UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

ANDREW

SMITH

HALL1D1E:

THE

PLEASANT CULTURE

FRUIT TREES, FLOWERS, AND VEGETABLES,

BEAUTY AKD PROFIT OF THE VILLA OR FARM.

BY NATHANIEL PATEKSON, D.D.

'And he spaka ot tre«s, from the cedar that is in Lebanon, even unto the hjssop that
springeth out of ths wall." — I Kings.

SIXTH THOUSAND.
OFT

PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM COLLINS,

SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, GLASGOW,
TATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.

Printed by William Collins and Co., Ill, North Montrose Street, Glasgow.

•„

OF
f

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION,

CONCEALMENT is rarely a right thing; and
v^ how far, for reasons given, the Author's hiding
of his name in the first edition may be justified,
is needless now to enquire, as the attempt so quickly
proved an entire failure. Whoever meditates the
smallest guile would need to provide more eyes and
a good memory. Some years ago, in contributing
the Statistical Account of his parish, the writer
took notice of a moor blackbird which he described
as a thief. The description soon out of sight, was
soon out of mind; but not so the thief, who, con*
tinuing his visits, kept alive the remembrance of
his person — and was again, it seems, submitted in
4The Manse Garden' to the like advertisement of
his stature, visage, and the colour of his clothes.

As in every case of human indictment, accusa-
tions, failing of conviction, serve only to excite
revenge and make the offender more inveterate ; so
in this, the thief, being neither hanged nor incar-
cerated, but merely affronted, roused his spleen, and,

IV PREFACE TO THE SECOND FDITIOX.

chattering all the way from Galashiels to Glasgow,
told every thing about the Manse Garden as well as
its gardener. Thus foiled in his plan of conceal-
ment, by " a bird of the air," what can the Author
do but, with indifferent grace, set down his name
in the title page I

As the science he unfolds is of slow attainment,
having its round of experiments only once in the
year, he cannot, having published in seed time, be
expected, before the crop has come off the ground,
to come forward with new improvements to enhance
a new edition. Some additions however have been
made, as a meagre token of his thanks for the kind-
liness with which his little work has been received
— a reception which cannot have further exceeded
his desert than it has his expectations.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

W ^HATEVER might be needful by way of in-
troduction will be found interspersed with the
work; but in the mean time the Author's appella-
tive given in the title page of this volume is such
as to demand some apology. Why does he take
the refuge of a common family name, instead of
giving his proper designation at once ? In his own
defence, he begs honestly to declare he has no lik-
ing to that sort of mystery, nor is he wont to use it,
never having before given any thing to the public
without sending along with it whatever good or ill
it might derive from his name.

The truth is, the following work, though nowise
contrary to clerical duty, is nevertheless not strictly
clerical ; and as nothing can equal the obligation
of the Christian ministry, or the awe of its respon-
sibility, or its importance to man, the writer trem-
bles at the thought of lessening, by any means or in
any degree, either the dignity or the sacredness of
his calling; and as the following pages might more
properly have been written by one bred to the
science of which they treat, or by some leisurely
owner of a retired villa, an inference, not the best
matured, may be drawn to the effect — that surely
the Author can be no faithful labourer in the Lord's
vineyard, seeing he must possess such leaning to
his own. He therefore expects, by hiding for a

VI PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

little, to give the arrow less nerve, because the bow-
man can only shoot into the air, not knowing whi-
ther to direct his aim. And yet if his own brethren
should suffer some share in the danger due only to
him, he seeks their forgiveness whilst, thus dis-
persing the mischief that might come upon him-
self, he causes it to fall on them only in the propor-
tion of one to a thousand. And if they are so good
as to submit without murmur to this slender impo-
sition, he begs to assure them that their patience
is not ill repaid by his very ardent desire to beautify
and warm and fertilise the places of their abode,
throughout all his beloved country north of the
Tweed. Nor does he fail to include in the same kindly
regard a large tract with which he is well acquainted,
extending a long way to the southward of that
stream, and within which, whilst the need of this
manual is very apparent, the climate is such as to
give it a perfect adaptation.

For the advancement then of a good cause, in
which his brethern as well as the Author are con-
cerned, may he not humbly hope that they will be
pleased to offer and perhaps commend a reading of
his treatise to such of their parishioners as are
placed in circumstances not unlike their own? In
every parish will be found one or more proprietors
of a very interesting class of society, tasteful and
intelligent, whose neat villas, gardens, and fields,
are of a rank not far remote from those of the min-
ister, and who like him are put to their shifts for
want of a thorough bred gardener. And that there
are many more who might find an interest in what he

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. vil

writes may be inferred on considering how much
the eye of the traveller is refreshed by the air of
snugness and refinement which a few trees and
shrubs already afford to the dwelling-houses of the
tenantry in those districts where agriculture is the
most improved. Wherever skill has augmented
( as in all reason it ought) the capital employed in
farming, the effect has been a more polite educa-
tion, which in its turn has produced a finer taste,
manifested it may be in dress and manners and
house accommodation; but more remotely, and
therefore more strongly, in the out-door ornaments
of roses, ivy, and fruit trees, which at once hide
the deformity of naked walls, and suggest the idea
of comfort within them. This indication of im-
provement deserves both to be hailed and helped
forward on its happy career; for there is more of
virtue in it than would be imagined by persons less
observant of the connection that subsists between
taste and morals. About doorsteps so adorned, both
wife and children look far prettier than they appear
when seen through broken windows mended with
old hats, or met with daubled feet and awkward
gait, sliding or like to slide off stepping-stones laid
in mire. When home is rendered more attractive,
the market-gill will be forsaken for charms more
enduring, as they are also more endearing and better
for both soul and body. And 0 what profusion of
roses and ripe fruits, dry gravel and shining laurels,
might be had for a thousandth part of the price
given for drams, which cause at market places need-
less stay, and vain or silly bargains, together with

Viii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

the growing vice which ruins all! In proportion
as drinking decays, the relish of home will revive;
and in proportion as a cultivated taste makes home
more cheerful, will the safety of morals be secured.
Thus external things, in themselves so trivial as
the planting of shrubs, are great when viewed in
connection with the moral feelings whence they
proceed and the salutary effects which they pro-
duce. And whilst it is gratifying from recent
beginnings to anticipate a further progress in such
matters of taste as tend to improve the social affec-
tions, the following incident, which fell within the
Author's knowledge, he begs to record, not only as
pleasing in itself, but valuable as a sign of the spirit
that is awakened: A landlord, not more illustrious
for rank than generosity, conceiving that he was
under obligation to one of his tenants, whether for
looking after the game or other civility, asked by
what favour the attention might be repaid. Instead
of any grumbling as to rent or roads, enclosures or
household convenience, the request, as modest as it
was elegant, was only a " bit of plantation for shel-
ter and ornament to the dwelling." Sure is the
Author, that falling into such hands his little
treatise would be hailed as quite the thing to tell
how a bit of plantation may be put down to the
best advantage. Wherever such fancy for lauda-
ble ornament is found, (and it is a thing which, like
fashion, spreads fast and far,) the pastor, by sug-
gesting this Guide to simple gardening, may at
the same time do a kindness to one of his flock, and
aiding the cause in which he writes, delight the
heart of another friend — THE AUTHOR.

INDEX,'

PART FIRST.

FOREST AND FRUIT TREES.

Page
The Holly, 11

Composition of Strip for Shelter, . . . . • 14
Recovery of one that has been Mismanaged, . . .21

Hedges made Hare tight 26

Provocations of a Bad Fence, ...... 27

Garden Wall— Heritors, . . ... . 29

Figure of the Garden — Cure of its Formality, . . .31
Stiffness of Plantations how Remedied, 32

Transplanting of Forest Trees — Sir II. Stewart — Relief to

the Bareness of Scotland, 33

Temporary Paling and Expedient in case of deep Snow, . 39
Gardening at Great Heights with Bad Soil and Climate," 41
Natural Beauty of Church and Manse — hence encouragement, 43
The Village Gardener — His "Workmanship. . . .46

Use of this Book — The Minister his own Gardener, . 50

The Bite, '52

Multitude of Motives, . .... 55

The Mechanical Turn, 64

Training of Trees upon a Wall, 65

Apples and pears, .65

Cherries, 68

Peaches, Apricots, Plums, 69

Usual State of Trees on first taking possession of a Manse

Garden, 71

Recovery of Pear Trees,

Apple Trees, 74

Plum Trees, 75

Planting of Wall Trees, . 77

Soil, Preparation of,

Flags beneath Fruit Trees, Vanity of, . • ; .79

Paradise Stocks, use of, 80

Wall Fruit Border, 80

Selection of Trees for wall,

Particular Rule for Cherries, 86

List of Trees for Wall,

Espaliers, Use of, Defended, . . .

Hails for Espaliers,

Espaliers neglected— How Recovered, . '

Pruning of Forest Trees— Theory how Determined— Note , 96

X INDEX.

Page

Espalier Trees, Choice of, 99

List of, 101

Willows for Tying Espaliers, 102

Fruit Bank Superior to Wall 105

Ribston Pippin, Cultivation of, . . , . • .106

Standard Trees, 107

Soil and Mode of Planting, . . .108

Pruning of, HO

Varities of— Cherries, Orleans Plum, Wild

Plum 113

Fruit Alley— Beauty and Profit at no Cost, . . 114

Grafting, 116

Budding , .120

Gooseberry, 128

> Pruning of, 129

Caterpillar, Enemy of, . . . . 129

Mode of Planting, 134

Currants, . 136

Rasps 138

Strawberries, 138

PART SECOND.

VEGETABLES .

Soil— Trenching— Value of Land doubled, . . .142
Preparation and Economy of Manure, . . - .147

System of Cropping, 151

Seasons of Sowing, Method for Remembering, . . . 1 52
Vegetables iu Alphabetical Order, . 153

PART THIRD.

Method of flower Department, 223

Flowering Shrubs, 224

Transplanting of, 226

Walks, 228

Edgings for, 229

Gravelling of 231

Flowers that Mingle with Shrubs, 233

Flower Borders, 235

Spring Flowers, 236

Perennial Flowers, ....:.. 237

Annual Flowers, List of, 233

Flowers requiring particular treatment, Alphabetically

Arranged,

APPENDIX, 269

ffUDI SMSXill

PART FIRST-

TREES.

OF all the trees of the forest, the native holly is
the most interesting and beautiful. Whether
young, as a shrub in the garden, or old, as a lonely
tree of the mountain, its glowing fruit and glossy
leaves, gleaming in the winter sun, prove the de-
light of all eyes. It allures to its own hurt the
mischievous schoolboy; it is the laurel of BURNS,
and the sanctuary of singing birds. Shielding its
songsters from the hawk, it shelters them in I the
storm, and feeds them with its fruit when other
trees are bare. It does one's heart good to see the
humble blackbird picking a red berry amidst the
falling snow.

O

The beauty of this tree is justly appreciated,
but its use is comparatively neglected. With a
little pains and patience, it were capable of alter-
ing the whole aspect of the country, and of adding
largely to the comfort of every rural abode. For
all the purposes of a hedge it is unrivalled; for or-
namenting the lawn, or affording shelter and retire-
ment -to the pleasure walk, it has no equal. But

THE HOLLY.

lawns and pleasure grounds may not figure on the
pages of so humble a title as 'The Manse Garden; '
yet neither must the Author's spirit sink because
his scope is confined. The first paradise was a gar-
den, and though grandeur may require amplitude,
beauty is contented with smaller dimensions. The
most touching scenes of nature are often found, not
in the wide range of hill and dale, but in the very
nook of a glen; and genius may appear in a cabinet
picture as well as in one of the largest canvass.
Why, then, may not the manse garden be fair,
though the field be small? and why should not art
be employed to make it a very delight to its owner,
and an object of pleasure to the traveller that passes
by? 0 for a law, originating in the perception of
comfort, and self-imposed, which should make the
planting of a few trees an operation as certain as
the building of a house ! Men would live longer
and better for the happiness thus given to their
homes; and the sickening sameness of bare hillsides
and of cold blue walls would be changed into a suc-
cession of the most pleasing objects. But how often
do we find even the manse, or villa of similar rank,
devoid of that peculiar charm which arises from
partial concealment, and standing almost naked in
the blast, though some shelter has been sought by
a strip or clump of trees.

When partial concealment is the object, the holly
fulfils the intention of the planter : it casts a deep
shade on the stonework, and, like the dash of the
pencil in a good picture, the effect remains un-

ORNAMENT AND SHELTER 13

changed by the changing of seasons; whereas that
produced by a deciduous tree resembles the like
effect in a bad picture, whose colours fade and frust-
trate the design of the artist. Much more, where
shelter is sought, has the holly a virtue which be-
longs not to any other tree. It is usual, by the
common mode of planting, to have needless shelter
in summer, and none in winter when the want is
greatest. Why, said an ancient poet, should music
be contrived only to enliven the occasions of mirth
and not rather to soothe those of sadness? And
why, with like reason, it may be asked, should
such trees be set for shelter as lavish their clothing
on the summer months, and leave those of winter
to cold and nakedness?

But have not all modern plantations, it may be
said, a due mixture of evergreens — Scotch firs, va-
rieties of spruce, and the beautiful Weymouth pine?
They usually have, it must be granted; and there
is to be found no fault at all with modern science
as displayed in the rearing of large plantations;
for indeed a true knowledge of that delightful
subject, together with extensive and liberal prac-
tice, have of late years adorned and enriched our
country. But of small strips and clumps, designed
for imparting beauty and comfort to the villa, the
author asserts, in general, the utter insufficiency.
By attending to the manner in which such strips
are usually formed, and to the successive stages of
their growth, it will appear that the intended shel-
ter must fail, and nakedness ensue; and, further

14 DEFICIENCY OF SHELTER.

the author humbly hopes to show, that for this evil
there may be found an easy and effectual remedy.
The strip, then, is planted with hardwood, in-
terspersed with a due proportion of firs, to give
warmth and verdure to the winter; and for a time
the success is such as to answer all the anticipa-
tions of the owner. But thinning becomes neces-
sary, that the trees may not die or grow sickly and
unsightly, like the rubbish of old furze. Still it is
hard to make blanks, letting in the wind, or the
idle eye that steals on the loved seclusion ; the
knife is reluctantly employed, and the axe is never
laid to the root without a sigh that shakes the

o

leaves, and not till the formality of a trial by jury
has passed upon every tree that is doomed to fall.
Thinned they are however, as matter of necessity,
and then the important fact, that trees, if they have
room, will grow in breadth as well as height, is
happily discovered. Thus nature does well for a
season: not less abhorrent of a vacuum than the
planter, she fills, by lateral shoots every inch of
space. But, by and by, there is a deficiency for
which nature, in such circumstances, makes no
provision; as the trees rise in stature, the under
branches fall away, and leave only bare poles in all
the lower region where shelter is chiefly wanted.

It is not supposed that the goodly evergreens
have been incautiously removed ; but of these, no
sort presents any exception to this law of incipient
and progressive nakedness. The Scotch fir grows
the barest of all; the spruce tribes do not long give

HOLLYS A PERFECT REMEDY. 15

shelter, save where they are sheltered themselves;
and the Weymouth, more delicate, thrives only in
the deep glen, or in the bosom of a large plantation.
An appeal to fact may be had in a matter so im-
portant as to involve nearly all the merits of the
strip; and no where will the reader find one of forty
or sixty feet in breadth, which has not, at a cer-
tain age, all the unseemliness ascribed, together,
with the vexing appearance of a scheme that has
miscarried. The strip becomes an open shed
having some roof indeed, but no other walls than
a few naked posts supply. Plantations of such
breadth upon low and level grounds have a good
effect on the distant landscape; but where they
appear on heights, verge the horizon, and stand re-
lieved against the sky, they have all the wretched-
ness of a ragged garment; and having such aspect
near a house, where they are designed for warmth
and seclusion, it were better not to have them. In
the first period of their growth, they afford but the
pleasures of hope ; then, for a season they give an
air of snugness to the dwelling: and then, as the
planter is growing old, they are getting bare; and,
looking through his poor strip, he sees from hedge
to hedge the withered grass partly broken and
partly waving in the winter winds. In point of
taste, such a plantation is downright ugliness, and
in point of utility its condemnation is, that it does
not answer the end.

