from the nearest shore about one mile. A heavy surf often interrupts the landing for several days together.

The whole island is of volcanic origin, and the surface is now partly covered with a reddish soil, while in some places there is a yellow earth resembling ochre. A fine black earth covers the bottom of the valleys, which are now in a fine state of cultivation by the little military colony before alluded to. The island is composed of several conic hills, from two hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty yards in height. Green Mountain has a double top, rising in two peaks, like the Grecian Parnassus. In almost every part of the island, as Mr. Purdy justly observes, are found prodigious quantities of rocks full of holes like a honey-comb; together with calcined stones, very light, and pumice-stones. "The rocks, lying

THE CHANGE OF VOLCANIC PRODUCTS TO upon each other in a very irregular way, and

FERTILE SOIL.

mostly on the declivity of hills, leave great chasms [The slow but certain change of lava and other pro-ty, an observer runs some risk who ventures withbetween them; and as they have very little solididucts of volcanoes to fertile soil, has long been out caution upon them." About the middle of known as a remarkable and general operation of na- the island, and between the hills, there are several ture. The length of time required for this process is as little plains, which are divided into small spaces, various as are the proportions of the materials acted so remarkably distributed that you would take on; and even the shortest periods have generally been them for so many pieces of land cleared of stones, too long to be recorded by authentic history. The and separated from each other by long walls. neighborhood of Siena, in Italy, still remains as barren and desolate as if the volcanic covering of the earth was of recent formation: yet it is known that the eruption that produced it took place more than three thousand years ago. To this, a remarkable contrast is presented in the following account of the island of Ascension, on which, the fertilizing effects of natural causes have rapidly worked to convert a naked and desolate rock, to a fertile habitation for man.]

From Morrell's Voyages.

According to the statement of the officers of the English brig Slaney, who visited this island in February, 1827, Ascension was then (under in a most flourishing state of progressive improvethe government of Lieutenant Colonel Nicholls) ment as to its resources, both natural and artificial. Roads are constructing from the several springs (sixteen in number) to convey water to the garrison; and hopes were entertained of being able to supply a squadron with that essential article in the course of a year, by means of iron pipes from the principal spring to a reservoir near the The island of Ascension was formerly described beach. Pasturage for cattle is making its appearas "a barren uninhabited island in the South At-ance. Sheep, turkeys, guinea-fowls, and live-stock lantic Ocean, without soil or vegetation," and as of every description thrive well. Fruit, such as "an impracticable heap of volcanic ashes." This pines, Indian gooseberries and plantains have been description was once correct; but industry, skill, successfully cultivated. Potatoes, onions, carrots, and perseverance have now rendered a more fa-pease, French beans, and almost every esculent vorable one appropriate. The island is in fact a vegetable have been produced upon the island; shattered volcano, the pulverized materials of and thus from a desert cinder, nature has been which, are rapidly becoming converted into a rich courted successfully to yield most of her useful and fertile soil. It formerly belonged to the Por-vegetable productions. Only two deaths from tuguese, who discovered it in 1501; but in 1816, sickness have occurred at Ascension during the some English families from the island of St. He- last two years (1825 and 1826;) and when we lena settled here, and it was taken possession of consider that gales of wind are unknown to have by the British government as a military station; visited the anchorage there, the value of the island and sixty transport ships provided the garrison of as a rendezvous' and a depot for stores and provitwo hundred men with supplies from the Cape of sions, for a squadron of observation, destined to

cruise either on the African or Brazilian coast hereafter, will obviously repay the liberal attention that has been bestowed upon it."

FLOATING GARDENS OF CASHMERE.

From the London Penny Magazine.

The city of Cashmere, being the capital of the province of that name in Asia, is situated in the midst of numerous lakes, connected with each other, and with the River Vedusta, by canals, separated by narrow lines and insulated plots of ground. Upon these lakes are floating gardens, cut off generally from the body of the lake by a belt of reeds; the cultivation of which is not only very singular, but highly profitable, and worthy of imitation in many parts of Europe as a resource for raising food for man. The second number of the Journal of the Geographical Society' contains a notice of the Natural Productions and Agriculture of Cashmere, from which the following account is compiled:

among the reeds at the bottom of the lake from the side of a boat, and turned round several times, a quantity of plants are torn off from the bottom, A short time after the visit of the brig Slaney, and carried in the boat to the platform, where the the William Harris, a transport, landed at the weeds are twisted into conical mounds about two island a cargo of live-stock, horses, hares, rabbits, feet in diameter at their base, and of the same pheasants, poultry, partridges, &c., seeds of vege- height, terminating at the top in a hollow, which tables, agricultural implements, and a supply of is filled with fresh soft mud, and sometimes wood necessaries for the garrison, who all enjoyed very ashes. The farmer has in preparation a number good health. In return, she took a large quantity of cucumber and melon plants, raised under mats, of fine turtle, with which the island abounds; and and of these, when they have four leaves, he according to Capt. Leslie, it furnishes the finest places three plants in the basin of every cone or in creation," being "not only fat and large, but in mound, of which a double row runs along the the highest perfection for eating. Their weight, edge of every bed at about two feet distance from in general, is from one to seven hundred pounds. each other. No further care is necessary except They are of all I ever tasted, the fattest and the that of collecting the fruit, and the expense of prefinest; all others I ever saw before bear no comparing the platforms and cones is very trifling. parison with them." Mr. Moorcroft traversed about fifty acres of these floating gardens of growing cucumbers and melons, and saw not above half a dozen unhealthy plants; and he says, he never saw in the cucumber and melon grounds, in the vicinity of populous cities in Europe or in Asia, so large an expanse of plant in a state of equal health or luxuriance of growth. The general depth of the floating beds is about two feet, and some of them are seven feet broad. The season lasts for three months and a half, beginning in June. From the first setting of the fruit to the time of pulling, seven or eight days are the ordinary period. Thirty fullsized fruit from each plant, or from ninety to a hundred from each cone, are the average crops. The seed of the melon is brought annually from Baltistan, and the first year yields fruit of from four to ten pounds each in weight; but if the seed be re-sown, the produce of the second year exceeds not from two to three pounds. Unless when eaten to great excess, the melon produces no disorders, The city of Cashmere is subject to considerable and it is remarked that healthy people who live inundations, which have become annually more upon this fruit during the season, become very frequent, through the neglect of the government speedily fat; and the effect upon horses fed upon in not checking the accumulation of weeds and this fruit is reported to be the same. In the early mud, which diminish the depth, and consequently part of the season, cucumbers of full size sell at increase the surface of the lakes. This has sug- the rate of about three for a piece of coin of the gested the expediency of a floating support by value of a halfpenny; but as the weather becomes which vegetables are cultivated in safety, deriving hotter, and the plants get into full bearing, ten, as much moisture as is beneficial without the risk fifteen, and even twenty are purchased for this of being destroyed. Various aquatic plants spring price. It is calculated that every cone yields a from the bottom of the lakes, as water lilies, money return of about eighteen-pence. Allowsedges, reeds, &c.; and as the boats which traverse ing six-pence for labour of every description, and those waters take generally the shortest lines they including also the tax, the clear profit is a shilling can pursue to their destination, the lakes are in for every two square yards. The yield of the some parts cut into avenues as it were, separated melon is numerically less, but the return of profit is by beds of sedges and reeds. Here the farmer at least equal. No other vegetables are raised establishes his cucumber and melon floats, by cut-upon the spaces between the cones, although Mr. ting off the roots of the aquatic plants about two feet under water, so that they completely lose all connection with the bottom of the lake, but retain their situation in respect to each other. When thus detached from the soil, they are pressed into somewhat closer contact, and formed into long beds of about two yards breadth. The heads of the sedges, reeds, and other plants of the float, are next cut off and laid upon its surface, and covered with a thin coat of mud, which, at first interrupted in its descent, gradually sink into the mass of matted stalks. The bed floats, but is kept in its place by a stake of willow driven through it at each end, which admits of its rising and falling in accommodation to the rise and fall of the water. By means of a long pole thrust

Moorcroft thinks that onions, cresses, and other useful vegetables might be raised upon them; and water-mint grows spontaneously upon the floats.

Cashmere, or Cassimere, is one of the northern provinces of India within the Ganges. It is surrounded by mountains, and from its beauty and fertility has been called the Paradise of the Indies. It contains upwards of 100,000 villages, is well stocked with cattle and game, and is said to be unmolested by beasts of prey. The people are ingenious, and resemble the Europeans in their persons, and the women are fair and tall. The famous Cashmere shawls derive their name from this country, though at present the supply that actually comes from it is comparatively small.