bles, this wheat is most favourably produced. The preparing of the ground is the same as for other descriptions of corn, with the exception that no manure is laid upon it. In Tuscany they till very lightly: the grain is sown in autumn or in spring, but more commonly in autumn, because the straw is reaped more early, and the preparation for the manufacture may be entered upon more promptly; for if the straw be laid by from year to year, it will not bleach so favourably. It is requisite to sow thickly; for the grain comes up in consequence more slenderly, and of course in more considerable quantities. As soon as the stalk has gained sufficient strength, which may be easily proved by breaking it, it is reaped. This time varies between the blossoming of the grain and its full maturity, according to the quality of the seasons, soil, &c. The straw of the wheat that is suffered to ripen for seed serves for the coarser description of hats. As the plant is naturally short, it is plucked up, in order that its length may not be curtailed by cutting it with the sickle or scythe. When the plants are gathered, they are collected in small sheafs of three or four handfulls, and allowed to remain as many days upon the ground. The dew assists in the bleaching; but if the weather threaten rain, they must be quickly housed; for if they be wetted, they will be spoiled and rendered unserviceable for the purpose intended -at least in the manufacture of white hats. The straw being gathered, it is requisite to separate that part which is to be employed in the manufacture of the hat; that is, the upper part, from the first knot to the ear. This operation is less difficult to perform than to describe. When separated, it is collected into small bundles, and the process of bleaching commences, which is done in the following manner :-The straw is put into a large wooden chest until it be filled, with the exception of the centre, that is reserved for a chafing-dish, lighted: the lid of the chest is closed as closely as possible, and in this state it is suffered to remain three or four days. No metal must be used in the making of this chest.

The straw being bleached, it is picked and culled, in which operation the spoiled, rank, and too large stalks, are rejected; and the different qualities of straw (to the number of sixty, according to their delicacy) are separated; and of these, sixty qualities are manufactured.

When picked and sorted, the platting commences. This art is easily learned, and need not be described. Suffice it to say, it differs not from the ordinary mode in the common straw hats. The platting is begun with five straw-threads, and gradually increased to nine, until the whole of the

bottom of the hat be finished, and thus they continue the whole. The platting being completed, it is sewed, after previously cutting off the projecting straws. The sewing of the plats is made upon a form, of which they take the figure. The sewing, which should be managed so as not to expose the threads, is effected by passing the needle under the straws in the platting. The rim of the hat should be from time to time withdrawn during the sewing, to prevent its becoming distorted. It is commonly by the number of rows or plats composing the rim, that the fineness of the hat is distinguished; since this rim being of a settled dimension, the finer the plat, the more material is included in the plat. The straws that exceed the level of the plats are again clipped with scissors.

The hat being completed, it is polished, calendered, and bleached: before it is calendered, and after having been fumigated with sulphur, the straws which have too yellow a hue, or are otherwise defective, are removed the vacancies also in the plats are filled up. The straws are removed by needles and scissors, and the vacancies are supplied by means of a needle threaded with a straw. The hats are smoothed with polishers, passing them uniformly the same way: they are commonly made of box-wood, of a wedge form, with a single handle uniting at its base: they are calendered with a long heated iron of about fifteen pounds weight, passing it also the same way over the plat: the fumigation by sulphur is performed before the hats are either polished or calendered, and in the same chest in which they are first bleached, being previously slightly damped; and they remain in the vapour from 24 to 72 hours. Finally, those of an inferior quality are died black.

Decolouration of Leaves.-Vegetable nutrition. It is well known that when light is excluded from any of the vegetable kingdom, the leaves lose their green colour, and become of a yellowish white. This is from the loss of carbon, which, when the action of light no longer fixes it in the tissue of the plant, is poured out into the atmosphere as carbonic acid, and the plant, deprived of the substance to which it owes its green hue, languishes into a morbid paleness. The change is also produced by the exhaustion of the soil in which the plants are growing. The time will be greater or less according to the degree of nutritive principle.

The same phenomenon may be established by remarking in spring the difference of colour between grain growing in a rich soil, and that growing in a poor soil. In the decolouration of leaves from want of light, there may be plenty of carbon in the plant, but instead of being fixed in the tissue, it is

dispersed under the form of carbonic acid; while, in that arising from the exhaustion of the soil, the carbon, which is the essential colouring principle, is wanting, and therefore the brightest rays of the sun produce no effect. Cold is a third cause of the change of colour in the leaves of plants; this results both from the obstacle opposed by the lowness of the temperature to the nutrition of the leaves, and also from the age of those organs. Those plants which have the greatest vigour of vegetation will always resist the longest the influence of the cold, which tends to suspend their nutrition, and, therefore, to change the colour of their leaves. Hence it is found that a certain depression of the temperature occasions in plants during their developement a suspension of the fixation of the alimentary carbon, and consequently a change in the colour of the leaves; but that the effect of this lowness of temperature will be in a great measure resisted by plants which possess in a considerable degree strong principles of nutrition. These observations tend to prove that it is from the soil that plants principally derive the alimentary matter by which they exist. This is an extractive soluble in water, existing in various proportions