Plant hollys instead of firs, and every inconve-
nience will disappear. You will have no pain or

16 BEA.UTY AND SHELTER.

hesitation as to thinning and pruning; the promo-
tion of jour hollys becomes the main object, and
every thing that interferes will readily give way.
Only cut down as the hollys spread, and in the
long run there will be as much timber as the ground
can carry. The timber may grow magnificent if
you will; the holly will thrive notwithstanding.
Nothing that grows will look so smiling and vigor-
ous under the shade of trees; it may be seen luxu-
riant where it has been chance-sown by the root of
an old oak; it never knows what it is to die under
any circumstances; it is peeled by bird-catchers,
to whose blackguard calling it seems indispensable,
still it lives; age seem unable to secure its decay;
it is literally ever green. The root, holding a per-
petual lease of the soil, is possessed of a reproduc-
tive vitality, and while the old stem is failing
through length of years, a numerous offspring
arise, which shelter in their bosoms the aged par-
ent, allowing no marks either of the infirmity or the
change of generations. The expence is nothing;
four shillings1 worth (the price of a hundred good
plants) is enough for an acre. The hollys should
be placed, say twelve feet asunder, and so arranged
that one farther remote may divide the space be-
twixt the nearer two.

A strip so furnished, though not more than thirty
or forty feet wide, will afford more beauty and shel-
ter than one of three times the breadth reared in
the common way; and it will also have this in-
comparable advantage, that no length of time will
produce the nakedness of a wretched row of poles ;

^BEAUTY AND SHELTER. 17

it will continually increase your privacy and shade,
providing ibr the comforts of your old age, by sub-
stituting for the bleakness of December the gayeties
of June, and give you the happiness of leaving the
world better than you found it. Neither is it all
the while a petty low shrubbery that you rejoice in.
Amidst the shining hollys may stand the flowering
lime, with its accompaniment of bees — the moun-
tain ash, bending under its vermilion clusters —
the shady plane, with its chattering magpies — the
early-budding poplar, giving notice of the spring —
the walnut, of sweet-scented leaves, and whatever
else may please your fancy, — all rising to the ma-
jestic; whilst all within and beneath is closely
covered, and always green, and full of birds fight-
ing in song. It is not meant that the holly is the
only tree that will grow in the shade, or that
nothing else should be planted as underwood ; pri-
vet, common laurel, and some others, may aid the
variety; but the holly must be your sheet anchor.
Every one of the fir tribes may have a place at the
first, serving early to give a clothed appearance;
but still it is the holly, always improving as all
other things decline, which alone can make the pro-
gress of shelter keep pace with the progress of time.
To ensure the success of a design so interesting,
as well as to make its advantages more generally
available, it will be proper to offer a few remarks
both as to the first formation of a sheltering strip,
and the amending of one which, having been reared
in the common way, has become next to useless.

B

18 FORMATION OF STRIP.

Choose your ground where shelter is most
needed, whether for the house orgarden, and trench
it well; but do not trench too sorely on the glebe,
lest economy, afterwards more observant, should
regret the extravagance. A quarter of an acre,
well shaped and situated, will do a great deal, con-
sidering that the plan already specified is contrived
to make much shelter of little space. Let it be
fenced outside by a sunk stone wall, of three or
four feet, with a hedge on the top — a hedge ot
thorns, if the soil is indifferent, and the situation
much exposed; in more favourable circumstances,
by all means let the hedge be of holly. Before
planting, manure the ground with lime and dung,
which will be repaid by excellent crops of potatoes
for a few years, and in the mean time your trees
will vie with one another, making shoots of four or
five feet in a season. If the hedge be of thorn, let
it grow three years untouched, except as to careful
weeding; then cut it as close by the ground as the
knife can be laid; thus treated, it will become so
compact that no hare or rabbit can find entrance
even when snow has filled the excavation of the
sunk fence. If the hedge be of holly, clean it, of
course, but do not touch it with the knife for seven
years. When the lateral shoots project over the
wall, they may be trimmed flush with its front
which will render the fence impervious to the nib-
bling invaders that prove so destructive to young
fruit trees and various productions of the garden.
Thus matters are easy where the ground is clear

REARING 'OF HOLLYS AND SHRUBS. 19

and of your own choosing; but the case is more
difficult when you have to do with old trees copsed
with hemlock, nettles, and brambles, and surround-
ed with bad hedges, of many blanks, and choked
root and branch, with an absolute matting of grass.
Do not go in a passion to root out trees and all, but
exercise a little of that patience which belongs to a
slow and steadfast revenge, and which bears with
pleasure a present annoyance, because of a plan
which, though not quickly, will surely accomplish
the triumph of a thorough correction. Every ad-
vanced tree is of great price; it is the purchase of
time, not of money. Let a sufficiency be spared,
lest, in future, waiting on young plants, you re-
member the old, and repent the rashness.

Begin by ordering from the nursery one hundred
hollys. Plant them in the best piece of border
ground your garden can afford, in rows eighteen
inches apart, and six or eight inches distant in the
row. Let them remain till they are good large
bushes of two feet in height, giving them all the
while the advantage of frequent hoeing in summer,
and slight digging between the drills in winter.
By this process not only do they rapidly expand
above ground, but, which is more important, they
form, instead of the whip-lash roots of the seedling
bed, a very fleece of fibres, to which the earth ad-
heres, and by which, when transferred to the shrub-
bery, their growth is at once sure and vigorous.
Along with the hollys, lay in a small stock of
Portugal laurels at threepence each, common lau-

20 REARING OF HOLLY S AND SHRUBS.

rels at half so much, variegated hollys at sixpence,
a few of the arborvitse, laurustinus, arbutus, and
juniper. Of these some of the finer sorts may be
planted near to the house, where they are to remain,
and on ground which may not require a tedious pro-
cess of amelioration. Should the house be situated
in the garden, by all means let some of those beau-
ties come next the eye, to the exclusion of cabbage,
filthy in decay, or of gooseberry trees, with their
accompaniment of trampled ground and refuse of
fruit, — a hideous sight. Others of the more hardy
shrubs may be set to nurse, for future lifting in the
manner of the hollys; and in the mean time layers
of every sort may be freely taken. This is the
easiest thing in the world, and the most certain of
success. Stir up the ground, and make a rut two
or three inches deep, all round the plant; from the
under side of the lowest branches pare a little of the
bark; or instead of paring, give the branch a twist;
lay the portion that is twisted or pared, into the
bottom of the excavation, and fasten it down with
a peg; then replace the earth, and set up the head
of your future plant, keeping it erect by firming
the soil around it. Every shrub of a few years
old will thus afford a dozen of fine young plants,
which will be more prized than those bought at a
considerable expence, and surer of growing well
than such as being brought from a distance have
their roots less fibrous, and half peeled, half with-
ered, before they arrive. Thus your stock will
increase, and afford the pleasure both of tracing its

REFORMATION OF A BAD STRIP. 21

progress and possessing a ready supply for beauti-
fying and filling up any vacant space which may
occur. Whilst thes£ preparations are advancing
any fit time may be taken for the reformation of
your ill looking strip, with its ragged hedge and
underwood of hemlock.

Begin by grubbing up old lilacs, stinted and
flowerless for want of sun and shower — elders,
which, though beautiful in the open lawn, grow
deformed in a thicket, and blight every thing near
them — willows, worthless as trees, and ill favoured
— spirea, growing like a sheaf, and retaining the
dead stalks amongst the living — the hedges totally,
and not to be succeeded by any thing of the same
kind in the same place; and sparing only a few of
the best trees, at such distances as they may re-
quire for growing to a goodly size. Proceed then
to trench the ground, reserving to the root of each
tree that is saved, a circle of as many feet in dia-
meter as there are inches to the stem. In this
process of trenching and uprooting, make distinct
heaps; one of stones for the roads, one of wood for
the fire, and one of all abominable weeds, with
which accounts may be settled by a due mixture
of lime. It may be that a gravel walk is needful,
either where there has been one of grass, or none;
and in the excavating of which there will be fur-

O

nished an invaluable mound of earth as well as a
convenient receptacle for the heap of stones. The
earth may be wheeled to the trenched ground and
made into compost with dung, in the proportion of

22 PREPARATION OF THE SOIL.

one to three of earth, or with lime at the rate of one
to six; the whole to be turned over once or twice
a-year, till the hollys, as previously recommended,
have attained the proper size; and the soil to which
they are destined, beingnow renovated by trenching,
may in the meantime, be enriched with manure,
and kept clean by alternate crops of potatoes and
turnips; whilst the matured compost will be in
readiness for application to the roots of the hollys
in the final act of transplanting. That so much
care and trouble are not needlesly bestowed may
be ascertained by examining the state of the mould
from which the poor and profitless tenantry have
been ejected; it is dry as dust and terribly im-
poverished; it seems, at a small depth from the
surface, not to have felt the refreshing of a shower
for half a century; it has seen no sun and suffered
no frost, nor has it breathed the vital air in all
that time; it is mingled with the recent chips of
the mattock, and full of turfy fibres, which, though
dead, are undecaying as wool or hair. In this state
it might do well for oats or barley; but not for your
hollys, the hope of your old age and of centuries
to come: and hence the use of a contrary series of
productions, and of the rich mound to be had as
above described: or failing that, a portion of the
rooty earth may be exchanged for the black mould
of an old onion bed.

Proceeding thus with good assurance of success,
you cannot choose for the operation of transplant-
ing a better time than the gloomy month of

TRANSPLANTING OF EVERGREENS. 23

November — provided it be gloomy. Avoid a clear
frost as you would the fire of the dog-days. After
some mornings of rime, when you are sure of a
week of wet weather, seize the amiable opportunity;
— and surely not a little may be said for on occu-
pation that can make a November drizzle more
cheering than the sunny dews of May. It is not
intended that this is the best time for lifting; the

O

more delicate evergreens; but hollys, though by
mismanagement the most readily lost, are not
delicate; and this is the season which best secures
all advantages to that plant; its last year's growth
is perfectly ripened, and not one shoot will hang
its head. In a dryer season of the year, every
thing newly transplanted requires frequent water-
ing, the trouble of which, in this case, may as well
be spared, and which, however liberal, never equals
the natural moisture; and by the prevalence of the
winter and spring rains, the roots get thoroughly
e.ncased in the soil before the period of growth
returns. I venture to assert that, by properly
conducting the removal of hollys and other hardy
evergreens in this month you will not be able to
pick up one fallen leaf, of one of a hundred plants,
before you see the young fresh buds of the following
spring.

Have near the scene of your operations a plenti-
ful supply of water, as many small pointed stakes
as you have plants to lift, and a large clue of
oakum — the shop name for single but strong
threads of hemp saturated with tar. Have, at

24 TRANSPLANTING— DRTROT.

least, two men with strong new spades, and stand
by them every minute: for the spades have, in all
ordinary hands, a strange centripetal attraction on
account of which it is difficult to maintain a due
remoteness from the heart of the roots, and not-
withstanding the strictest mandate, you will find
frequent cause for calling Hold, when the mur-
derous slash is about to descend through your
living fibres. Set spade over against spade each
a foot from the stem of your holly s, and allow no
wriggling or prising till they have gained an even-
down depth greater than that of the roots — then
lift, and up comes the whole living form, as un-
concious of suffering by the change of bed as a
sleeping child. Carry softly; make the new bed
broad and deep, of the prepared compost; set the
most projecting branch to the west wind; pour in
a little more of the foreign with a mixture of the
native mould; then drench with water: the wet-
ness of the earth or of the day is no excuse, as it
might be found, on a narrow inspection, that the
roots, though surrounded, are not closely embraced
by the soil, but that there are cavities, within
which the roots will become mouldy and die of
dryrot — so called;1 level all up making the sur-

x"So called" — In throwing this discredit on the name, the
Author does not profess to unravel the mystery of the thing; in
other woi'ds, to account for and cure that remarkahle decayt
whether it be in the timber of ships or houses, which is usually
denominated dryrot. But if the name be wrong it deserves cor-
rection lest it lead to a wrong idea, and the attempting of a
remedy by securing to the wood more wet, and so preventing a

TRANSPLANTING — DKYROT. 25

face slightly firm with the foot; and lastly, stake
and tie every plant. Make this last a rule without
any exception. You are apt to say when it is
calm that the wind will do no harm; but wait the
equinox, and you will see an exactly conical per-
foration, smoothly plastered around the neck of
every unfastened plant. For the sake of variety,
other sorts of your large and well nursed ever-

disease that may be supposed, from its name, to originate in dry-
ness. It is only by comparison that the term has any truth.
The cause of rotting is more obvious in wood that is laid on wet
grass ; and then it seems myterious that a waste as rapid should
be found in that which is so dry as the floor and panels of a fre-
quented parlour. These are indeed dry as compared with boards
laid on the grass ; but where the rot occurs in the panels, they
are in reality not dry. Mushrooms oflarge dimensions, or plants
of another species, will be found gi owing inside, and seeking their
way to the light. Such tribes do not live without water: roast
them, and the falling drops will prove the fact: neither are those
deals so clothed with vegetable life that are always near the fire.
It would seem, therefore, that the above misnomer should be
amended by substituting the word wet for dry: and it may be
observed, too, that the wetness which causes it is just in the most
favourable circumstances for aiding the disease in its hidden and
appalling devastations. The moisture is closed in, and excluded
from the air. Were the circulation free, a dryer atmosphere
would sometimes, at least, check the decomposition of the tim-
ber, and the progeny of its corruption being, though mischievous,
naturally delicate, might suifer by the changes of temperature.
Wherefore if dryness of site and freeness of circulation cannot be
provided for in the case of a house so infected, let not the inmate
breathe his wrath upon the mushroom — itself not the cause but
the effect of the dangerous damp of which it gives a friendly ad-
monition; and let him seek no oil or mineral poison to prevent
in future the wood which he repairs from giving the like indica-
tions of harm: but let him rather flee for his life, lest staying t
unwarned he may be found to have slain the witness, not the foe»
and made himself a prey.

26 FENCING.

greens may be removed to the same place, and
after the same manner. Having thus furnished
your boundary strip, as a sheltering outline you
may plant anterior to it your finer evergreens,
which from time to time may be multiplied and
diversified from your stock of layers. This inner
range of shrubs, mingled with flowers, and made
accessible by a walk, remains to be further noticed
in Part III, the flower department.

The incurable hedge we suppose to have been
utterly extirpated; and if the place it occupied
happen to be under the drop of the trees which
you have spared, or is likely to be soon over-
shadowed, a new stance, somewhat farther remote,
must of necessity be chosen, and there the same
method as that recommended in the formation of
a strip on new ground may be adopted; but with
this absolute resolve, that from the first the fence
shall be perfectly hare tight. A garden lying
open to hares, rabbits, hens, dogs, and cats, is truly
nonsense ; for why incur the expence of many
things, and render them all nugatory by saving
the expence of one? A few words, therefore on
the article of fencing will not not be deemed unneces-
sary; and ample apology for the pains may be pled
by the frequent occurrence of a ragged hedge as
the only shield of the manse garden.

