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supporting this new practice, by irresistible evidence; and to demonstrate the existence of the course upon which this curious property of fiorin depends; and to deduce, from uncontroverted principles of natural philosophy, that this effect necessarily follows from the cause whose existence I have established.

your countrymen, as I did to the English, that whoever comes, or stands to inspect my proceedings, shall have fiorin roots, strings, seeds, and full instructions on every process relative to it; and also be taught how to know it at home; where, I can assure them, it is the most common grass with which nature has clothed their country.

I have precluded myself from recurring, in this letter, to former Quantity AMOUNT OF FIORIN WIN

publications; and therefore confine myself to a direct answer to your question.

The answer is to the same purport with a notice which I published last year in my own country, and have lately sent to England, viz. That I would mor and make hay on the first and fifteenth of every month, from October to March inclusive; and that I would take care to have hay in the field, exposed to the weather during that whole period.

I commence mowing this year somewhat earlier; and, as I must soon leave the northern shore, I began to cut my Portrush meadow, September 25th.

You saw it four or five days before, and can bear testimony to its high state of vegetation. I made you remark the surface bristling with innumerable green points, like the teeth of a flax hackle; every one of them in full growth, adding rapidly to the length of the string, of which I showed you that it formed the point; of course, that I lost much in quantity by so early mowing.

On the 1st of October, I shall cut the fiorin in my plantations, orchards, that close under hedges, and, in general, whatever is exposed to have its hay adulterated by falling leaves. October 15th, I shall mow my irrigated fiorin, allowing full time to make it into hay, and to take it off before November 10th, when I wish to let in the water.

I shall mow the rest, as suits my convenience, on the 1st and 15th of the succeeding months; promising to

TER CROPS.

For the quantity and the quality of my fiorin crops, I must refer to the printed defence of my sanity, which has been often impeached on account of my paradoxical positions relative to this grass.

You will see there, that it was proved, before the earl of Gosford and lord viscount Northland, by the oath of the person who assisted me in measuring the ground and weighing the hay, that one portion, not manured the preceding year, produced at the rate of six tons the English acre; and that another portion which had been manured, produced at the rate of seven tons, four hundred, 1 quarter, and 8 pounds; that the hay, when weighed, was dry, rattling, and merchantable by weight between man and man. The two noblemen certifying, at the same time, for the superiour quality of the hay.

WINTER GREEN FOOD.

Should the enormous quantity and great value of fiorin crops prove insufficient to tempt your countrymen to venture upon Christmas hay-making, there is another most important use to be derived from fiorin grass, which relieves them from the necessity of encountering so formidable an operation; that is, an inexhaustible stock of winter green food, which can be mowed daily for their milch cows.

Though I have pressed this topick in different publications, I must, in this instance, deviate from my rule of seeking new matter, and earnestly

recommend the culture of fiorin in Scotland, had it nothing to recommend it but this solitary advantage. I do not proceed upon mere speculation; the value of fiorin, as a winter green food, is established by practice. Two years ago [1807] I tried it on a small scale, with complete success. Two acres of this grass last year [1808] left me (after my hay experiments) a considerable quantity for my milch cows, which, while it lasted, both enriched their milk and increased its quantity. For this year I have an abundant stock; and, probably, during the rest of my life, my cows will not taste dry hay. Here is an additional motive for inspecting my proceedings. Those who are not disposed to believe my statements upon the quantity of my fiorin crops; and those who are obstinate in denying the possibility of saving hay in the midst of winter, may be curious about this new fact, and willing to ascertain the existence of a valuable winter green food of such easy acquisition.

PROCESS OF MAKING

CHRISTMAS.

HAY AT

I shall conclude by replying to a question, which you, as well as many others, have often put to me.

By what process can I save hay in the three winter months, when,, exclusive of the deluges of rain, and falls of snow, to which it must be exposed, evaporation is rarely in action; a season, during which the atmosphere is rarely disposed to absorb moisture, but is, generally, parting with what it holds dissolved?

I was not so hardy as to speculate a priori, upon the success of so unusual a practice. The facility of saving fiorin hay in winter, I discovered by accident, as I have detailed minutely in a memoir published in the Transactions of the Belfast Literary Society, and it was some time afterwards that I discovered, and stated to the world, the principle upon which this curious property (peculiar to fiorin

hay) depends. I cannot now go over the same ground again, but shall proceed to what I have not stated before, viz. my mode of making hay

in vinter.