in the different vegetable earths. All carbon which is susceptible of being converted into carbonic acid at the ordinary temperature of the atmosphere, is adapted for the nutrition of plants. This carbon is to be found in the extractive matter which abounds in vegetable earth, and which is also found in solution in all waters, even in the most apparently pure springs. When the water contains a considerable quantity of this matter, it is sensible to the taste; but otherwise its presence cannot be detected, as it is not affected by any chemical re-agent.

It is unquestionably true, that some soils furnish too much aliment to plants: thus wheat growing in a very rich soil, will have an exuberance of leaves, and the stems, borne down by their own weight, are bent towards the earth, by which the vegetation is suspended, and no grain is produced. Even the stems which remain in an upright position produce very little grain; the superabundance of nutrition, producing in the plant the same effect as obesity in animals, considerably diminishes its generative power. The cause of this phenomenon must be sought in an examination of the mechanism of vegetable nutrition.

Transparent and opaque Cuttings of Quills, Tortoiseshell and Whalebone, in Embroidery. -The above materials may be used for embroidery, as steel spangles have usually been. They may be varied under an infinite variety of forms, and may be shaded in every colour. They produce a more airy decoration, are less liable to accident, and are more agree able to the eye, than any spangles hitherto known. Two improvements have been added to this method of embroidery-the one that of rendering the quill of so brilliant a white as to resemble mother-of-pearl, and the other that of employing in the embroideries of gold and silver thread, thread of horse-hair and whalebone.

ARTS.

It is stated that Colonel Fock, of the Russian artillery, has, by experiments at his smelting houses, near St. Petersburgh, ascertained a most important fact in metallurgy. He has proved that the metal may be extracted from the ore by using wood as fuel, without previously reducing it to charcoal. If this information be correct, and the process, which has hitherto been deemed impracticable, can be made known in France, it will be deemed invaluable to the French iron masters, who will, by this means, be relieved from the immense expense now incurred in preparing the charcoal.

John Samuel Dawes, of Bromford, in the parish of West Bromwich, in the county of Stafford, Iron Master, for certain improvements in the manufacture of iron.

William Sneath, of Ison Green, Nottingham, Lace Maker, for certain improvements in machinery for the manufacture of bobbin net lace.

John Dickinson, of Nash Mill, in the parish of Abbotts Langley, in the county of Hertford, Esq. for certain improvements in the manufacture of paper.

March.-VOL. XXXVI. NO. CXXXV.

John Libou, of the Naval Club House, Bond Street, in the county of Middlesex, Esq. Commander in the Royal Navy, for an improved method of constructing capstans.

Moses Teague, of Park End Iron-works, near Calford, in the county of Gloucester, Iron Master, for certain improvements in making and smelting pig iron.

Elijah Galloway, of Blackfriars Road, in the county of Surrey, Engineer, for certain improvements in paddle wheels.

R

BIOGRAPHY.

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A new work from the very successful pen of the author of "Granby," will shortly make its appearance; it is to be entitled " Arlington."

A Fourth Edition of Dr. Granville's" Catechism of Health" has just appeared.

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A new work, entitled "Stories of the Days of Chivalry," will shortly make its appearance. "Stanley Buxton, from the pen of Mr. Galt, is, we hear, likely to be one of those autobiographies in which that Author has so eminently succeeded."

Sir Richard Phillips has just completed the printing, and will publish in a few days, a small closely printed volume upon which he has been many years engaged, called " A Million of Facts," intended to serve as a general Common Place Book, for reference on every subject of probable inquiry and curiosity.

It is proposed to publish a number of Captain G. F. Lyon's Mexican Drawings, descriptive of the Scenery and People about the Mines of Bolanos and Real del Monte.

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"A History of the Church of England," by the Rev. T. Vowler Short, B.D.

"Conjectures concerning the Identity of the Patriarch Job, his Family, the Time in which he

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"Reflections on the Metaphysical Principles of the Infinitesimal Analysis," by M. Carnot; translated by the Rev. W. R. Browell, M.A.