But should the requisite work appear less easy
than you could wish, the only rule for you is to
break all up and have no garden ; to buy your
vegetables and your fruits ; to make open pasture,

VROVOC4TIONS OF A BAD FENCE. 27

suffering the cows to poke your windows, defile
your doors, and rub their necks, leaving the brown
hair, on the greased corners of your harled house.
This has at least the merit of a system, in which
no part counteracts the whole; and the taste that
approves of grazing, with its understood accom-
paniments, up to the doorstep, has not long gone
by. But to fence, and yet not fence, is faulty
not in point of taste, but of reason; and to exclude
your own cows from your garden, whilst you ad-
mit hares and rabbits which are not your own, can
scarcely be reckoned charity, and is not very justi-
fiable on the ground of prudence. But a garden
in all probability you will have; and if a fence
secure against all intruders be difficult, let the diffi-
culty be met by a greater — namely, the annoyance,
in various ways, repeated daily, and continued all
the years of your life.

You have sown your small culinary and flower
seeds in fine season, and raked all in, neat and
clean; and when you look out to see whether the
young sprouts yet carry the dewdrop, you find a
lot of hens, like partridges under a dry hedge,
revelling in the luxury of filling their feathers with
the soiL, and repaying what they take away with the
plumage which they leave. You have a standard
pear, whose quality you have secured by grafting
and whose fruit you are waiting for year after year;
and that is the very tree around which all the cats
of the village choose to assemble for the peculiar
diversion of exercising their claws, piercing the core,

28 PROVOCATIONS OF A BAD FENCE.

and making the bark to the touch of the hand what
the under part of a stirrup is to the foot. And
whilst your patience is thus under the claws of the
cat, that of your goodwife is submitted to the teeth
of the rabbit. The early cauliflowers were expected
for a particular occasion; but the munching tribe,
popping out and in at will, have not left a green
blade. You have a Ribston pippin on your best
wall, and every flower-bud is nibbled as neatly off
by the hares in the night time as if great industry
and a sharp knife had been employed all the day.
It may be some consolation, that though they have
taken the buds, you have still the branch; and
there is no saying what may happen to the hares
before another winter; but look to your espaliers,
and you will have no occasion to congratulate your-
self on the exemption of the fruit-bearing wood.
It is near the extremities that the crop is most
abundant, and these also are the portions that the
hare makes choice of to eat entirely, whilst the
wood, otherwise garbled, contracts a disposition to
canker. The lowest branch, lying most convenient
to the teeth, suffers the furthest process of gnawing;
the next a degree less; and the third, not so access-
sible, is truncated only as far as the bite is easy;
so that the tree is mere vacuity where the fruit clus-
ters should abound; and the branches, instead of
maintaining their destined parallelism, are reduced
in figure to the transverse section of a Dutch ship,
I might tell of a remedy for this wasteful sight,
but rather withold it, lest, in mastering the hare

, GARDEN WALL. 29

you submit to the hen. This busy gardener will
be found at one time nestling in your onion bed ;
at another, breaking the newly set rows of your
dazzling ranunculuses, or scooping out the half-
struck layers of your prize carnations, or combing
with her claws the roots of a fine shrub, and leaving
them to crisp in the sun. With much care, but
scarcely without damage to the fruit buds, it is
possible to make the young wood unsavoury to the
hare, and thus to secure its safety; but it is far
better to look to your fence — to make that secure,
and so ratify a truce with all your enemies at once.
Have no quarrel with your heritors, and you will
have a capital garden, wall. I have never known a
case in which there was not manifested by that
honourable body a great readiness to promote the
comforts of the minister, except where the latter
has proved either nearly useless, or given to litiga-
tion. The legal fence is one of stone and mortar,
two ells in height, measured from the surface and
therefore exclusive of the depth necessary to obtain
a foundation, and of such length as to enclose
half an acre of ground. Mortar perhaps once signi-
fied clay, but now it means lime, according to use
and wont. And lucky it is for your apricots, as
they require so much nailing, and the clay does not
hold. But you are not likely to suffer by the sub-
stitution of clay for lime, as no gentleman in these
times, is willing to have an an ugly hole in his pro-
perty, or to exibit, by a clay pit, the proof of an
execrable soil. A lime wall, besides, will in most

30 GARDEN WALL TURF-COPE.

places cost less, requiring only one foot in thick-
ness; whereas a mud construction must be twenty
inches, or two feet, to have any chance of standing;
and even with such expensive thickness, as the wall
has not the benefit of a roof over its head, it will
be sure, on the slightest failure of the turf-cope,
getting soaked, to suffer expansion by frost, and to
burst, a mass of hateful ruin, in the February rains.
But not failing, the turf-cope is a pest polluting
by the seeds of everything vile, both flower borders
and gravel walks; and if to prevent the bursting
of the wall through the failure of coping, and
kindly to save the minister from a pest, as well as
to remove from the eye the meanness of a turfy
heap which uncouthly mingles with peach blossom,
the heritors should determine for a cope of stone;
then the needful thickness of a clay wall becomes
a very considerable aggravation of the expence.
For if freestone be adopted, it is charged by the
square foot; and if common stone, for cheapness, be
preferred, it is yet not cheap when required of a
length not less than two feet — such stones being
valued not by the weight, but by the difficulty of
finding them.

Supposing the legal dimensions and proper ma-
terials freely granted, you may. by a little manage-
ment and taste, at nearly the same cost, have a
much more efficient fruit wall, and an equally good
fence on all sides, with less of formality in the ap-
pearance. This is to be done by diminishing the
length of mason work, and by adding to the height,

PIP ORE OF GARDEN. 31

where the aspect is good; the remaining boundary
being completed by a hedge, and sunk wall of four
feet, consisting of dry stones pointed with lime.
And with such advantages, surely there ought to
be no penurious grudging on the part of the pos-
sessor in regard to nursing the hedge, temporary
paling, or a little <extra expence, by which the esti-
mate on this plan may exceed that of the uniform
and allowed dimensions. An equally high and
four-cornered garden wall, staring in the open field,
is the most unseemly thing that can be set down
on the surface of the earth. If your house stand
in such a garden, it looks like a prison; and all the
flowers within such a boundary of stone appear not
otherwise than as a parterre for the amusements of
bedlam. Should the house be a little remote, still
the huge square box of a garden annihilates every
possible trace of natural beauty; and this it does
equally in every degree of littleness or of magni-
ficence. Witness many villas — witness Floors.1
The shape must vary according to circumstances;
but in general angles may be avoided, and two or
three of the sides may consist of wall; but some-
thing of the cresent form, opening its arms to the
sun, ought to be preferred; and then the figure
may be completed in a way the least offensive, by
a low hedge surmounting a sunk wall, which is but
little obtrusive.

Still the visible line of demarcation is bad; and

1 The seat of the Duke of Roxburgh, whose splendid park is
thus disfigured.

32 STIFFNESS OF FIGURE CORRECTED.

nothing tends so much to do away this effect as
a few irregular trees near to and without the

O

boundary. And this leads me to remark, what
might be proved by a thousand observations, that
it is the ring fence of a plantation which mainly
fixes on it the stiffness of artifice, and prevents it,
whatever be its form, from having the ease and
elegance of natural wood, All ornamental clumps
ought, therefore, as soon as possible to be freed
from the encumbrance of their surrounding hedge
or dyke; and it is impossible to describe the instant
surprise of new beauty which succeeds to such act
of demolition. If to the removal of such hampering
lines from the landscape be added the advantage of
a few chance scattered trees, allowing the clumps as
it were to dissipate like the verge of a cloud, your
work of art is completly charming, and hardly to
be distinguished from that of Nature's hand. But
as your garden fence cannot be so disposed of, the
best that can be done is to break, by a few trees,
the exactness of the outline ; and if you have
planted within your enclosure, it is at once pleasant
and easy to transfer some portion to the outside.
For this you have trees where they are wanted,
and of such size as to need no fencing, and by
forming a colony to relieve an over crowded popu-
lation you avoid the pain of cutting off young and
promising lives. And as this is an operation so
important wherever the hand of rural improvement
is at work, the devotion of a page to the subject
may be allowed.

TRANSPLANTING OF GROWN TREES. 33

The most novel and interesting experiments of
this kind are those of the ingenious and enterprising
Sir H. Stewart. His theory, founded on a careful
analysis of the physiological laws, is undoubtedly
good; his method of shifting the site of living timber,
so far as time has yet proved, appears to be eminently
successful; and no small praise is due to the splendid
scheme of clothing a lawn in a few days with trees
of a stem three feet in circumference — the growth
of thirty years. Yet there is reason to fear that
neither the author's valuable treatise, nor the de-
monstration of his success, will go very far to help
the nakedness of our country. To the success of
such operations, not to speak of skill, a large expence
per tree is absolutely neccessary, and reasonable
fears there may be, that trees of such magnitude
will not do well upon indifferent soil. The exca-
vations for their new residence must have consid-
erable depth; and the whole apartment, loosened
as by trenching, and enriched with compost, is
highly favourable to the life of the old, and to the
growth of newly formed roots, for a certain number
of years. JJut look to the sides of the pit, consist-
ing, it may be, of hard till or sheer gravel; and
what iron wall have the surprised roots in their
new adventures to perforate, or, after good feeding,
in what poverty to live, when they seek to extend
their sphere. It will then be time to lift again,
and seek a larger flowerpot for the plant. It is a
just theory, that the roots must be taken up to a
great degreee, entire if the branches be kept entire;

C

34 DEFEXCE OF POLLARDS.

but this method is wholly inadmissible for the
adorning of treeless hedges, or relieving the sterile
and wretched appearance of dry stone dykes — an
object extending to nine tenths of the arable fields
throughout all the breadth and length of the land.

Let younger trees be planted, in the form of pol-
lards, and they will do in every case — clothing the
country, and at no considerable cost. It is objected
to the pollard, that it has a mean and deformed
appearance; but what is the patience of a bare
pole for one summer, compared with enduring the
nakedness of a country age after age? And that
the defect is only temporary, I could refer to a
thousand instances in which the most critical eye
could not discover that the tree, no longer a pollard,
had once suffered the disgrace of decapitation.
Where the young shoots are thinned out, the second
or third year after transplanting, and any decayed
wood smoothed off, so as to allow the bark to close
in with the new growth, no more defect will be
visible than in any tree of the same advancement
growing where it was sown. The ash and elm do
best, and the oak will not fail in good soil; but the
beech and the plane had better not be lopped, and in
that case the roots must be more carefully extracted.

But why make pollards at all, it may be asked,
since their appearance is at least for a time de-
formed? The answer is, that, having little ballast,
they meet the wind with less sail; but a far stronger
reason is, that the future growth of the pollard is
better than that of a tree, of whatever size, trans-

PLANTING OF POLLARDS. 35

planted entire as to the branches, but mangled as
to the roots. In the thicket of a young plantation,
it is impossible to accomplish the lifting without
considerable laceration; and if that could be avoided,
it would still, in many situations, be impracticable
to replace a sufficient compass of root in the ground.
If the roots then must be curtailed — so must the
branches. Every thing as to the leaves being lungs
is well enough understood; but, notwithstanding,
the head must be taken off, though the leaves be
consequently few; for as the principal nourishment
comes from the smallest and remotest fibres of the
roots, and as these are mostly severed, it follows
that the top branches — and the fact is seen in every
case — being unmoistened from beneath, get so dry
and indurated in the heat of summer, that they never
afterwards serve well for the circulation of the sap;
whereas the head being diminished, and little more
than the trunk, which does not so readily part with
its moisture, being suffered to remain, new shoots
are formed, which, growing in proportion to the
nourishment supplied, have no unhealthiness, and
cause no future obstruction, but serve in all time
coming as open tubes for conveying the sap to suc-
ceeding ramifications.

The best age for pollarding may be from ten to
fifteen years; but as size, which depends on soil and
shelter as well as time, must also be consulted, the
best rule is to choose the healthiest tree, of a stem
two, three, or four inches diameter. The ball or
circle of roots, should measure at least one vard

36 EXPENCE OF POLLARDS.

across, and the pits for their reception a little more.
When the soil is poor, a few spadefuls from the
nearest fields should be allowed, or as much compost,
if it may be had; and for the better firming of the
roots, and preserving of moisture, it is of no small
use to throw around every stem a quantity of loose
stones, which take in all the rain that falls, and
exclude the sun. For protection, the top being
high enough to surmount all bestial, nothing more
is requisite than a handful of thorns tied round the
stems, to ward off the necks of cattle, the teeth of
sheep, and the poisonous grease of their wool.
There is no nicety of seasons as to planting; any
time of soft weather, from the fall of the leaf to the
middle of April, will do; but the earliest is the
best chance, save where too much wet might cause
rotting — and in that case, it is better to plant just
on the opening of the bud.

It is gratifying to remark, that the whole ex-
pence of lifting, transporting, (where the distance
is within a mile,) making pits, planting, and defend-
ing, does not exceed thirty shillings per hundred —
a number quite sufficient to relieve the stiffness of
the garden fence, and ornament every field of the
glebe. And why, throughout the country, are
fields so generally bare — why is the harshness of
stone dykes so long unmitigated? One pound is
no great price for an elm; and how short a period
might not the thirty shillings grow into a hundred
pounds! England has less plantation than Scot-
and, yet England seems all wood, and Scotland all

COUNTRY BEAUTIFIED. 37

bare. The explanation is the hedge-row, which
besides beautifying, brings money, and without
marring the plough, gives more to the field by
shelter than it takes away by shade. In the letting
of grass parks, the earlier verdure tempts to the
highest price for that field which is surrounded by
the thickest row of trees. Remember the thirty
shillings, the hundred pounds, the higher rent, the
charm of wooded scenery, and wonder how there
should be any where a field without trees where
trees would grow; and wherever corn ripens they
will grow. The chief hinderance is the difficulty a
man has of moving himself. That difficulty is in-
creased by the coldness of a bare territory; and the
cold that once subsists secures its own continuance
— it begets an unwillingness to stir, even when it
is known that the movement would bring warmth.
Cold in this respect differs from hunger; the former
is sedative, the latter is stimulant; hence men are
more active in the procuring of food than of clothing;
hence the plough goes further than planting, and
hence England, having less cold, has more trees.

But not only is the pollard convenient for the
forming of hedge-rows, it admits of an application
as easy and economical to all by corners, steep
banks, and open pastures, not submitted to the
plough, or too much exposed to the blast; and the
success of the method may be seen in the county
of Selkirk, on the beautiful and well wooded estate
of a gentleman distinguished equally for the science
and the revenue of planting, where thousands of

38 COUNTRY BEAUTIFIED.

trees, in groups or sprinkled like stars, promise a
rich return; though no further fencing has at any-
time been given than that of having placed them,
as pollards, in the heart of a whin bush, wherever
such had occurred in the sheep walks, or in steeps
and glens incapable of other cultivation.

If you plant a tree, it has been justly said you
will water it, intimating the pleasure you will take
in its growth; and, to succeed, the main rule is to
put your hand to the work. A volume of minute
details might be written on this pleasant theme,
but giving an air of importance by the minuteness
of detail, they would serve only to deter from the
enterprise which their author would zealously re-
commend. There is nosuch mysteryinthe matter.
Only make a beginning; improvement will grow
out of experiment; and you will find in the very
nature of the work a new interest communicated to
your life; and which, relieving the pressure of cares,
and lightening the burden of toil, will tend to no
worldiness of spirit; for ministers certainly do not
plant for their heirs, and though others may, yet
do they reap only the pleasure of their handiwork,
and must bequeath its gains to the unknown futu-
rity. Thus conferring as well as receiving good,
and incurring no evil, let our gardens and every
corner of our glebes be adorned; and, if we have
to lament, on the part of those having large pos-
sessions, that too little is done, let us, at least, set
an example, though it be but in the model style,
and have our home a paradise of fruit and flower,

FOEM OF THE GARDEN. 39

of shelter and shade, endeavouring still to make
the place more worthy of ourselves, and ourselves
more worthy of the place.

