ODE TO THE POPPY.

By the late Mrs. O'Neil, of Shane's-Castle. NOT for the promise of the labour'd field,

Not for the good the yellow harvests yield,
I bend at Ceres' shrine;

For dull to humid eyes appear
The golden glories of the year;
Alas! a melancholy worship's mine!
I hail the goddess for her scarlet flower,
Thou brilliant weed

That dost so far exceed
The richest gift gay Flora can bestow;
Heedless I pass'd thee in life's morning
hour,

(Thou comforter of woe!) "Till sorrow taught me to confess thy pow'r.

In early days, when fancy cheats,

A various wreath I wove

Of laughing Spring's luxuriant sweets,
To deck ungrateful love;
The rose, or thorn, my numbers crown'd,
As Venus smil'd, or Venus frown'd,
But Love, and Joy, and all their train are
flown,

And I will sing of thee alone;

Unless perchance the attributes of grief,
The cypress bud, and willow leaf,
Their pale funereal foliage blend with

thine.

Hail, lovely blossom! thou can'st ease
The wretched victims of disease;

Can'st close those weary eyes in gentle

sleep,

Which never open but to weep;
For, oh! thy potent charm

Can agonizing pain disarm;

Expel imperious memory from her seat, And bid the throbbing heart forget to beat. Soul-soothing plant! that can'st such blessings give,

By thee the mourner bears to live,

By thee the wretched die!

Oh! ever friendly to despair,
Might Sorrow's pallid votary dare,
Without a crime that remedy implore,
Which bids the spirit from its bondage fly,
I'd court thy palliative aid no more.
No more I'd sue that thou should'st spread
Thy spell around my aching head,
But would conjure thee to impart
Thy balsam for a broken heart;
And by thy soft Lethean power,
(Inestimable flower!)
Burst these terrestrial bouds, and other re-
gions try.

of all, or any of the different species of the palm tribe of plan's growing spontaneously on the co tinent, and islands of North and South America, and in other parts beyond the seas, but more partic larly in tropical climates, and may be there cultivated, and are des cribed in the writings of the ce lebrated Linnæus, and other authors, before the said leaves are of na

tured growth. And he suspends

the same in the air in the shade, in order that they may become well bleached and dry; or other wise he causes the same to be so coilected, bleached, and dried, and in this state he transports them to the place of manufacture. And farther prepares the same for use by cutting off more or less the outer ex tremities, where the leaves tape: and are thinnest, and from the in ner extremities, where the material

is most stiff and rigid. And farther, he divides the various portions of the said leaves into longitudinal slips, with a knife or knives, or other fit cutting-tool or tools, used either singly or set in a frame, so as to afford an equal gage for the said longitudinal slips as to the breadth thereof; and he afterwards sorts and selects the said longitudinal slips, by separating a part from each other of such slips as are best adapted to the several particular uses in manufacturing as aforesaid. And in some cases he washes the said leaves previous to cutting the same (as before mentioned) with soap and water, and exposes them, after rinsing them, in a moist state to the fumes of burning sulphur in a close chamber or place. And where it may be desirable to dye the said leaves of any particular colour, he performs the same by the usual process upon them, either in their first state, or in any of the subsequent states or stages of manufacture. And farther, that among the different species of the sad tribe of plants, the gents areca and corypha are the most rally useful, and to be preferred; and that the midle portion the leaf of the plants to est to proportions as aforetar, better article 1519 produced or adried by tremities so cut că. £4, 2 the said sips are and may be fully empye mat fru

of hats and boney ca and bakes, asa dur en

and purses, 1912

or intertwit

Σ

without the In

of

do render them capable of being employed in platting or intertextures, which could not be attempted or made with the articles or materials heretofore in use for those purposes.

On Irrigation; by Mr. Thomas Purdy, of Castle Acre, in the County of Norfolk. (From the Communications to the Board of Agriculture.)

As I am now watering at least twenty acres, in a most complete manner, by forming them into beds of from ten to twelve yards breadth, and introducing the water upon the crowns of the beds, to be carried off by parallel diains, I desire to state, that the meadows I am irrigating are situated in a neighbourhood which consists almost entirely of arable land, let generally for not more than from ten to eighteen shillings per acıo per annum,

That meadow and pasture land do not bear a greater proportion than of one acre to bity of arable land, and that now thatanding this preat want of feeding land, yet the meidons which i tag were not in their old previous

sar, worth more tag Resen 20.1tw, bez tog Anwar, and the

The method I have taken to irrigate the above meadows is, by taking water out of its natural course, at the distance of at least thirteen chains above my first meadow, by a ditch, upon the average twenty feet wide, seven feet perpendicularly deep, and six feet wide at the bottom. The water thus introduced, divides itself into two feeders, one of which conveys water to my first meadow, and then runs off to water my last meadow, and the other to the other intermediate meadows. All the meadows are formed into beds, as I have stated above, which are raised so as to have a fall on each side from two to three feet, and so well formed, as to be watered in every part. The work is all done by labourers with spades, and will cost altogether about 301. per acre. This expense, however, I think by no means considerable, when I take into consideration the circumstances of value above stated, and when I consider, what perhaps may not occur in those countries where irrigation is more practised, viz. that the turnip crop, as food in winter, is becoming more expensive and (what is of great consequence) more precarious; to supply which deficiency, I expect the hay of these water meadows to be such a resource as is almost inestimable.