To look for a fine day at that season might be vain, and to wait for it where the quantity of hay is considerable, must be inconvenient; besides, the close flat soil of this grass is always so wet, that rain, at the time of mowing, could not make it worse; but, from the length of the strings, it rises from the scythe so rough in the sward, that the air has a free passage through it, and also in the lap-cock; nor in either does it receive injury, though it should be exposed for weeks without turning. I open out the hay in the first stirring wind, which soon carries off its exteriour damp, whether it came from rain, or was acquired while lying flat on the ground. As for its own internal juices, I am anxious to retain them.

As soon as the surface is dry, I hurry the hay into lap-cocks, when I consider it safe from all danger.

In the next wind (after a week, and I care little how much longer) I open the cocks for half an hour to let the air pass through them; hurry eight or ten of them into a large cock, in which it will stand the winter safely; but, as wind might scatter it, I consider it more prudent, in another windy day, to throw it in to cocks as large as men can build, without treading. These, secured by two ropes (easily made from the long strings) will certainly stand secure until wanted for house or other consumption, and need not be removed from the place where they stand, as their surfaces will not bleach, nor their bottoms rot, as happens in other hay-cocks.

Thus a most troublesome and expensive part of the process of securing our hay will be saved; I mean, that of bringing it home, and putting it into large ricks; an operation, during which, the farmer's whole

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IN the evening of 26th of June, 1809, a terrestrial waterspout appered about a league southeast of Carmagnole, in the department of the Po. The weather was stormy. The cloud which gave rise to this meteor was grayish, and not very large; but it began to lengthen on one side, forming, as it were, a very sharp tail, which approached the earth in a serpentine line. The cloud had then the shape of a reversed cone, part of which emitted a very perceptible yellowish light; this cone, about half way between the summit and base, might be eight or nine yards in circumference. As it approached the earth, a kind of cloud that looked like smoke, having also the appearance of a kind of cone, was formed, and its summit advanced towards the waterspout. The duration of this meteor was twenty minutes, during which it traversed a space of more than eight hundred yards, and then descended in a de luge of water. In its way, it over threw a young oak, and stripped the bark from a mulberry tree, the roots of which were almost entirely laid bare, by the removal of the earth which covered them. The bark was reduced to a dry, whitish, and almost friable substance. The lower cone also exerted its fury upon the dust, which it raised, and the corn which

was then cut in the fields, and which it carried away and dispersed. A man, who was in the line traversed by this phenomenon, feeling himself beginning to rise, held by a bush, that he might not be carried away. A quarter of an hour after the disappearance of the waterspout, there was a thunder storm, with hail. The thermometer was at 18°, and the mercury in the barometer, which at first stood at twenty seven inches six lines, rapidly fell, 2 1-2 lines.

Another phenomenon, attended, however, with still more mischievous effects, occurred on the 8th of July near Aix, in the department of Mont Blanc. The wind was south, and the thermometer at 22°; the cloud in which it originated, appeared in the form of a waterspout, about six miles from Aix, at a considerable elevation. It proceeded along the chain of the Lesser Alps, situated northwest of Chamberry. It was slightly charged with electrick matter, and carried along with it a prodigious mass of flakes of ice, with a tremendous noise. Having traversed the distance of about eighteen miles, along the summit of the mountains, a contrary current of wind meeting it above lake Bourget, about six miles from Aix, detached a portion which was carried toward the north northeast; while the other continued its course

westward, towards the Lyonnois. In both directions, the storm spread devastation through the vallies. The town of Annecy has not a single pane of glass, or tile left whole. The lumps of ice were as large as a man's fist; some weighing 3, 34, and even 4 pounds. Numbers of the country people are wounded; several shepherds are killed, and great

numbers of cattle killed and wounded.. The desolation is general throughout a tract of forty two miles. The progress of the column of ice along the mountain, opposite to Aix, exhibited the most terrifick, and at the same time imposing spectacle that can possibly be conceived.

DESCRIPTION OF MEUDON.

BY MRS. CHARLOTTE SMITH.

