--_From the
MS. Journal of the Bristol Nursery Library_.

_The Cowslip and Polyanthus_.

By sowing the seed of the wild cowslip in the garden, a number of
varieties will be produced, some of which have flowers of a beautiful
bright red colour. May not this process be the first step towards the
formation of our garden polyanthus? if that be not, as is generally
supposed, a variety of the primrose, rather than of the cowslip.--_Gard.
Mag_.

_French Method of making Coffee_.

The principal points are these:--The coffee,--_Turkey or
Bourbon_,--should be roasted only till it is of a _cinnamon colour_, and
closely covered up during the process of roasting. In France this is done
in closed iron cylinders, turned over a fire by a handle, like a
grindstone. The coffee should be coarsely ground soon after it is roasted,
but not until quite cool: some think its _aroma_ is better preserved by
beating in a mortar, but this is tedious. The proportions for _making
coffee_ are usually _one pint of boiling water to two and a half ounces
of coffee_. The coffee being put into the water, the coffee-pot should be
covered up, and left for two hours surrounded with hot cinders, so as to
keep up the temperature, without making the liquor boil. Occasionally
stir it, and after two hours' infusion, remove it from the fire, and
allow it a quarter of an hour to settle, and when perfectly clear, decant
it. Isinglass, or hartshorn shavings, are sometimes used to clarify
coffee; but by this addition you lose a great portion of its delicious
aroma.

Coffee in England is generally _over-roasted_, and to this fault arise
all the inconveniences which are so often attributed to coffee, but which,
in reality, are produced by the imperfect modes of its preparation.--_From
the Coffee-Drinker's Manual, translated from the French_.

_Ivy_.

Attached to the officers' barracks at Winchester, is a very fine
specimen of ivy; its trunk has been severed off to a height of more than
two feet from the ground, yet it has for years continued in healthy
vegetation.--_Gard. Mag_.

_Parasite Sycamore_.

In Kinmel Park, Denbighshire, is an oak tree, which, twenty or thirty
years ago, lost one of its largest branches by the wind, and a partial
decay was the consequence; a key from a neighbouring sycamore fell into
the fracture, which, vegetating, has formed for the old mutilated oak a
new head. This parasite appears to have so completely seated itself, tha