In order to avoid the box-like appearance of a
common walled garden, I have recommended, as part
of the enclosing line, a hedge and sunk fence. It is
not to be expected that, before the hedge is well
grown the low wall should be sufficient to keep out
the ordinary intruders; and there it will be necessary
to erect a paling, which maybe very slight, as it will
neither be long needed nor have much to do in re-
sisting cattle, being well aided by the sunken wall
of three or fourfeet. As economy is a great beauty
when the end is sufficiently accomplished, the
minuteness of the following description of paling
will readily be excused. At the distance of nine
feet from each other, let stuckings (stakes) of
peeled larch, three to four inches diameter, charred
at the lower end, be driven at the bottom of the
wall, and held against its front by ranees from be-
hind ; — the stuckings must overtop the wall by two
feet; — let two bars run along the outsides, giving
thus more room to the hedge, the one a little lower
than the summit of the wall, and the other an inch
or two from the top of the stuckings; and let these
bars be crossed by pieces of lath placed upright,
and not more than two inches apart. Let the
whole be anointed, when very dry with coal tar
and the fabric will last for ten years. It may be
asserted that no other sort of paling, if hare-tight-
ness be effected, as by the above, will so much

40 FENCING.

combine cheapness with durability. For greater
security, it is proper to observe, that though the
laths may surmount the top bar, where they are
out of the reach of cattle, they must not descend
lower than the under one, where their frailty would
be more exposed; and as the under bar is placed a
little beneath the summit of the wall, the poking
sort of invaders will not discover a way of access,
although there may be room enough to admit their
bodies.

Should it be found, on the decay of your wooden
erection, that the hedge, with all due care, is not
sufficiently close, let a small peg be set upright into
any vacancy that may occur; but by no means
draw in a bushy thorn, as is frequently done, and
which, as it hinders the growth of lateral shoots,
soon makes the blank larger than before. If any
part has failed to a greater extent, fill it up with a
well grown plant of a different species; for it is
remarkable that a thorn will not grow in a soil
already occupied and exhausted by thorn roots:
but a common or sweet brier, a barberry, a crab
or wild plum, or a well grown holly, will fully
answer the intention. Should it however appear,
that from the bad thriving of your hedge in general,
such remedies will not be effectual, it may be ex-
pedient, on removing the paling, to add one row of
stones by way of a cope, so as to raise your wall
about six inches higher than the roots of your
thorns, and thus make sure of tightness, as the
difficulty is experienced only at the very surface of
the ground.

GARDEN IN HIGH SITUATIONS. 41

But it may sometimes happen that a snow storm
will level a pathway over the very top of your de-
fence, and yet leave your trees in some places
uncovered, and exposed to the enemy. A quantity
of soot, with twice as much cow^s dung, reduced
with water to the consistence of paint, and laid on
with a soft brush, will prevent the hares from
touching the bark, and serve for the whole season,
without causing any injury to the tree. In too
great proportion the soot is unsafe; and care should
be taken not to hurt the flower buds; but withall,
the remedy is by no means tedious in its applica-
tion, and is perfectly efficacious in preventing a
devastation which many years will not repair. All
these little matters, I am aware, will be judged
worthy of notice by every one who has experienced
the peculiar provocation of the various garden ene-
mies— their assaults being of a kind too trivial for
the exercise of resignation, and yet, by frustrating
the hope of your labour, making all your plans and
expences mere foolishness.

But whilst the above methods may apply to all
ordinary situations, there are others in which they
could not be adopted with any degree of propriety.
In very high and exposed places, where the soil
and atmosphere are such as to stint all vegetable
growth, the planting of hedges for such nicety of
defence is out of the question, and the erecting of
paling still more. Look around you before you
lay your plans. Is your height above the level of
the sea 800 or 1000 feet, — does the plough turn

42 GARDEN IN HIGH SITUATIONS.

up black peat earth, mingled with round white
stones, — does the nearest plantation of Scotch firs
present its small tufts of annual growth, like the
top of a thistle; and is its hedge, of twelve years'
standing, scarcely two feet in stature, and covered
all over with moss of an ochrey colour mingled
with silver grey, — take your measures accordingly.
Plant no hedge with a view to keep out hens or
hares, but raise a strong rampart of large blue stone
from the nearest quarry, and within it plant green
kale and potatoes. Your kale plantation will
thrive no worse for affording shelter and pasture
to your hens, whose eggs will be the best of your
garden productions. Even here I could figure a
certain degree of beauty inside the garden; but it
must be of a kind suited to the nature of the place
I would have the high mound of dry stone fence
completely covered with Irish ivy. I would have
no fruit trees and no flowers; the heath is beauti-
ful, and the village children will bring enough of
fruit for preserves from the cranberry bogs. In
the keen air giving a keener appetite for breakfast,
it will be no vexing sight to see the garden full of
hens; some feeding amongst the kale, some cack-
ling for joy of their warm nest, beneath the ivy,
in the vernal sun; and others, white as the snow,
perched on the green summit, like sea mews on the
ridge of the wave. For your own shelter, rather
collect peat fuel all summer than plant trees all
winter. If your glebe could spare a hundred acres
you would do well to cover them with larch, which

HAPPY SITUATION OF MANSES. 43

occupying such breadth, will grow well at any
height, and soon improve both soil and climate;
but spare yourself the misery of a strip, or clump,
or hedge-row, of which the branches, lying all to
one side like the rigging of a sloop, instead of
making you warmer, will only chill you by demon-
strating the effects of the incessant blast. As it
is easier to bear want than failure, be content with
bleakness; and of mental food, healthful exercise,
and the relish of beauty, even in the bleakest
season, there will be no want in your library, in
pastoral visitations, and the sight of clear blue sky,
glassy snow, the social circle, and a blazing fire.

But circumstances so untoward as the above
described do but rarely attend the abodes of the
Scottish clergy. The kirk and manse are generally
objects of pleasing interest to the traveller. A
great advancement both of taste and liberality, on
the part of landed proprietors, appears in all the re-
cently erected churches of our picturesque country;
and the adjacent manse stands, amidst the grada-
tions of wealth, a model of the golden mean — as if
Providence had chosen to illustrate, by his servants
in the Church, the wisdom of the prayer "give me
neither poverty nor riches. " The situation of the
manse is, for the most part, low, sheltered, and
beautiful, by the woody bank of lake or stream.
The country, being every where mountainous,
abounds, of course, in glens and rivers; and in
these romantic retreats are found the decent church,
and the peaceful-looking abode of the pastor.

44 KIRK AND MANSE.

Such felicity of site has often led to the sarcastic
observation, that the Church is too wise not to have
the best things to herself. But so far as the accu-
sation of a selfish wisdom is limited to a predilec-
tion for the murmuring stream and the shade of
trees, without implying the guilt of aggrandise-
ment, it may be easily borne. But even this, if
the charge were grave, might be answered by the
fact, that the sweet attractions of the river have
first moved the flocks to feed on its green pastures,
and that thither the shepherds have but followed
them. It is true that the church, in consequence
of this attraction, is but rarely central to the
parish. In some districts may be counted nearly
a score of churches ranged along the winding
valley, whose stream serves to each in succession
as the parochial boundary; and hence the area of
the parish is very unequally disposed around its
place of worship. Nevertheless the site of the
kirk and manse is chosen on a far juster principle.
For obvious reasons, the population is crowded on
the valleys, and thinly scattered on the moors :
and the most perfect adjustment of every claim is
to suppose the people, with their respective dis-
tances, to form a coherent substance, of which
substance the centre of gravity is the proper site
of the church. This principle, as just in morals
as in mechanics, may serve to appease the remote
inhabitants who complain that they must travel all
the breadth or all the length of the parish before
they reach the place of worship. From the above

IMPROVEMENTS. 45

it follows, that the manse, in the situation of which
the minister has seldom any choice, has, by a law
of nature, nearly the best advantages of soil and
shelter which the parish can afford.

Surely this holds out to the incumbent great
encouragement to accomplish what nature has left
to be done by art for completing the beauty and
comfort of his residence; and as he, from superior
education, must be supposed to possess a cultivated
taste, and ought to have charity, he cannot be
excused either in suffering dirty doors, or refusing
to plant a tree because he plants not for his
children. But where is the ground of complaint,
it may be said, seeing that so much has already
been done? Improvements, it must be owned, have
taken place in an age so replete with improvements;
and as this is just the ground of expecting more,
so, indeed, much more may yet reasonably be ex-
pected. And therefore these pages are humbly
submitted to my honoured fathers and beloved
brethren. Were the times as formerly when there
was no stir — no taste in this way, who would have
written what none would have read? But now
that improvements are begun and progressive,
many are looking out for hints on a subject in
which they are interested ; and for any that may
be here suggested, I can answer that they are the
result of experiment, and adapted to the circum-
stances of the persons for whom they are designed.

Having provided for the shelter and ornament of
your garden, as well as its safety from devastation

46 THE VILLAGE GARDENER.

and annoyance by small foes, we come now to take
a look of its interior; and for the following reasons
I venture to suppose, that the observations next to
be made will be judged worthy of your attention.
The village or the country gardener is a man that
has his price; he is not always to be had, and what
is worse, he is least to be had when he is most
needed. The seed time is his harvest, and in that
season of his importance, he must divide himself
amongst his customers. Thus your reeking furrow
impatient to receive the seed, must again get cold
and wet before the man of science makes his round,
and thus waiting for your man you lose your crop.
But know a little of the thing yourself, and with
the help of a common labourer, you have the time
and tide in your own hands. But look to the
workmanship of these men of price, and you will
discover your need of knowing more than they do.
How often do you see, on the best wall, every sort
of tree for "uniformity's sake," submitted to the
same rule of training, a rule too which in the case
of some is such as to prevent the possibility of
fruit-bearing. The fault may be in Nature, making
one tree to differ from another; but the fault must
not be in this man's science — all must conform to
the same laws. He knows that the young wood is
an encumberance to the pear; and he lays down its
well trimmed branches with many a side-long glance
at their exquisite parallelism; and this delight were
marred if the plum might be any exception. It
insists, indeed, on not bearing a morsel of fruit

BUNGLED GARDENING. 47

except on its young wood ; but Andrew will not
allow a twig to remain, and hence the tree, after
ten years of trial, by torture, is, with others of the
same family, condemned and burnt, either for bar-
renness or contumacy. Meantime your wife and
children have often had watering teeth, on viewing,
in the Squire's garden, a rich profusion of green-
gages and of magnums, like the golden eggs of yore,
and have wondered why they have none at the
manse, Andrew blames the nurseryman for cheat-
ing in the matter of grafts, and you suspect the
soil. This is really too bad, to have nothing for
the teeth — to have the best soil, a wall that did
not come there without expence ; not forgetting
your account current with the man of price ; and
to have no other produce than a set of bare, knotty,
gnarled old poles, held up to the beauteous sun with
shreds of old hats or pieces of shoe leather; and all
this, because your man of science cannot see why
the plum should differ from the pear. 1 would
exhort you not to suffer ugliness, sterility, conceit,
and useless expence. If you do not choose to
notice what, part of a tree is made for bearing fruit,
and tell Andrew to spare that, or put in a nail your-
self, lay the axe to every root, and plant ivy, which
will train itself, look beautiful, and cost nothing.

As in the fruit department, so in the vegetable.
Dinner on the table, you have nothing but pota-
toes; and an apology is made, alleging the badness
of the garden. The truth is, your man, going to
all places, remembers nothing about any place; and

48 BUNGLED GARDENING.

the succession of cropping, as necessary to the gar-
den as to the glebe, is a matter of chance. Hence
your cauliflowers, having succeeded late cabbages,
instead of swelling to a noble bumpy head that
might please a phrenologist, are mere buttons; and
so of the rest. Yet no expence is spared ; the
garden consumes a great deal of manure, as much
as might help a large field of wheat, besides in-
curring a considerable debit for seeds and plants ;
and not a little for whole days, half days, and odd
hours, as per Andrew's account. Still there is
nothing to eat. I have so often met with com-
plaints of the unproductiveness of manse gardens,
that I have suspected some ill bit of ground, long
peeled by the parish privilege of feal and divot,
had generally been alloted for clerical horticul-
ture; but the suspicion was bad, and the deep black
mould every where testified against it. However
rich the soil, it gets deadened by long use ; the
constant supplies of manure serve to quicken it
rather for the production of animal than of vege-
table life ; and so fed for half a century, without
trenching or rest, it becomes a living heap of worms.
Hence the verity of the statement, the worm took
the carrots, the worm took the onions, and the
snails, as busy above ground, left not a vestige of
the peas. Having so many eaters in the garden,
it is easily understood that you are at no little
expence in feeding them, and have nothing left for
yourself. A little skill on your own part, to be
acquired herewith, together with a few days of a

BUNGLED GARDENING. 49

potent labourer, might dispense with Andrew and
his worm-eaten crops.

As in the vegetable, so in the flower department,
(for what garden wants somethings in that way?)
Andrew cannot remember, and no bump of locality
could, where all the lilies in the parish have made
their beds for the winter; and what cares he for
the sleeping beauties that lie waiting for the sum-
mer sun ? Slash goes the murderous spade, with
the harshness of a guillotine, through dahlias, jon-
quils, crown-imperials, and narcissus-poetica. This,
perhaps, you consider of little consequence, but if
you do not care for flowers do not have them. It
is not natural to combine nursing with destruction,
— to cherish hope and plan its ruin. Root up all
and sow grass, a beauty that never tires, and amidst
which, the "wee modest crimson-tipped flower"
will spring up of its own accord and defy the scythe.
Such a remedy easily suggests itself, and such an
arrangement would afford far more pleasure than
indifferent and ill kept flower borders, and would
display a certain elegance of taste suited to those
who have no love for horticulture. Yet this is a
thing no more to be met with than ivy substituted
for ill trained and fruitless trees. The truth is,
there is far more of imitation than of consistent
plan in the measures that are every where adopted.
All gardeners having walls, have wall trees; and as
every garden has its flowerpots, you must have
them of course; but it is good to imitate a good
design only when imitation is purposed in the exe-

D

50 USE OF THIS BOOK.

cution also. It is the universality of the former,
and the rarity of the latter, that causes so many
failures both as to the comforts and fruits of a
garden. That man might claim the praise of
wisdom, who, having no love to garden work, and
caring nothing for flower or fruit, or other vegeta-
bles than the fields produce, would feed sheep upon
his half acre, and save fifty shillings per annum,
instead of adopting the imitation plan only in part;
and having, at no little expence, the shadow of all
things, but the substance of none.

These being the evils of the case, this little
volume is proposed for their remedy ; and the
better it will prove remedial that it is small. You
will escape in the first instance, the great evil of a
<rreat book. There is often a monstrous affectation

o

about science, that swells its details to the con-
sumption of far more time than would be necessary,
without its aid, for the discovery of all that it con-
tains ; and besides, a book on the subject before us
is sure to contain a great many things of which we
have no manner of use.