The University Press of Oxford is engaged on the following works:-" Plotini Opera, ex recensione Frid. Creuzer"-" Suide Lexicon, ex recensione, T. Gaisford, L.G.P.R."-" Index Græcitatis Platonicæ, operâ T. Mitchell, A. M."—"The Works of Archbishop Cranmer”-“ A new edition of Bishop Burnet's History of his own Time”— "The Works of Francis Bragge, B.D."-“ Origines Hebrææ; or, the Antiquities of the Hebrew Republic; by Thomas Lewis, M.A."-" The Criterion; or, Miracles examined; by John Douglas, D.D. Bishop of Salisbury."

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"Illustrations of the Christian Faith and Christian Virtues;" drawn from the Bible. By M. S. Haynes, Author of "Scenes and Thoughts," &c.

"Dr. Lardner's Cabinet Library." Vol. IX. (Memoirs of the Duke of Wellington, Vol. 11.)

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A new novel, entitled "The Jesuit," is in the Press and may shortly be expected.

THE REV. GEORGE CRABBE.

The Rev. George Crabbe was born at Aldborough, in Suffolk, in 1754, where his

father was then an officer of the customs. He was originally destined for the medical profession, and actually served his apprenticeship to a surgeon-apothecary and man midwife. He had, however, no taste for physic; his genius and talents directed him into the paths of literature, and instead of poring over Hippocrates and Galen, he was imeditating on the poets of antiquity and the master bards of England. His love for poetry developed itself at an early age, and his first published effusions appeared in the Lady's Magazine-a periodical publication of greater repute in those days than at present. These poems obtained for him some degree of notice, and such was the encouragement he received, that at the age of twenty-four he came to London, where he had the good fortune to find a friend in the illustrious Edmund Burke. Encouraged by the favourable opinion and honoured with the advice of that eminent man, (in whose presence most of the poems were written, and to whose critical judgment they were, when complete, submitted,) the author published, in 1781, "The Library," which, as might be expected from such very high auspices, met with a most favourable and flattering reception from the public. Soon after this he published The Village," which raised him still higher in reputation, and stamped him as a genuine poet. This last poem obtained the approval of Dr. Johnson. The praise and favour of such men as Johnson and Burke might well have stimulated him to further exertion; but whether from the indolence or unambitiousness of his disposition, he seems about this period to have deserted the Muses, and to have betaken himself to the more serious and solemn duties of his profession. He took holy orders -was admitted at Cambridge, and at the age of twenty-five entered the church by the of the celebrated Doctor Watson, patronage then Bishop of Llandaff. He soon afterwards became Chaplain to the Duke of Rutland on his appointment to the Viceroyalty of Ireland; and some years afterwards, through the friendship and patronage of that nobleman's family, he obtained the rectory of Troubridge in Wiltshire, where he remained until his death. For many years after he settled at Troubridge, Mr. Crabbe retired from the gaze of the world, with the solitary exception of having published a poem, intitled "The Newspaper," in 1785. In 1807 he published a collection of "Poems," which were perused in manuscript by Lord Holland, and were read

The only performance in prose which he ever wrote was "A Natural History of the Vale of Belvoir," and which was incorporated by Mr. Nichols in his History of Leicestershire. The characteristics of Mr. Crabbe's style of poetry are originality of thought, truth, depth and pathos of description, with the happy diction and polished versification of Goldsmith. He formed a sort of connecting link between the literature of the last century and of the present day. He was the last surviving celebrated man mentioned by Boswell in connection with Johnson, with the exception of the venerable Lord Stowell. He was a scholar, and a preacher too, we have heard, of much ability. He sometimes visited London, but preferred Troubridge, where he expired after a short illness on the 8th of February, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. It is understood that a poem of his composition is extant in manuscript, the booksellers being actually afraid, while the present poetryphobia" is prevalent in the world of letters, to venture on the publication of a new work in verse, even by so popular an author. At a Meeting of the Council of the Royal Society of Literature, on the 14th of April 1828, the two royal golden medals of the value of fifty guineas each, given annually to individuals distinguished by the production of works eminent in literature, were adjudged to Crabbe, as the head of an original school of composition.

The following passages, which we extract from a Memoir in the Athenæum, present a just view of the peculiar character of the poet's compositions.

"The rustic population of the land are neither so wretched nor so depraved as the reverend bard describes them; there is no want of worth and talent among the poor; and, though we acknowledge that sin abounds, and that the manners of many are shameless, we hold it to be bad taste in the Muse to close the right eye on all the virtues, and open the left on all the wretchedness of the peasantry, and, pitching her voice to a tone sarcastic and dolorous, sing of the cureless sores and feculence of the land. There is, no doubt, something wrong in the internal construction of that poet who considers that every man with a

ragged coat and every woman with uncombed locks are fallen and reprobate, and who dipping his brush in the lake of darkness paints merry old England as a vagrant and a strumpet. If we, however, dislike the foundation on which this