1 will certainly be able to adapt his invention to all addi~ tions he may make to his boat. Now, in Mr. Wilson's model, the lockers, or hollow benches, which he has added outside the boat, to make it fit for a life-boat, are put together without any attempt to introduce into their framing the principle which is used in the construction of the body of the boat. These buoyant lockers are in the model, on the contrary, formed in a very inartificial manner, perfectly similar to that used for making packing-boxes, of boards nailed together at their edges, and to partitions nailed to the boat from the inside; which construction, if imitated in a large boat, must render those lockers always leaky, on the buoyancy of which the only superiority of the boat in safety over any other alone depends. Mr. Wilson has been unfortunate in the claim to invention in the second part of his model as well as the first; for those buoyant lockers placed outside his boat come under the description of the "hollow projecting gunnels for boats," for which Mr. Lionel Lukin obtained a patent in 1785, the specification of which is in the third volume of the first series of your Repertory of Arts; in which he expressly mentioned that these projecting gunnels, as he calls them, are to be made outside the boat, are to be either hollow, or filled with cork or other light materials, are to project least at the head and stern, and most in the middle. In other particulars they are also very similar to Mr. Wilson's model; and the very title of the patent declares Mr. Lukin's projecting gunnels to be for the same purpose as Mr. Wilson's buoyant lockers, namely, to prevent boats or small vessels from oversetting or sinking. I beg leave to mention, in concluding, that neither now, nor when I before claimed publicly this mode of constructing boats as my invention, had I the smallest intention of throwing throwing the least imputation on the Society for rewarding Mr. Wilson for the inventions of others. Gentlemen remote in residence and connection from shipping concerns may be supposed unacquainted with the facts I have stated, without any want of attention on their parts; on the contrary, I shall ever be happy to declare my respect for the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, &c. and to acknowledge my obligations to them for ancient as well as recent favours. It must be evident, from what is tated, sthat Mr. Ewer, of Bursledon, Hampshire, ship-builder, in whose yard my boat was built; J. Payne, shipwright, of same place, who built it; or Mr. Forest, boat-builder, near Redcliffcross, London, who had the boat on his premises so long, are all perfectly well qualified to make boats on this construction, which appears to me to have the merit of uniting staunchness and lightness to strength in a very superior degree. I am, Gentlemen, Yours, &c. JOHN WHITLEY BOSWELL. On the Revival of an Obsolete Mode of managing By the Rt. Hon. Sir JOSEPH BANKS, Bart. K.B. P.R.$,&c. From the TRANSACTIONS of the HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY of LONDON. THE custom of laying straw under Strawberry Plants, when their fruit begins to swell, is probably very old in this country: the name of the fruit bears testimony in favour of this conjecture, for the plant has no relation to straw in any other way, and no other European language applies the idea of straw in any shape to the name of the berry, or to the plant that bears it. When Sir Joseph Banks came to Spring Grove, in 1779, he found this practice in the garden. John Smith, the gardener, well known among his brethren as a man of more than ordinary abilities in the profession, had used it there many years; he learned it soon after he came to London from Scotland; probably at the Neat Houses, where he first worked among the market gardeners; it is therefore clearly an old practice, though now almost obsolete. Its use in preserving a crop is very extensive: it shades the roots from the sun; prevents the waste of moisture by evaporation, and consequently, in dry times, when watering is necessary, makes a less quantity of water suffice than would be used if the sun could act immediately on the surface of the mould; besides, it keeps the leaning fruit from resting on the earth, and gives the whole an air of neatness as well as an effect of real cleanliness, which should never be wanting in a gentleman's garden. The Strawberry beds in that garden at Spring Grove, which has been measured for the purpose of ascertaining the expence incurred by this method of management, are about 75 feet long, and five feet wide, each containing three rows of plants, and of course requiring four rows of straw to be laid under them. The whole consists of 600 feet of beds, or 1800 feet of Strawberry Plants, of different sorts, in rows. The strawing of these beds consumed this year, 1806, the long straw of 26 trusses, for the short straw being as good for litter as the long straw, but less applicable to this use, is taken out; if we allow then on the original 26 trusses, six for the short straw taken out and applied to other uses, 20 trusses will re main, which cost this year 10d. a truss, or 16s. Éd. being one penny for every nine feet of Strawberries in rows. From this original expenditure the value of the manure made by the straw when taken from the beds must be deducted, as the whole of it goes undiminished to the dunghill as soon as the crop is over. The cost of this practice therefore cannot be considered as heavy. In the present year, not a single shower fell at Spring Grove, from the time the straw was laid down till the crop of Scarlets were nearly finished, at the end of June. The expense of strawing was therefore many times repaid by the saving made in the labour of watering, and the profit of this saving was immediately brought to account in increase of other crops, by the use of water spared from the Strawberries, and besides, the berries themselves were, under this management, as fair and nearly as large as in ordinary years, but the general complaint of the gardeners this year was, that the Scarlets did not reach half their natural size, and of course required twice as many to fill a pottle as would do it in a good year. In wet years the straw is of less importance in this point of view, but in years moderately wet, the use of strawing sometimes makes watering wholly unnecessary, when gardeners who do not straw are under the necessity of resorting to it, and we all know if watering is once begun, it cannot be left off till rain enough has fallen to give the ground a thorough soaking. Even in wet years the straw does considerable service, heavy rains never fail to dash up abundance of mould, and fix it upon the berries; this is entirely prevented, as well as the dirtiness of those berries that lean down upon the earth, so that the whole crop is kept pure and clean ; no earthy taste will be observed in eating the fruit that has been strawed, and the cream which is sometimes soiled soiled when mixed with Strawberries, by the dirt that adheres to them, especially in the early part of the season, will retain to the last drop that unsullied red and white which gives almost as much satisfaction to the eve while we are eating it, as the taste of that most excellent mixture does to the palate. An Essay on the Influence of Frost, and other Varieties of bad Weather, on the ripening of Corn.. By the late BENJAMIN BELL, Esq. From the PRIZE ESSAYS and TRANSACTIONS of the I WAS first induced to consider this subject with atten tion in Autumu 1782, when, at the usual season of the corns in this country being all got home, none of them were ready for cutting. In the spring and summer of that year, the weather was for the most part cold and wet, and therefore very unfavourable to vegetation, The crops, accordingly, were weak during the whole season; so that when frost took place early in Autumn, they were very generally in a situation ill fitted to bear it, few of them, except wheat, being at that period better than chaff; and excepting in well-sheltered early grounds, all of them were so green, that there was reason to fear they would not ripen sufficiently either for being used as food, or for seed in the following spring. On some of the best grounds in Mid-Lothian, even of those contiguous to Edinburgh, many of the crops of pease were only in blossom in the end of September; and large fields of oats, as well as barley, after being repeatedly exposed to frosts, in September, October, and No vember, |