On a New Variety of Pear; by Thomas Andrew Knight, Esq. F.R.S. &c. &c.

HAD the Pear been recently introduced into England from a clie mate similar to that of the South of France, in which it had been found to ripen in the months of August and September, and to become fit for the dessert in the four succeeding

months, it might have been inferred, with little apparent danger of error, that the same fruit would ripen here in October, and be fit for our tables during winter; provided its blossoms proved sufficiently hardy to set in our climate. But had many varieties of this fruit been proved by subsequent experience to be capable of acquiring maturity before the conclusion of our summer, and in the early part of the autumn, without the aid of a wall, scarcely any doubts could have been entertained of the facility of obtaining numerous varieties, which would ripen well on standard trees, to supply our tables during winter: for it would be very extraordinary if the whole of our summer, and of our long, and generally warm autumn, would not effect that, which a part of our summer alone had been proved to be capable of effecting; nevertheless, though varieties of the pear abound, which bear and ripen well in the early part of the autumn, we possess scarcely any good winter pears which do not require an East or West wall in the warmer parts of England, and a South wall in the colder parts. This can arise only from the want of varieties, and I venture most confidently to predict, that (if proper experiments be made to form such varieties) winter pears, of equal merit with those which now grow on our best walls, will be obtained in the utmost abundance from stan dard trees; and that such pears may be sold, with sufficient profit to the grower, on as low terms as apples are now sold during winter: for I have had several opportunities of observing that the fruit of seedling Pear-trees generally bears a considerable resemblance to that of their parent trees, and the experiments I induce me to believe, that a good have made on other species of fruits, copy of almost any varieties may

be obtained; and as I have more than once succeeded in combining the hardiness and vigour of the yellow Siberian crab with the richness of the golden pippin, I do not doubt of the practicability of combining the hardiness and vigour of the Swan's egg pear with all the valuable qualities of the Colmar, or Bezi de Chaumontel; and I consider the climate of England as peculiarly well calculated for the necessary experiments.*

I am disposed to annex some degree of importance to the production of abundant crops of fruit, to supply our markets, at a moderate price during the winter and spring; for it has been often observed, that great manufacturing towns have generally been more healthy in seasons when fruits have abounded than in others; and the same palate which is accustomed to, and pleased with sweet fruits, is rarely found to be pleased with spirits, or strong fermented liquors: therefore, as feeble causes, which are constant ly operating, ultimately produce very extensive effects on the habits of mankind, I am inclined to hope, and to believe, that markets abundantly supplied at all seasons with fruits, would have a tendency to operate favourably both on the physical and moral health of our people.

Under these considerations I have amused myself with attempts to form new varieties of winter pears; and though my experiments are yet in their infancy, and I have seen the result of one only, and that under very unfavourable circumstances, I am induced to state the progress that I have made to the Horticultural Society, in

• See Hort. Trans. Vol. 1, p. 89. BELFAST MAG. NO. XL.

the hope that others will join me in the same pursuit.

traces

In the spring of the year 1797, I extracted the stamina from the blossoms of a young and vigorous tree of the autumn berga mot pear, which grew in a very rich soil, and I introduced at the proper subsequent period the pollen of the St. Germain pear, and from this experiment I obtained several fruits, with ripe seeds: I, however, succeeded in raising only two plants; one of these was feeble and dwarfish in its growth, as well as wild and thorny in its appearance, and I did not think it worth preserving. The other presented a much more favourable character, and I fancied that I could discover in it some of the features of its male parent. This plant afforded blossoms in the year 1808, but I had very unfortunately removed it from the seed-bed, when it was fourteen feet high, in the preceding winter, and as it had never been previously transplanted, it had retained but very few roots. Two of the blossoms, nevertheless, afforded fruit; which began to grow with rapidity as soon as the tree had emitted new roots, but this was not till late in the summer, and on the eighth of October, the fruit was blown from the tree by a violent storm. The two pears were then very nearly of the same weight and size, each being somewhat more than eight inches in circumference, and in form almost perfectly spherical. Though braised by their fall, the pears re mained sound till the beginning of December, when they became sweet and melting, though not at all highly flavoured: their flavour was, however, better than I expected, for they were blown from the tree long before they would #ff