[33] It appears to us that a slight inaccuracy has crept into the deduction of all the dates in M. Champollion’s Chronology subsequent to the expulsion of the shepherds. The date of that event is the foundation of the subsequent dates, and is supposed to have taken place B.C. 1822; after which, according to the extract of Manetho in Josephus cited by M. Champollion, Thoutmosis, the king by whom they had been expelled, reigned 25 years and 4 months, followed by the other kings of the eighteenth dynasty, making altogether 342 years and 9 months: (including the 2 years and 2 months additional of Horus, in compliance with the version of the passage in the Armenian text of the Chronicle of Eusebius.) This number, 342 years and 9 months, falling short of the 348 years attributed to the eighteenth dynasty in Eusebius and Syncellus, M. Champollion has suggested that Thoutmosis may have reigned the five years which constitute the difference, before the expulsion of the shepherds, since, according to the record, he did reign, some years before that event, over all the parts of Egypt not possessed by the shepherds. So far, so well: but in such case, the year B.C. 1822, being the epoch of the expulsion of the shepherds, and not of the commencement of the eighteenth dynasty, must surely correspond to the fifth year of the reign of Thoutmosis, and not to the first, as M. Champollion makes it. We have hesitated to venture this remark on a matter to which M. Champollion must have given much attention, believing that mistake in us is much more probable than an accidental inadvertence in him; but we have returned frequently to the consideration, without having been able to satisfy ourselves; and the rectification of our mistake, if it is one, may prevent others falling into the same. [p190]
_Proceedings of the Horticultural Society_.
At this meeting a paper was read from the President, T. A. Knight, Esq., upon the culture of the mango and cherimoyer. Its object was to suggest some improvements in the management of these and other trees cultivated in stoves, deduced from an application of Dutrochet’s electrical theory of vegetation to practice. It has now become generally known that this observer is of opinion that the motion of the fluids in plants depends upon two currents of electricity, setting with very unequal force between the denser fluid of the tree and the lighter fluid of the soil in which the tree is planted; the more powerful current setting from the latter to the former, and so producing absorption, by conveying aqueous particles into the roots, through the vegetable membrane of the epidermis. In applying this theory to practical purposes, Mr. Knight recommends that the pot in which the cherimoyer or mango is planted, should itself be surrounded by a medium through which an equable and regular supply of fluid may be conveyed to the roots, and that the naked surface of the pot should by no means be exposed to the free action of the atmosphere. Without entering upon any question of the accuracy of the French philosopher’s observations, it is quite certain that such a mode of cultivation is that which is most congenial to plants, and which is indispensable to those of a habit at all delicate. The common practice of plunging pots into a tan-bed, or among sand, if in glass-houses, or in the earth if in open borders, is a proof of the necessity that gardeners have found, of securing as regular a temperature and degree of humidity as is possible for the outside of their flower-pots; through the pores in which, moisture is chiefly conveyed to the roots, which always cling to the inside surface of the pot.