If I want to know what sort of peas I should
purchase for seed, I meet a list so long that I am
perplexed, like a shopping damsel amidst an ocean
of calicoes ; and how should I get out of the laby-
rinth, if indeed I should venture in, to choose an
apple out of three hundred varieties ? My life is
not long enough to try so many apples or to eat so
many peas. Besides, although I have no hot-
houses and no conservatory, I cannot learn how to

USE OF THIS BOOK. 51

sow carrots without encountering a dissertation on
the bleeding of vines, or the temperature fit for
exotics. I am morover, three hundred feet above
the level of the sea, and farther from the tropic than
I could wish ; and when I proceed with directions
for the month suited to Covent Garden, if not to
the climate of Italy, I find, for the time being,
nothing but ice and snow, and might as well dig a
Roman causeway, or sow the top of Mont Blanc.

And then some of the finer fancy pieces of work,
such as budding or grafting, which in their nature
are very captivating, and as simple as splicing a
rope, cannot appear in a book of science without a
portentous minutiae about saddles and scions, that
deter from all attempts, and make it appear that
nothing short of a regular apprenticeship can qua-
lify for the mystery. Kind reader, I mean to
deliver thee from the killing toil of ponderosity, and
from the awe of mystery — from the perplexity of
needless varieties, and from prescriptions for which
you have no use, or which, being worse than use-
less, prove false, by having no adaptation to your
climate. It is simply the purpose of this little
manual to suit the medium climate of North Bri-
tain, including a goodly portion of the south ; to
consult the economy of ministers; to make every
manse garden a model of neatness and fertility; to
give shelter and seclusion to the meditative walk
of the pastor, and plenty of pot-herbs, fruits, and
flowers, to his tasteful and thrifty wife. But the
secret must be out ; that to these ends it is nearly

52 THE BITE.

indespensable that the minister should be his own
gardener, wholly as to knowledge, and partially as
to work.

Now the book will not do without the bite; but
how to get at hand or heel to infuse a little of the
mania is the ticklish question. In order that you
may let me come at all near you, it is probable that
you should like first to be informed as to the na-
ture of the bite, the intensity of the virus, and its
effects on the system. It would be unreasonable
not to satisfy an inquiry so natural into the cir-
cumstances of the case; and I can assure you that
you need to be under no serious apprehension. You
may experience a little uneasiness at the first, from
a powerful excitement of the nervous system; but
the uneasiness is occasioned rather by the novelty
of the movement from a state of comparative rest
than from the motion itself. In this respect it
resembles the law of projectiles. There is first a
considerable disturbance produced amongst the
sleeping particles in overcoming their vis-inertiae ;
but, when once impelled, they find the motion so
agreeable, that were it not for obstacles they would
never cease to move. The effect of the bite does
not disappear till the decline of life — not that the
mental and nervous energy are then expended, but
a more quiescent state is superinduced in accommo-
dation to the weakness of the bones and muscles.
From all the cases, however, that have come under
my observation, I can truly say that this decline
has been put off to a far greater distance from those

• THE BITE. 53

who have submitted to the bite, and the increased
activity which it communicates, than from such as,
preferring a mere torpid state of existence, have
treated their nervous system with punch and pipes,
and morning slumbers and strong tea. I am not
philosopher enough to tell why a machine that has
so many joinings, levers, pulleys, and pivots, should
last longer by constant and even rapid motion than
by lying a good deal idle — unless it be that rust
consumes faster than labour wears; but, like other
venders of specifics, I rest chiefly on the facts of
the case, and to these I can confidently refer.

I have further observed, as to the effect of the
infusion by the bite, that it stimulates the brain
gently, increases the circulation, and determines
to the surface — that it gives to the head a great
turn for quick inventions, and fills the heart with
kindly feelings. In short, I have never discovered
any thing of a rabid tendency in its effects on those
who have been bit except a strong propensity to
bite others. And as to its operation on your taste
and pursuits, it will inspire a love of your garden,
and as strong an antipathy to that of the sluggard
as another sort of bite gives to the sight of water.
But neither will it infect you with a flower mania,
and set you to the useless counting of petals, pros-
ing about anthers, and dozing away your time
amongst poppy heads. You will prefer a goodly
laurel, placed with good effect, and having this
noble advantage, that whilst it is fair to view,
there is no further trouble in all time coming with

54 THE LITE.

the goodly breadth of ground which it covers.
Beneath the shady brow of your laurel, you will
set the bright eye of a flower, and rather have a
few of Flora's bounteous smiles than wait on all
her little caprices and humours. You have other
work in hand, and will not despise the rearing of
a cabbage as large as the church bell, or of baking
apples as thickly grouped as a string of onions.
You will deal in the substantial as well as the
pretty ; and, insisting upon order, the chief in-
gredient of beauty, you will not tolerate weeds,
rubbish, broken branches, and scarcely a blank in
your drills of any crop.

Thus have I set down, bona fide, all that I have
observed as to the effects of the bite; and I sin-
cerely hope that your first reluctance will be over-
come, by the assurance that the gentle infusion
will prove in many ways beneficial. But it will
require a little aid. When Socrates had meekly
swallowed the hemlock juice, he asked his physician
what he should do to assist its operation, in order,
no doubt, that he might be not half killed, but duly
and rightly affected according to the design of the
drug : and as most medicines require some vehicle
and coadjutor — supposing that you have imbibed
my infusion, which, I am aware, is rather inefficient
by itself — I recommend the following prescription,
which will in all probability ensure its success : —
Read ' Thomson's Spring' for what the garden now
is ; and 'Milton's first days of Adam and Eve' for
what it was. The former will induce you to realise

MOTIVES TO GARDENING. 55

by sight what the poet has so beautifully figured
upon your imagination ; and the latter, when you
are charmed with the first simple delights of man
in watching the progress of flower, and tree, will
remind you that human imagination cannot go
farther in the conceptions of earthly felicity than
the Creator did when he put the best of his crea-
tures (two, they were not one) into a garden to
keep and dress it. I pity thee, 0 brother, if thou,
being alone, art incapable of receiving this part of
my prescription! There is nothing that bears any
resemblance to paradise for thee. There is no
beauty in the rose, or the ripe cherry, except you
have more eyes and more lips than your own. But
there is more of the prescription, and perhaps more
suited to your case.

Independently of the pleasure, let the use of
your garden be considered — the use, I mean not for
your living, but for your life. Your mode of life is
sedentary ; — you walk abroad, it is true ; — but if
you happen to see your face reflected from the deep
black pool, as you wander by the river side, you
will discover that the last theme of your studies
has left its print still upon your brow, and you will
infer from that index, that the solitary walk, which
has set the limbs in motion, has produced no change
of action in the brain, the heart, the liver, or other
organs which are strongly affected by the exercise
of the thinking faculties. But besides the walk
taken purely for health, you have many out-of-
door duties, to the performance of which you must

56 MOTIVES TO GARDENING.

travel no small distance; and hence you are apt to
imagine that the inconveniency of a too sedentary
mode of life will be sufficiently counteracted. A
little attention, however to the principles of physi-
ology might correct this mistake. Those duties
discharged amongst the distant members of your
flock are all of a solemn kind, and many of them
deeply affecting — keeping the mind as intent as in
the study, causing the heart and throat to swell
and tears to flow, and keeping in quick vibration all
those untractable cords that serve for a correspon-
dence between the mind and the remotest material
parts of our system. This modeof overworking and
wearying by only one sort of application, which is
inconsistent with the health of our frame, as it is
inconsistent with man's nature, soon destroys either
the mind or the body; and indigestion, or bilious
disorder, is frequently the first intimation that vio-
lence has been done to the laws of our constitution.
The great prevalence of this Protean malady
amongst rny clerical brethren might be attested by
the illustrious practice of the late Dr. Gregory, or
that of his successor, Dr. T., the hope of such des-
pondents. With great love to my brethren, and
perfect belief of a theory agreeing with nature's
designs and verified by facts, I recommend the
work of the garden, which effectually sets the mind
upon a new train of ideas, whilst it gives salutary
play to all the bodily functions. The long con-
tinued sameness of intellectual exertion, whilst
health remains, too nearly resembles that lamentable

THEORY OF HEALTH.

V

OF

57

state of mind in which only one idea can be enter-" ~
tained, to be judged either accordant to the indi-
cations of nature or beneficial to humanity. Do
you plead that you have in hand too serious and
important labours for admitting of any diversion
by things trivial and temporary — your pleading is
met by the analogy of material things: the ground
will not bear the same kind of produce for any
length of time; and art, having made the discovery,
adopts a succession of crops. The natural forest
is never succeeded by trees of the same species —
showing, where no art is used, that nature will not
give birth to a progeny for which she does not pro-
vide the resources of strength. You propose, by a
contrary course, to yield always the same sort of
fruit ; and the consequence will be, that, wearing
out yourself, your productions will in a short time
become sickly and weak, and, should you not dis-
cover that deteriorated quality, you will soon lose
the gratification of doing what you esteem your first
duty, by losing the power of doing any thing what-
ever. You will become bilious; and then farewell
to study and all its charms — to walks, and the
music of the brook, where you pondered the same
theme — to duty and all its rewards — to every thing
that soothes or delights, — the face of friend, the
look of love, the soft cheek and guileless tongue of
babes — farewell to all, but horrid apathy, and pitchy
gloom, and long night watching, or the dream in
which you know not whether you are man or beast,
wood or stone.

58 THEORY OF HEALTH.

If in such a condition to find deliverance you
would submit to any terms, think it not hard to
adopt those which, as they are easy, are able also
to save from such a calamity. Have first a sense
of the might and stedfastness of those laws which
belong to your constitution, and which the almighty
Founder of them never suffers to be broken with
impunity. It is no matter on what pretence or
from what cause the violation is made ; ill health,
disease, or death, will be the consequence. Piety
seeks seclusion, and thinks it does well ; but the
mind becomes vapid, the frame nervous, the ima-
gination gloomy, and the loved seclusion is soon
completed in the grave. Ignorance fares no better:
in the merry dance, a draught of cold water is
surely a harmless luxury, being the ready cure of
burning heat ; but the cure is followed by inflam-
mation and sudden death. The most helpless inno-
cence fares no better: the lovely child, in his playful
way, drinks the wrong vial, and quickly dies.

Why is this life the dawn of an immortal
existence, the all that we have in this world, and
chiefly given as a preparation for eternity, so badly
guarded from a thousand causes of destruction, by
the non-observance of those laws which are ordained
for its advantage, but of which the violation is
fatal ? Why does the knowledge of those laws not
form a part in the elementary process of every
school and seminary of learning? why should not
ministers contribute to a boon so essential to the
designs of their calling, and the welfare of all men

DIVERSITY OF PURSUITS. 59

and why should they, in all other respects so learned
disregard this branch of knowledge, the most mo-
mentous of all, because that on which their life,
their usefulness in time, and their fitness for eter-
nity, depend ?

Let the subject be viewed according to these tre-
mendous realities, and you will subscribe to the
necessity of diversifying your pursuits — of having
for bodily exercise such an object as may withdraw
the attention from graver studies, and hold you in
sufficient occupation, whilst it keeps you a good
portion of every dry day out of doors. Your
profession is of a nature that cannot maintain a
healthful subsistence without having the body kept
in motion from two to four hours a-day — and all
that time bathed in the free open air of heaven ;
and neither will your mind work to good purpose
on serious subjects without frequent recourse to
such as are light and recreating. Languor, debi-
lity, and a quick decay of the digestive organs, are
inevitably superinduced by a contrary treatment ;
and whoever, on the appearance of such symptoms,
has recourse to other stimulants than those of air
and exercise, in order to help on the flagging
powers of vitality, sows that moment the seeds of
some mortal disease, under the suffering of which
he cannot say that he is guiltless of his own blood.

Such unnatural stimulus is to the body what
enthusiasm in religion is to the mind ; and they
who, forsaking the salutary use of the divine Word,
can be pleased only with fanatical excitement,

60 ARTIFICIAL STIMULUS.

must soon fall from their giddy height, and have
themselves to blame forall the melancholy and mop-
ing idiocy which consequently ensue. Every arti-
ficial stimulus whether in mind or body, is followed
by a periodical lowness — causing in spiritual things,
the gloom of despair, and in bodily, a wretchedness
which can find no relief but by the exciting drug,
which, on every fresh application, adds fuel to the
flame it has already kindled. There is no misery
like this — to be a self-destroyer, and yet to shrink
from the approaching catastrophe ; and the more,
it is feared, to hasten it the more. And this is a
state of being into which many are as unwittingly
drawn as a ship when it first touches the noiseless
edge of a vortex. On the decay of the digestive
powers, through the want of proper exercise, it
seems reasonable and harmless to call in the aid of
a dram ; but the law is violated by that decision,
and all future miseries are but the result and the
punishment of that first violation. Let it be a
fixed thing that temperance, air, exercise, with
diversity of attention, are essential to a healthful
and useful existence. The law holds on its even
tenor, regular as the sun, and steadfast as the mind
of the Eternal. Conformity or suffering is the only
alternative : let the character of the transgressor

o

be in other respects good or bad, the punishment is
equally sure. God doth not suffer his law to be
changed : he changes the countenance of the vio-
lator, and sendeth him away.

To render your observance of the above law both

GARDEN EXERCISE. 61

cheerful and constant, nothing can be more effica-
cious than to betake yourself to the study and
labour of your garden. In summer or in winter,
you will always find there something to do, and
something that will give pleasure when it is done.
Your required exercise never wants an object ; one,
too, that sufficiently draws off attention from more
serious things, and has that peculiar interest which
arises from a work that is progressive. Whilst
the mind is refreshed by a continual variety, the
exercise to which the body is called has not only
the advantage of being in the open air, but of accom-
modating itself, by various degrees of activity, to
every change of temperature. In the training of
trees, the mind is agreeably occupied, whilst the
free air and moderate exertion are admirably calcu-
lated for relieving, in the early part of the week,
the languor and debility incident to the labours of
the pulpit. When the air is colder, and the frame
more energetic, the saw and the pruning knife, the
one toilsome and the other easy, are excellent com-
panions ; and the spade, in one half hour, will
bring on a summer glow in the coldest days of
winter. Here, then, you have a kind of exercise,
suited to all circumstances, ever at hand, and the
motive to which is ever new, and strengthened by
the love of progress, and the grateful survey of the
work you have accomplished. A mere walk, com-
pared with this, is like the amusement which chil-
dren take in writing their names on the sand of the
sea-shore ; you derive advantage from the motion as

62 THE STUDY AND THE GARDEN.

you pass along, but you leave no abiding trace on
the path that you have trode.

It is more important to observe, that whilst the
mind is invigorated by diversity of pursuit, there
is this further benefit, that the reciprocity of mental
and manual exertion creates for each an increase of
relish and aptitude : the garden recreation quickens
the appetite for study, and the quiescent posture of
study renews the desire of garden activity. Who
ever has maintained, for a sufficient length of time,
a regular system of employment, in which bodily
and mental application are upheld in due proportion,
will be surprised by the spontaneous appearance of
those energies which hitherto lay dormant in his
frame; nor is this the discovery of a fact merely —
it is a source of delight; for the healthful play of
either muscular or mental power is as certainly a
pleasure to the human creature, as skipping is to
the lamb, or singing to the bird. A man used to
this renovating process cannot become sluggish, and
is a stranger to the sloth that eats into the bone.
He keeps disease at a distance; and duties, which
to the sluggard are a load, are light and easy to
him. Whatever he has in hand he has also in
heart; his movements are impetuous ; so that it is
dangerous, from the velocity with which he is
carried, to meet him at the turn of a corner ; and
when the bodily energies are for a time suspended,
but not exhausted, and therei s a return to study,
he enjoys, in the exercise of the thinking faculties,
an actual revelry in the flowing of thoughts, which

THE STUDY AND THE GARDEN. 63

amount to more, in a brief space, than the most
laborious efforts could produce, by the longest ap-
plication, in a more languid state of the system.