YOU ask me, my sister, for a further description of my abode, if that can be called an abode where I am only a transient lodger, and from whence I every moment expect to receive a summons to depart; for, alas! I know not whither! You ask, too, my motives for preferring this place, which in my last letter I told you was melancholy, to Versailles or St. Cloud, where I could equally have the advantage of gardens, or to Chaillot, Passy, or some other pleasant village, more immediately adjoining to Paris. My dear Fanny, I prefer this place, because it is melancholy, and because it is retired. Here, as I wander over the deserted gardens, I seldom meet any body but the men who keep them in something like order, and who do not even look back at me, or mark my solitary walks. There are Meudon two palaces, one of very ancient structure and long quite uninhabited: the other built, or at least repaired, by the dauphin, father of the present king, which Louis the XVIth has occasionally inhabited, and which contains many handsome apartments. They both stand in the same garden, which has never received any modern improvements; and in many parts of it the borders are destitute of their former ornaments; and, of many of the trees and shrubs that remain.

at

Meudon, September 7, 1791. "The boughs are mossed with age, And high tops bald with dry antiquity."

Adjoining to the most ancient of these royal houses, which terminates a long avenue and a large court, is a chapel with an arched gateway, leading to it from the garden, and surrounded by paved passages and high cloisters; and it is on some broken steps, that, near these almost ruinous buildings, lead from the lower to the upper garden, I frequently take my pensive seat, and mark the sun sinking away above the high coppices that are beyond the gardens (and I imagine form a part of them, though I have not yet ventured to wander so far.) A yet more cheerful seat I have found for my less melancholy moods, on the wall of the terrace on the opposite side, which looks down immediately on the village of Meudon; where, among its pleasant looking houses, they still point out the habitation of the celebrated Rabelais. As I never enjoyed, because, perhaps, I do not understand his works, I contemplate it not with so much pleasure as it would afford those who can admire them.-Of late, my Fanny, I have found this view too riante, and have adhered almost every evening, after I have put my little ones to bed, to the old steps: where I hear no sounds but the bell of the convent of Capuchins (which is on a high ridge of land, concealed by

trees, about half a mile from the old palace) or the wind murmuring hollow through the iron gratings and stone passages that lead round the chapel, from whose windows of painted glass I can fancy the sullen genius of superstition peeps forth, sighing over his departed power, in melancholy responses to the summons that call the monks to their evening devotions. I often meet, as I come through the avenue, some of these venerable fathers, who, with slow steps, and downcast eyes, their cowl frequently covering their faces, and their arms crossed upon their breasts, pass me; apparently so occupied by their holy meditations, as not to hold an insignificant being like me worth even a salutation. But why should that seem discourteous, which is probably a part of their religion? I ought also to consider, that, besides the gloomy austerity of their order, they are now, perhaps, more austere, because they are unhappy. They believe their altars are violated, and their profession rendered odious; they fear their subsistence may fail them, and that they may be turned out into a world which is seldom too kind to the unfortunate, and is likely to treat their misfortunes with ridicule instead of pity. I have observed, within this last week, one among them who seems more restlessly wretched than the rest. I remark him every day pass by the windows of the house where I live, with a little basket in one hand, and a staff in the other; his hood always concealing his face; and his tall figure bending as if weighed down by calamity. After the morning duties are over, I see him glide among the trees in the garden, or among the vines that clothe the declivity towards the village. More than once he has come forth of an evening from the cloistered passages of the chapel, and, with solemn step, crossed near me to attend the last offices of the evening, when he hears the VOL.

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bell from the convent echo among the winding colonades. There is something particularly affecting to me, in beholding this solitary mourner, whose griefs, though they are probably of a different kind from mine, are possibly as poignant. Perhaps he was once a gay and thoughtless inhabitant of the world.. He may have seen (for he does not appear to be a young man) these now deserted palaces blazing in the splendour of a voluptuous court. Among its vanished glories, he may have lost all he loved; and he has now, it may be, no other consolation than visiting, in the cimetière of the chapel, the stone on which time is destroying even the sepulchral memorial of his beloved object. My house is just like other French houses; and its only recommendation to me is the melancholy sort of repose, and the solitary walks, which its immediate neighbourhood to the gardens of Meudon afford me. The windows command great part of the view between this place and Paris, to which it would be difficult for the pencil to do justice: with a pen, it were hopeless to attempt it. The first yellow tints of autumn are hardly stealing on the trees, increasing, however, where they have touched them, the beauty of the foliage; the sky is delightfully serene; and a sunset in the gardens here exceeds what I ever saw in England for warmth and brilliancy of colouring. No dew falls, even when the sun is gone, though we may call the evenings now autumnal evenings. I shall probably meet my fellow sufferer, for such I am sure he is, the solitary Capuchin. I have just seen him walk towards the palace garden. Well! and is there not satisfaction in beholding a being, who, whatever may have been his misfortunes, seems to have found consolation and fortitude in religion? I have often entertained a half formed wish that he would speak to me:-perhaps his own sufferings

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