To possess this efficiency and promote its con-
tinuance, it is necessary not only to alternate, as
above stated, the muscular and the mental activity,
which, by a mutual reaction, improve each other,
but it is necessary alike for both to avoid either
lassitude or too long rest. Do not continue in
study till mental application be overstretched, or
till the circulation of the material fluids has become
clogged and stagnant; and do not labour with hands
or feet till weariness come upon the body, whilst
the mind has been too long inactive. The moment
that the thinking powers begin to flag, hasten to
your garden ; and as soon as weariness affects the
body, return to your books. Let rest and fatigue
be vour tropics, and you will travel with unabated
vigour over the undulating line of your ecliptic.
But let quiescence be too long indulged, or lassi-
tude too long sustained, and the consequence will
be a long unfitness for any achievement ; the one
state terminates in leaden slumbers — the other in
faintness ; the one makes exertion seem appalling
— the other makes it really impossible.

Thus ought we to observe those constitutional
laws which so deeply affect our happiness ; and I
am greatly confident that experience will, in every
case, confirm all that has now been advanced as to
health and the efficiency of labour ; and the indis-
putable conclusion I trust will be allowed, that your

64 THE MECHANICAL TURN.

work in the Lord's vineyard will thrive the better
that you work in your own.

Suppose, then, that on stepping into your garden
you observe a fine fruit branch loosened from the
wall. It is covered with blossom or heavy with
fruit ; and the wind bends it over, and bears it
against the remaining point of its attachment. It
endures many a harsh gust, and seems in pain to
be delivered from its peril. You look on, and
would fain relieve it, as you would a child that is
drowning. But you have no mechanical turn, and,
in furnishing your house, never thought of buying
a hammer. Snap goes the branch, making a very
unseemly fracture, peeling a good bit of the yet
fastened wood, and hanging forth to the withering
sun the shrivelled fruit and seared leaf, to the
reproach of useless hands, if not a relentless heart.
As it is no doubt painful to behold the labour of
the long year perish, it were as certainly a pleasure,
by timeous interference, to prevent the catastrophe.

The mechanical turn is not like the gift of the
poet ; though not born it may be bought, and that
for a few shillings — the price of a hammer and a
parcel of nails. Love to the work is all that is
wanted : get the liking and the thing will come of
course. The work too will certainly prosper and
please every eye : the lines that you write upon
the wall will be full of flowers and sweetness, vastly
popular, and condemned by no critic. Thrice
happy state to do according to your liking, and
what you like to do so well that none may grumble

WALL TRAINING — APPLES AND PEARS. 65

and I cannot but wish, for the sake of certain
brothers, that they would contract the above predi-
lection with its consequent art, were it only to
keep them from the liking of that for which they
have really no turn. What boon to set them to
the inscription of rich and beautiful lines of fruit
upon their garden walls, instead of lines of fruitless
trash upon waste paper — to take them from the
smoky midnight lamp, by which they vainly court
Apollo, and place them in the literal light of the
sun — to give them free movement of every limb,
and a happy face, open and joyous amidst the
blossoming tree, and the bees singing at their own
work beside them; instead of the knit brow and
hard sitting at the loom, weaving a bad web for
which there is no market, and grinning over broken
threads, and ends of threads which will not meet !
Dare rather to be successfully wise. You are satis-
fied that there needs no mechanical turn to fasten
a branch as it was; and as to all other directions
for the training of trees you shall quickly see them
comprised in a very narrow compass.

For apples and pears set one shoot in the centre
of the tree straight up; and on each side lay one
horizontal, nine inches from the ground, or the same
distance from the branches underneath, cutting off
all the rest. ' This is nearly the whole work for the
year, as far as these kinds of fruit are concerned.
To have wood where you want it, for the like
operation of the following year, cut over the ver-
tical shoot in spring, at the height of eight or nine

E

G6 WALL-TRAINING.

inches from the lateral branches already laid in,
taking care to cut immediately over a bud and not
to injure it. That bud will grow up for your next
upright shoot; and in consequence of the amputa-
tion you will in general be sure of a choice for
laying horizontally. There is the whole mystery;
•and yet how often do you see large pieces of valu-
able wall quite naked, and the branches at other
places so crowded as not to allow the flower buds
to ripen, or the fruit to acquire its proper size and
flavour; and whilst it is vexing thus to have the
end so frustrated, there is this additional aggrava-
tion, that a tree ill conducted in the horizontal
mode of training does not easily admit of any future
reformation. But it is certainly easy not to lay
the branches too thick; and to avoid, blanks it is
only necessary further to observe, that as you may
not in some cases have the requisite trio of shoots
in the middle of the tree, a supply for the deficiency
may be found by reserving the most convenient of
the superflous shoots growing from the next lateral
branch, to be carried first upright to the required
height, and then set off on its proper destination.
The fractures that often take place in laying the
young wood in its proper position, when the shoots
have gained too much strength and hardness, will
soon teach the inexperienced practitioner the advan-
tage of bending trees at a more tender age.

And as to the fit time of summer pruning, there
is this difficulty, that if too late the tree loses the
benefit of sun and air; and if too early, you have

APPLES AND PEAPvS. 67

an aftergrowth, which, not being intended, proves
a want of skill, and is considerably detrimental.
This evil thing too will show itself even when you
have made the best choice of season, owing to an
unusual warmth and wetness towards the end of
autumn. But to avoid the difficulty of a nice dis-
tinction as to season, which after all may not serve,
and to accomplish the first intention of giving free
air to the fruit as well as to guard surely against the
trouble of aftergrowth, the following compromise
will in all cases be successful. Towards the end of
July, take a large sharp knife, and reserving only
the few twigs that are to be nailed to the wall, go
over all your trees of the kind in question, arid, by
one half hour's indiscriminate slashing, clear off all
the encumbrance of breastwood — that is, of young
shoots growing straight forward — taking care only
to leave about a handbreadth of stubble, or in other
words to cut the scions at such distance from the
stem. From the higher ends of these stumps,
young shoots will very likely arise; but no matter,
your work is not finished, their appearance is at a
place where they do no harm, and you settle ac-
counts with them by the proper pruning at the end
of the year. For this proper pruning you must
distinguish leaf from flower buds, and bearing spurs
from ligneous shoots, which may be done by looking
at the tree better than by a page of writ. When
you have enough of flower buds or spurs (little
shoots of two inches, with a large head, and not
like the rest) say at every half foot or less, make a

68 WALL-TRAINING — CHERRIES.

clean cut in taking off the wood shoots close by the
root, so that the bark may grow over the wound;
but when there is a scarcity of the former, leave a
quarter of an inch, which in many cases will become
the nucleus of a cluster of flower buds, and show,
by an equal distribution of fruit over your tree, the
value of a little attention to the modes of nature.

Cherries may be considered next in order, be-
cause they admit of the same method of training;
though, in regard to some sorts, that training
which is aptly compared to a fan ought to be pre-
ferred. In the horizontal mode the space betwixt
the branches is the first consideration; and this
will best be determined by allowing for that dis-
tance rather more than the length of the pendulous
leaves. If you see a branch completely buried
under the foliage of one that is higher — in which
case it will not bear fruit — you will do well either
to cut it out, or to unnail all the tree, and give
every branch more room. The black or the white
heart, I do not recollect which, (but look to the
leaf,) will require nearly as much width as the apple
or pear. As for the morella, those may plant it
who are fearless of acid, and have nothing to do with
their time; as it is sourer than vinegar, and, to be
duly trained, it requires the wall to be bristled with
nails. Having an incurable ascescency, like ill
doers, it gets the worst place — usually a north
wall ; but I have been told that it is somewhat
mitigated by having the best of the sun. And I
doubt not it may, just as republicans are sweetened

APRICOTS, PEACHES, PLUMS. 69

by a place near the throne ; but why to mend the
bad exclude the good, and suffer loss by doing in-
justice 2 The excellent may-duke cherry will have
abundantly fruitful branches, though only four
inches apart; and as it is more given to bearing
than idle growth, it ought to have the fan form,
by which, as the radii widen, you have room to lay
in the side shoots. And even the breastwood
(that which grows right forward) is not to be lost;
for if, instead of cutting it entirely off, you leave
nearly a handbreadth, the stump or snag will carry
a large bunch of rich dark fruit enough to fill both
mouth and hands. The black geen may be treated
in the sauie way; and is well worthy of a place on
the wall, though not of the best exposure.

With regard to apricots, peaches, and plums,
the training is the easiest thing in the world; and
if the work be as pleasant to you as I could wish
it, you will find an entertainment of some dura-
tion, and of frequent repetition in this department
of your wall. They are free growers, and afford
plenty of wood for laying in. The most important
rule concerning this class is to look to the space
which you design the tree to occupy, whether thirty
or forty feet in the length of your wall; and to set
off the branches fan-like in such a way as to reach
the several parts of the ultimate boundary in
straight lines. By this you will avoid an awk-
wardness that is often to be met with, in having
the branches first more vertical and then more in-
clined to the horizontal, resembling the figure of a

70 APRICOTS, PEACHES, PLUMS.

cup or tulip. I do not object to the prettiness of
this; but it is an arrangement that embarrasses the
subsequent operations of training. It is important
to put the strongest shoots always the lowest that
may consist with the above plan, as the main
strength of growth takes always the direction of
the more vertical shoots. The young wood must
be laid in from time to time, as early as it will ad-
mit of that operation, in order to have the full
benefit of the season for ripening, and for the same
reason the superflous shoots must be cleared away.
All that is not duly ripened, especially of the peach,
is killed with the winter frosts, and must be cut
down to the nearest fresh buds in the spring.
Avoid crowding, and have no blanks. The small
shoots may in general be two inches apart; and
twice as much would be an unnecessary freedom.
The reason of this closeness is the constant succes-
sion of young wood that must be kept up; some
always coming forward to take the place of older
and thicker branches that must be removed. Some
little variations in the contiguity of the shoots
must be admitted, according to the size of the leaf,
the fruit, and the nature of the wood as to bearing.
But whoever proceeds according to the above direc-
tion will not go far wrong, and will acquire by a
little practice an exactness which no ordinary pa-
tience would serve for writing, and far less for
reading.

Nothing more should be wanted for your entire
success, did you enter to the possession of your

RECOVERY OF ILL TRAINED TREES. 71

garden as of your house with walls unfurnished,
and had all to do after your own taste and fashion;
but the probability is that you succeed to a garden
not without trees, and that most of them will be
found in no small disorder. When your prede-
cessor was about to leave the world, he either had
the fruits of the upper paradise in view, and cared
less for the lower; or being unfit, through age or
lingering disease, for the over sight of his affairs,
the stewardship devolved upon his wife; and what
heart to the garden could she find amidst flowers
that seemed the ghosts of bygone summers, and
fruits that had a savour of widowhood? Children
half reared, the means reduced, the widow's loneli-
ness, and the flitting, were cares that could not well
accord with the training of trees. Be not rash to
blame, but think of the next flitting, and let the un-
known term lead the heart to higher things, whilst
the hand proceeds to the recovery of your trees, from
the effects of mismanagement or of long neglect.

It will probably be found that your espaliers,
now become standards, have grown so high as to
cast your sunny wall into the shade, whilst the
wall-trees themselves have run as wild as willows
by the stream. For such inveterate rebellion of
either province, there can be no remedy without
some death; but proceed with mercy to the flexible,
and use policy to reduce the obstinate. A vener-
able pear must not be cut down, for it will be a
long time before those of your own planting will
yield much fruit ; and an old tree, however lost by

72 RECOVERY OF PEAR TREES.

neglect or bad training, may be wonderfully re-
claimed. Leaving the espaliers to be afterwards
called to account, we suppose, in the case of an
aged pear upon your wall, that its branches have
got as thick as your arm, and bear only at the
farther extremities — all the spurs near the centre
being quite effete, and nine tenths of the tree nearly
fruitless; yet by the following method may such
a tree, in the course of two years, become the wealth
and ornament of your garden. By means of a
large chisel and mallet, let every alternate branch
be taken out, with a clean cut, close by the main
stem; and, with the same implements, smooth off
all the fruitless spurs of the remaining branches
near the middle of the tree. Several young shoots
will spring where the alternate branches have been
amputated. Of these, let one be laid to the wall,
to run along the site of the former branch; and let
another be trained along the front of the remain-
ing branch, not scrupling to nail it to the wood,
smoothed of its spurs, in the same manner as the
other is nailed to the wall. In this way proceed to
fill all the vacant spaces, and to furnish the naked
front of every old limb of the tree. In the first
year, supposing your wall to be three yards in
height, you will have, perhaps, six square yards
covered with young wood, and ready for full bear-
ing in the second year; and that, too, in a quarter
where no fruit had appeared for a long period before.
But this is not the only region where you may
have the benefit of young wood, and consequently

KECOVERY OF TEAR TREES. 73

of juicy well grown pears. For, on the first year's
growth after the operation, if, instead of clearing
away all the breastwood from the whole length of
the old remaining branches, you select and lay to
the wall as many scions as are needful for an in-
terim supply — say one to every foot, and placed as
in fan-training — they also will commence bearing,
and serve for a time, whilst the shoots first men-
tioned, and which are designed to be permanent,
are proceeding to fulfil their destination ; and
whilst they so proceed, those adopted for an in-
terim supply are gradually to give way. In like
manner, those running along the front of the old
branches must have a path cleared for them by
knocking off more of the knotty spurs as the young
wood advances; and in this way you lose no chance
of fruit on the old wood, except where you have
gained a far better by substituting the new. Thus
whilst the fruit-bearing is maintained at the farthest
extremity of the branches, as before the operation,
you have fruit of the like quality all over the sur-
face: and at the same time your plan is still ad-
vancing towards the entire renovation of your tree.
For supposing that, in the course of five or six
years, the shoots which you have trained on the
face of the old branches have gained a sufficient
length, you have only to lift them carefully from
their site, till the old branches are removed, and
then promote them to their proper station upon
the wall. Those which occupied the intervening
spaces will be equally advanced, and of course the

74 RECOVERY OF APPLE, CHERRY,

tree will be wholly renovated. I have seen other
shifts for old trees, but none which provides, as this
does, both for the continuance of a crop and the en-
tire replacing of the old wood with new; and that,
which in description is so obviously feasible, has
been proved by experiment to be wholly successful.

The same may be done with an apple of a good
sort, and without any symptoms of canker. If the
wood be healthy, and the fruit of an indifferent sort,
the process may be altogether the same, except that
grafts should be made on all the shoots which are
designed to be permanent; allowing the breastwood,
which is laid in for temporary use, to bear after its
own kind. But when canker appears on the old
wood, it is probably also that it will soon affect the
new, though grafted; and, in that case, it will be
better to plant young trees, at a proper distance,
one on each side of the old, taking such fruit as the
old will supply, till the young get forward, and re-
moving only such branches as come in the way.

With regard to the recovery of other misguided
trees, the cherry, if not very old, may be cut over
with a circular sweep, about two feet from the
ground; and the consequent shoots set all off in
the manner of wheel spokes — even bending some of
them downwards, so as to hide the deformity of
the naked stumps, and making them fast by tying,
not by nails driven into the old wood, as in the
case of the apple or pear. The peach, in its age
and disorder, had better be replaced by a young
tree. But with regard to apricots and plums, in

APRICOT, AND PLUM TREES. 75

the like circumstances, a very gratifying arrange-
ment may be adopted — one by which the tree will
no longer be ill looking, but soon clothed with
abundant blossom and fruit. This affords a plea-
sure of that kind which we have in the reformation
of a prodigal; and in which case, as in the former,
some of the complacency is perhaps due to the pa-
tience and methods we have employed, contrary to
the opinion of others who judged the recovery
hopeless.

Choose some fine winter day, and begin your
operations by wrenching the ragged hedge-like tree
entirely from the wall. Cut out a number of its
oldest and barest boughs, with a view to acquire a
plentiful supply of young wood near the heart of
the tree; prune all the remaining branches quite
smooth, about half way to the top, and then restore
them to the wall, by an equal distribution in the
form of a fan; but let the bared portion of each
branch be held out from the wall about four inches,
by pieces of wood set behind. Near the extremity
of these branches will be found by the favour of
former negligence, an abundance of young shoots,
some of one and some of two year's growth. Let
all these be laid down in close order, like a circle of
rays, which in summer they will still more resemble
by the brightness of their blossom. Within this
luminous ring you will have another circle, yet in
embryo, composed of the young shoots proceeding
from the old stem, and for whose expansion you
have provided, by keeping the naked part of the

76 PLANTING WALL-FRUIT TREES.

old branches at a proper distance from the wall.
This inner circle will also abound in fruit, as close
and beautiful as the stars of a peacock's feathers,
and will quickly enlarge its dimensions, approach-
ing nearer to the exterior ring. When the younger
rival comes quite up to the older, then, agreeably to
the laws of nature, the beauty of the mother must
fade as that of the daughter is unfolded. On the
first conjunction your tree is complete, and all in
full bearing; and this completeness will be main-
tained by gradually diminishing the outer ring as
the interior disk is enlarged. For the success of

o

this shift also, I can refer to the test of experiment;
and may be allowed to notice again the advantage
of a principle by which, without losing one year's
crop, an old and almost barren tree is submitted to
a process of entire renovation, having not only
young wood in every part, but studded all over
with golden apricots or green-gage plums.

In the wall department of your garden, I have
placed pruning before planting; an arrangement
which, though not very accordant with the order
of time, is most likely to answer your business as
to the order of importance; because, for one in your
circumstances who is called to the first operations of
planting on new ground, there are ten who enter to
a garden already in some sort furnished; and that,
too,with trees most frequently in such condition as
above described. And as the chief thing is to bring
your own skill, and occasionally your own hand,
into requisition, the above methods of reforming bad

PLANT-ING WALL-FRUIT TREES. 77

trees are the most likely to promote that end; and
if that end be once gained, all the rest will follow
of course; for there is something so attractive in
horticultural occupations, that we never find them
abandoned by those who have once engaged in them;
and to effect that first engagement, we can figure
nothing that will present so strong a motive as an
obvious and quick and certain process of establish-
ing beauty and fruitfulness in the room of confusion
and sterility. Nor is it to be expected that you shall
have the satisfaction of beholding such a process,
if your dependence be not on your own resources,
but on the common routine methods of your pro-
fessional man; it being far more probable, in these
circumstances, that you will first endure, for some
seasons, the ugliness of ill grown, useless trees, and
then, after sustaining as much disgust as serves
to fix the resolution, root them out to place more
hope on the young of your own planting; from
which, however, you will gather very little bulk of
fruit for ten yearsv

But we now proceed on the supposition that you
have new ground, and a new wall to furnish; and
here it is almost certain, unless you have bestowed
more attention than is usually given to the works
of others in which you have no personal interest,
that, on proceeding to plant, you will find yourself
in doubt as to many things; and that, long after
the work is done, you will either suffer regret on
account of the place chosen for certain fruits, or, in
order to get rid of your vexation, you will shift the

78 SOIL FOR WALL-FRUIT.

site of your trees, and occasion no small loss both to
yourself and them. Wherefore, the following ob-
servations are humbly submitted to your attention,
that you may profit by the writer's loss, or purchase
at a cheap rate the lessons he has learned.

The first thing is the soil ; and you must either
be at the expence of making the soil fit for the tree
that you desire, or be content to want that tree for
which the soil has no fitness. It is a necessary
principle of all vegetable growth, that the expan-
sion of roots, including depth as well as breadth,
must bear a due proportion to that of the branches.
If your wall is only 6 feet high, your fruit border
must be trenched at least 2 feet deep; if 8, 2J feet;
if 10, 3 feet. If the subsoil be either pure gravel
or hard till, you can have no satisfaction with less
trenching; but if the subsoil be alluvial, or consist
of the debris of a hillside, showing good soil, though
plentifully mingled with large stones, the trees,
with less of your provision, will forage for them-
selves. But early canker, and that even of the
young shoots, will certainly ensue wherever pure
gravel or indurated clay meets the feed ng fibres
within 18 inches of the surface. If, then, you
choose to content yourself with such a depth, plant
nothing but paradise stocks, from which you may
have good fruit for a few years; but rather take
down your wall than show a summer codling -upon
it— a sort of tree that will do well enough in a com-
mon hedge. The most that can be made of a low
wall and slender depth of soil is to set the paradise

FUTILITY OF FLAG-STONES. 79

stocks on the very surface, making no pit in plan-
ing them, but merely throwing earth upon the roots.
The pavement that we often hear of for counteract-
ing the descent of roots is nonsense, or nearly so ;
for if it be of sufficient breadth, it will cost more
than might serve to deepen the soil; and if it be
of small dimensions, the roots will hasten to the
extremity, and then take their own way, going
straight down with a greediness proportioned to the
period of their confinement. The causeway theo-
rists suppose that the progress of a tree is like that
of inert bodies, which continue their motion in the
direction that is given them; whereas the living
plant has more alliance to the living animal, taking
the nearest road it can find to procure food and
drink. One would think that the error as to the
supposed obedience of the roots in their less visited
territories might have been corrected by a pretty
fair analogy taken from the nature of the branches,
which are well enough seen. After being tied
down for any length of time, or carried horizontally
to any distance, every espalier branch, as soon as
it gains its liberty, sets its head erect; and so every
root held up by the pavement will begin to go down
the instant it passes the barrier. Therefore trust
more in shallow plan ting than in a few slate stones;
and make provision for replenishing your wall with
new paradise stocks when the old begin to fail,
which, in the above circumstances, may be expected
in the course of ten or twelve years.

In a small bit of ground you may have a suffi-

80 PARADISE STOCKS WALL-FRUIT BORDER.

cient supply ready grafted, and a few years trained
on small stakes to that figure which they are after-
wards to maintain on the wall. The stocks cost
nothing; and if you apply your own hand to en-
grafting, you may have, at very little expence, and
even on the thinnest soil, a constant supply of fruit,
and that of no inferior quality. The paradise
stocks not being seedlings, but raised from layers,
are remarkable both for avoiding the thong-like
tap-root, and for sending out a great multitude of
small fibres, which nourish the tree, without travel-
ing fast arid far like those of the free-growing kinds.
This accounts for their early bearing, their short
life, and their adaptation to a low wall and a scanty
allowance of good mould. In other circumstances
they ought to have no preference: for at every re-
planting there is incurred a considerable vacancy
as to space, and consequently a loss both of time
and of fruit; whereas other trees set in good soil
will soon complete your design, and serve for the
period of your life, without leaving the bare face of
your wall to look idly at the sun.

In giving scope to the roots, the next thing to
depth of soil is the breadth of your wall-fruit bor-
der. The technical rule, that it must equal the
height of the wall, may readily be discarded. If
you have a good height, there is no need of objec-
tion; but should your wall be only six feet, the
border will still be the earliest and most productive
portion of your garden ; but how little area for
cropping will the length give when multiplied by

CHOICE OF WALL TREES. 81

only two yards in the breadth ! And, considering
the roots of the trees, how often do suckers appear
on the farther side of the gravel walk, showing how
far the tree goes in quest of food, and what bad
fare it meets with in passing through or under a
mass of stones, instead of more latitude of soil,
enriched by frequent manuring, and quickened
by many upturnings to the frost and sunbeams!
Wherefore, on more accounts than one, although
stinted in your allowance of wall, it will be wise to
give a more liberal breadth to your border. Should
the former be only six, let the latter be at least
nine feet, and there can be no harm in making it
twelve. I am aware that the look is something,
and that your greatest distance from the wall adds
to the meanness of its height; but a good crop
of early cauliflower and better fruits are of far more
consequence, and of such real beauty as to conquer
the defect.

Next to the fitness of soil in the furnishing of
your wall, the choice and arrangement of trees are
to be considered. The depth, the extent, and the
richness of your soil constitute your talents for
valuable productions; and that your wall, as a
splendid page, may display those talents, you
have only to observe the rule of good composition —
"Apt trees in apt places." If your elevation ex-
ceed that of 400 feet, unless the advantages of local
shelter be very great, plant no peach, neither at-
tempt, although out of sight, the best of its species,
the Moorpark apricot. It always argues a weak-

F

82 CHOICE OF WALL TREES.

ness to strive against nature, and to spend, in badly
executing what is above your ability, those labours
which, if laid out on things within your reach,
might be crowned with abundant success. At a
height of 800 feet, with ordinary shelter, theMag-
dalene peach will ripen well in most years, and the
Moorpark apricot in favourable seasons. Let this
then be your border, observing that, if 100 feet
must be added to your elevation, such addition may
be compensated only by the utmost advantages of
encircling hills, woods, southern aspect, and gravelly
subsoil. If these trees, then, are to have a place
at all, they will of course claim the best — not only
the wall that sees most of the sun, but such por-
tion of it as falls not within the shade of other walls.

The magnum plum, if you would have it eatable,
will come in for the next favourable exposure ; but
you need not allow it to ramble very far. It is a
good fruit when its great depth of pulp is well
broiled in the sun, but otherwise it is worse than
the skin of a melon; and as we have too many
dark summers, in every one of which this tree is
useless, it ought not, seeing it must have the best
aspect, to be allowed much more.

The Eibston pippin and the jargonelle pear will
repay you both in quantity and quality for every
hour of more sun that you give them. If your
situation be near the level of the sea, the green-
gage plum will do as well on an east wall; but any
where about the medium elevation it must come in
for a view to the south — and richly it deserves it.

CHOICE OF WALL TftEES. 83

Should the Moorpark apricot, according to the
above notice, be excluded, you may have a beauti-
ful display of the Royal George, or of Breda, which,
though inferior in flavour, are yet good fruits, and
illustrious for preserves. The Orleans plum, the
green pear of Yair, the nonpareil apple, and Thorle
pippin, are all so much the better of all the sun they
can get at a medium elevation, that you may admit
them to your best wall acccording as you have room.
The year 1826, the dryest and hottest we have
seen, proved, by the size and quality of various
fruits, that in high situations sun heat is the great
want. Trees go well down for moisture, and do
not suffer for want of rain in the dryest season, as
they do for want of sunshine in ordinary seasons.
And as ministers may not have so much in their
power as to the mode of laying out their gardens,
it may not be amiss to suggest to proprietors who
do not incur the expence of hothouses, that the
best way in which a garden can be laid out in higher
situations is to have only one wall in all its length
facing the south. The expence of building is the
same. The north aspect is at all events useless :
and though the east and west walls may have fruit
on both sides, yet the two will not equal, taking
quality together with quantity, the production of
half the space having an aspect to the south. A
garden of such a form might be made more beauti-
ful than any other: and it would free its owner
from the embarrassment which so frequently occurs
in settling what trees may be put off with an in-

84 SPACE FOR WALL TREES.

ferior exposure ; for in truth one and all of them
are valuable in the proportion of the sunlight which
they receive.

But supposing that you have now made choice
of as many as your best wall can accommodate, the
room to be given to each is an important consider-
ation, and not very often, as far as I have seen,
considered wisely. A small bit of wall will yield
a shilling's worth of fruit in one year, and that is
more than the price of a good tree. The wall is
the main expence. Have it well filled up as soon
as possible, and have it in view to keep it always
full, removing the whole or part of any tree that
proves less valuable than the one which it begins
to incommode. You may, according to this plan,
allow one dwarf tree for every twenty feet in the
length of the wall; and let the whole be inter-
spersed with riders if your wall be eight feet high
or upwards. These last should all be of kinds
which bear almost immediately — as cherries, plums,
and various sorts of apples. The dwarfs are
trained close to the ground ; the riders are so called
because they overtop their neighbours: and the
first design is to have them out when the dwarfs
make up to them. But it may happen that you
will be loath to part with one of these short-leased
tenants, especially if the neighbour that comes to
supplant proves him less deserving; in which case
the rider with his long shank, may be trained in
the form of a windmill, pointing the vanes in all
directions, or two branches may be led downwards,

FILLING UP THE SPACE. 85

parallel to the main stem; and from these lateral
shoots will spring, which may serve to fill all the
required space. Of free growers, the wood bears
most fruit when submitted to such tortuous course.
With regard to the other walls, it may be pro-
per to have on certain portions of them duplicates
of some of the trees which have been chosen for
the south exposure. This will be found conveni-
ent chiefly in the case of such fruits as keep no
time, but must be eaten quite ripe from the tree —
as cherries, plums, and some pears. In the one
situation the crop will be finished when that on
the other begins to ripen; and thus the season of
fruit gathering is agreeably prolonged. The red
magnum ripens early, and has no need of a better
aspect than the east or west. Observe the shelter
as well as the sun. Perhaps the one wall may
have more of either than the other; and you have
only to choose the position according to the quality
of the fruit, for which choice the observations al-
ready given may be sufficient — the rest is merely
filling up. And where this is the only object, you
may, for the sake of variety, and a little economy
of time in covering the wall, alternate the horizon-
tal with the fan-training. Apples and pears should
all be horizontal, in which mode of training they
assume the form of a pyramid; and as all the
stone fruits should be fan-trained, the latter admit
of spreading for a time over the space that is va-
cant towards the top of the pyramidal.

It is important to occupy one of the corners

86 MOOR BLACKBIRD — XETS.

having partly a south and partly an east or west
exposure exclusively with your cherries; and to
plant them, both dwarfs and riders, so as to fill the
wall at the soonest. For no sooner will fruit appear
than it will be carried off by birds, unless protected
by a net. By having a double aspect, you prolong
the fruit season ; and by having the trees of that
species brought together, one net will serve for all
that you require. — A most pestilent fellow, a moor
blackbird, without any coral on his bill, sooty, tune-
less, and ill shaped, has of late years, like the old
invaders of Italy, found the fruit of our gardens
better than that of his native wilds; and, having
once tasted the cherry, he cannot forget the flavour
of it. He comes a host exactly at the season of
ripe fruit, and never fails, with an angry chatter,
when he is disturbed, to intimate that you are as
annoying to him as he is to you. He is sure to
have the advantage of you in early rising, which
both quickens his appetite and affords him leisure
for his morning meal. He is besides less shy as
to the quality of his food; for, whilst you are
judging that your fruit has not quite attained the
mellowness that is wholesome for your stomach,
he is busy eating; and that he has no complaint
of acidity, he proves, by a readiness to fall upon
your plums when he has done with your cherries.
Thus, differing from you only a little as to the
nice point of perfect ripeness, he makes the round
of your several crops, and is about to conclude his
harvest of each sort just when you had thoughts

MOOR BLACKBIRD— NETS. 87

of beginning yours. Finding my sooty foe too
many for me — that he was ready enough to quaff,
in cherry juice, "a good conclusion to the harvest,"
but never once to think of the sentiment that "fair
play is a jewel," I thought of salutiug him with a
little sparrow hail, — of which, on making the at-
tempt, I observed no further effect than the pro-
voking of that peculiar chatter by which he is wont
to express his disapprobation as often as he is dis-
turbed in his interesting avocation. In this I felt
some sympathy with my antagonist, perceiving
that he regarded the hail not otherwise than I
have done certain visitors who had as little to say,
although they did not fail to make havoc of time,
and hinderance of important duty. He lost no
feathers, but merely an hour of harvest work: and
yet the loss was more apparent than real ; for,
getting thereby a rest for rumination and whetting
of teeth, he resumed, as other martyrs to small
hail must do, his beloved task, and with redoubled
quickness soon made amends for all his loss. Doubt-
ing whither my aim might not be too erring, I
enquired of an old man, who was known to the
premises for half a century, what in former times
had been done with an enemy so untractable and
persevering. Upon which my old friend, with a
shake of his grey locks, which intimated that the
case was a hopeless one, said, " I dinna ken; the
doctor used to shoot them whiles, but it never did
them meikle guid."

Judging that, if no better for being shot, their

88 CONVENIENCE OF GRAFTING.

manners were not likely to amend by mere provo-
cation, I determined to alter by mode of warfare;
and so, grabbing up my trees, I gathered them into
one place, that one mode of defence might serve
for all, and sent, by a herring cart, for a long web
of decayed net, which cost only ten shillings, and
has lasted nearly as many years. Thus, paying
the enemy the same kind of compliment that Agri-
cola did the aborigines of the north, I have found
the defensive system entirely successful.

When you have gathered your cherries at the
full maturity of their rich and dubious hue between
red and black, the same net may be transformed
to your plums. But whether the enemy takes
himself off on being foiled, or is compelled to raise
the siege for want of provision, or finds easier
prey in other fields, I have not been attentive to
ascertain ; but certain it is, that for the above small
cost you may be free from any material damage
by this swarthy and moorish race. As to the
small matter of currants, it remains to give else-
where a method of having plenty in spite of all
that the birds can do.

A white rasp, or a red or white currant, may
be planted in the vacant spaces between your young
trees. As the fruit of these will be early, and of
superior quality, it is always something to add to
the benefit of your wall, and to give it a more
clothed appearance. But should you find pleasure
in grafting, you may, at no expence, raise on these
vacant spaces a few young trees of superior value ;

CONVENIENCE OF GRAFTING. 89

and by allowing them two or three years' training
before removal becomes necessary, you either have
an estimable and long remembered present for a
friend, or you have a tree that may keep its place,
in preference to some one of inferior quality, and
which has offended you by not answering to the
tally of your nurseryman. And as this last is an
inconvenience not unfrequent, it suggests the need
of acquiring the easy and pleasant art of inserting
a twig of a name and nature certainly known.
Should a summer codling set up its face on your
best wall, or a white hawthornden — which had better
be left to its early canker in the orchard than in a
place where every branch receives pains and has a
permanent destination to fulfil — it is important
either to have a well advanced tree ready to sup-
plant the interloper, or to have the art of lopping
off the unworthy branches, to be substituted by new
shoots of your own inserting, in such a way as to
incur the least loss of time, and to make sure of
the fruit which you wish to cultivate. A note to
this effect will be give in the sequel.

In the mean time, to finish our observations on
the wall department, the following list of trees may
be added for giving scope to make selection accor-
ding to our dimensions, and for preventing such
planters as may not know the quality by the mere
name of the tree from rearing on a wall such fruits
as are not worthy of that preferment.

90

LIST OF WALL TREES — ESPALIERS.

LIST OF TREES FOR THE WALL.
PEACHES.
Red Magdalene.
Royal George.

APRICOTS.

Early Orange ; not best, but

least shy.
Breda : better, and fit for

medium elevation.
Moorpark ; the best, but need

not be tried in high places.

APPLES.

Ribston Pippin.
Golden Pippin.
Nonpariel, Old.
Nonpariel, Scarlet.
Golden Rennette.
Corpendu.
Thorle Pippin.
Royal Pearmain.
Winter Pearmain.
Scarlet Pearmain.
Juneating (very early)
Paradise Pippin.
Golden Russet.
Kentish Pippin.

PEARS.
Colinar.
Jargonelle.
Green Pear of Yair.
Summer Bergamot.
Autumn Bergamot.
Green Pinkie.
Swan's-egg.
Grey Auchan.
Moorfovvl-egg.

PLUMS.

Green-gage.
Coe's Golden-drop.
Magnum-bonum, White.
Magnum-bonum, Red.
Blue-gage.
Orleans.
Orleans, New: earlier.

CHERRIES.

May- duke.
Black-heart.
White-heart.
Black-eagle,

ESPALIERS.

As taste ought always to be consulted in matters
of the garden, and as some object to espaliers alto-

DEFENCE OF ESPALIERS. 91

gether, on account of their stiff and formal appear-
ance, it may be proper to say something for their
admissibility before giving directions for their cul-
ture. It will be found that much of the bad effect
complained of arises either from the undue height
to which they are carried, or a great degree of un-
neatness in the mode of training. The straight
lines in which they are planted cannot surely be
urged as a valid objection, seeing that the espalier
row has no more fault in this respect than the wall
to which it is parallel, or the walk that lies between
both ; and if straight lines must be banished from
the garden, then peas must be sown broadcast,
potatoes must not be drilled, and we ourselves
must walk crooked, either in a stooping posture or
in a serpentine direction, in order to please the eye,
Let the height of your rails, supposing your garden
not to exceed the usual dimensions, be no more
than enough to accommodate five branches, trained
horizontally, and nine inches apart. Erect no
heavy and green-painted woodwork, but rather let
the trees themselves be the prominent objects con-
stituting a green and flourishing wall, sustained
only by the slender tops of peeled larch, which may
be suffered to fall away one by one, as the branches
acquire strength for their own support. Such a
line of fruit or blossom, instead of proving incon-
sistent with beauty, has rather a good effect ; serv-
ing, like a picture frame, to give completeness, by
a rich and beautiful boundary, to the flower border
which usually runs between the gravel walk and
the espalier row.

92 ESPALIERS.

But should your taste be over fastidious, it may
be observed that the fruit raised on espaliers, of
which every branch has an equal portion of the
sun, is greatly superior to that of standard trees ;
besides, trees of the former description, whilst they
yield a great deal of fruit, take up little or no
ground ; and, being kept so low, they do more good
by sheltering than harm by shading the crops or
flowers.

But to determine finally the question as to orna-
ment, take a survey of your garden after one of
those gales with which we are usually visited about
the autumnal equinox, and see the havoc that is
made amongst the standard trees: one half of the

o

fruit is thrown down, and every fallen apple or pear
has received a mortal wound; some are deeply
bruised, others are pierced with small stones, yet
sticking in the flesh, and some have taken a dimple
scarcely perceptible, but even that is an irreparable
injury, and not one fruit in a thousand so hurt
will keep for any length of time. But observe also
how the unfallen have suffered by the shock of the
tempest — their heads have been dashed together,
or they have been rubbed against the larger
branches, or lashed all day and all night by the
smaller twigs, till their natural colour is lost in the
multitude of stripes and blows. That they have
not fallen is no proof of their safety — they have
perished, but having less maturity, they have been
more tenacious of life, and are found after the
storm, like those more resolute seamen whose dead-

ESPALIER KAILS. 93

grasp is on the rope when their companions have
been washed away.

Doubting not, from the above considerations,
that you will judge favourably of espaliers, and give
them a place in your garden, the following direc-
tions may be of use for their successful and econo-
mical cultivation. Have the ground well trenched
and manured (see wall department), and plant the
trees three or four feet from the walk, and twice as
near to one another as they should afterwards be
when full grown. The reasons for this close plant-
ing are, as formerly stated, that the value of a few
crops is more than the expence of the trees, your
rails are sooner covered, and when the trees begin
to meet and incommode one another you can then,
having ascertained their various qualities, give
scope to the best, by diminishing or rooting out
the less worthy. For one or two years, after the
meeting has taken place, you may delay the pain
of execution by allowing the young shoots to pass
one another on the opposite sides of the rails.

To incur no more expence than is necessary, the
stakes may be placed two feet apart, in which case
the annual shoots will require to be conducted from
one resting place to another, by pieces of lath, or
wild brier, or willow of two years' growth. These
conductors require a firm and separate tying, dis-
tinct from that which fastens more loosely the
living wood; they thus give strength to the rails^
and provide for straighter training than is com-
monly done by having the stakes twice as thickly

94 RECOVERY OF ESPALIERS.

set, and consequently at double the expence of
timber.

It might be worth while, as an interesting ex-
periment, to construct the rails, or some portion of
them, after the manner of a Venetian blind, but
having the boards, one for each branch, broader
and farther distant; and set to a proper slope,
meeting the sun's rays so as to give the espalier
nearly the full benefit of a wall, together with a
greater freedom from mildew and troublesome in-
sects. The boards thus placed above one another
would, except the uppermost, cut off the descent
of silent hoarfrost, and protect the blossom; and if
painted of a dark colour, they would not fail to
cause a considerable increase of temperature, and
might last for twenty years.

Supposing that you have succeeded to a garden
in which the espalier rows are already complete
with full grown trees, but which prove very unpro-
ductive and unpromising, the question will be,
whether to cut down with a view to replant, or to
attempt some mode of renovation similar to that
proposed, under like circumstances, for the wall de-
partment. First see whether the fault lies in the
soil or in the training; if in the former, nothing
will do but uprooting — if in the latter, a reforma-
tion may be easily effected. If canker appear
both on the old and young wood, there is no room
for hesitation; the tree so affected cannot be too
soon removed ; but if the young shoots be healthy,
and if the spots of canker be confined to the stem,

RECOVERY OF ESPALIERS. 95

or some of the older branches, the tree may be
spared for a time. And, further, should the tree
be much overgrown with moss, and the soil, whether
from bad bottom or want of depth, be evidently
unfit for trees of considerable age, the most satis-
factory way will be to extirpate all for firewood,
and before replanting, to trench the ground much
deeper, and raise upon it crops of vegatables for
two years, with plenty of manure.

In the meantime, provide young trees from the
nursery, and set them in good ground, that they
may advance under a training suitable to their
subsequent destination, and they will suffer very
little, when they come to be removed, by your
own careful lifting and transplanting, compared
with the injury which those of an equal advance-
ment sustain when taken up in the ordinary way
and carried to a distance. But though there be
no fault either by age, or canker, or soil, it is no
uncommon thing to find espaliers wholly unfit for
fruit-bearing, owing to mismanagement alone. You
may see that the top branches, which give rise to
an annual profusion of young shoots, have been
annually cropped in a manner proper to a quickset
hedge; and all over the body of the tree, instead
of bearing spurs, you will find a multitude of lig-
neous knobs, every one yielding its own bundle of
brushwood — manifesting such a mode of pruning
as that practised on English hedgerows, where the
design of leaving so many stumps on the stem of
the tree is to afford every year a more liberal sup-
ply of fuel.

69 PRUNING.

For the redress of this woful wrong, it is only
necessary to distinguish a fruit spur from a wooden
knob — which any one a little more discerning than
the knob, can be at no loss to do — and, having
made this distinction, to apply the saw, or a strong
knife, or the chisel and mallet, sparing the knobs
as little as honey bees do their drones. Then will
your flower buds once more see the sun, and re-
joice in their liberty, whilst the pith of the tree,
which the idle knobs consumed, will go to swell
your store of juicy apples and honey pears. Where
the vile hedge-pruning of the top branches has left
a strong, close, and lengthy stubble, you must pro-
ceed with a lower cut, and make all smooth, even
though your \vork should resemble that of peeling
oak for the sake of the bark. In the healing of
such sores the powers of nature are wonderful; and
it is just the tenderness which shuns the inflicting
of a wound that betrays the worst ignorance of the
pruner, and puts all trees, whether forest or fruit,
into the most unnatural and unhealthy condition.1

1 It were desirable to have the dispute as to the pruning of for-
est trees settled by an appeal to facts, and which might be ascer-
tained by those who are much conversant in the sawing and
planeing of old timber. There are two methods of pruning, each
of which has it peculiar fault. One method is to cut off a branch
close by the stem, and allow the bark to grow over the wound: and
the fault of this method is, that the process of healing may re-
quire some years, during which time a certain decay on the sur-
face of the wound ensues, and the decayed matter, not being
absorbed, as improper substances are in the animal frame, must
continue as it is, and may probably constitute the source of a
spreading decay at a future period, after the new and healthy

. PRUNING DISPUTE. 97

Should the bearing spurs seem to have contracted,
from old age, a hardness that is incompatible with

wood has grown deep around it. Hence, it may be contended, the
origin of cavities so frequent in the heart of old timber. The
other method is not to amputate near the stem, but to mutilate
the branch that ought to give way, so as to check its growth but
leave the life in it; and the fault of this method is, that the suc-
cessive layers of new wood, desposited year after year, are every
one marred by this stump, which continues its cross grain through
them all, making a bad knot in every plank, and must either pro-
long this mischief for fifty years, or be cut off some time, and
cause the evil complained of in the former method, cr it must
decay, and allow the successive layers to grow around a decayed
substance, proving a worse danger, by leaving outwardly a hole,
and inwardly a tube for conveying wet. The evil of the cross
stump is well seen in firs whose branches fall of their own ac-
cord, not without leaving a host of ragged remains, which though
dead last a long time, and show in the subsequent sawing of the
timber, as it were, the transverse perforations which they have
made in every deal that is cut; the perforations are indeed fitted
with a knob or plug, but the plug, though neatly fitted, is so in-
differently fixed, that it may often be pushed out with the thumK
Such are the two methods of pruning, together with the fault of
each. The last is by much the worse, unless the first cause rot-
ting. Let some proprietor of old trees cut down one, of which he
knows the very spot whence a large branch was amputated some
ten or twenty years before, and after taking off a slab opposite the
ancient wound, let the plane be applied, proceeding, under his own
eye, by hairbreadths, till the vertical grain be separated from those
that meet the plane at right angles — this being the exact seat of
the supposed disease. The last shaving will be worth gold, as it
will finish the controversy, determine the rules of a delightful
science, and give, as the author expects, a victory to Scotland
over the English, who are enemies to the first mode described, and
which obtains in the north. The experiment ought to be made
with respect to wounds that have been anointed, and to such as
have not. It would be interesting to see the paint in the middle
of the shaving. But apart from all experiment, two things are
clear: first, that by pruning in clue time, no branch thicker than

G

98 RECOVERY OF ESPALIERS.

a free circulation of sap, they too must be knocked
off in order to make way for the training of fresh
shoots along the old branches, as recommended in
the wall department. The scheme there laid down
is no uncertain theory, and the success will be as
certain here.

In order, however, that you may ultimately have
a surer dependence than on trees verging towards
decay — if the soil do not require a total renewal by
deeper trenching, and the extracting of old roots,
it may be expedient, in order not to be without
fruit for some years, to adopt a compromise; namely,
that of retaining for a time your old trees, and set-
ting young ones in the intervening spaces. When
no good comes by longer waiting on the aged, it
will be necessary to trench the ground to a consid-
erable depth where they stood; and before setting
young trees in their stead, to exchange a portion
of the soil for that of a plot used for the culture of
pot herbs, and which exchange, like free trade, will
prove a mutual benefit.

In choosing the sorts of trees fit for your espa-
lier rail, let it be a general rule to adopt those that
are of a finer quality than can be advantageously
cultivated as standards; and at the same time not

the wrist would ever need to be amputated at all; and, second,
with regard to firs, that if the broken, barkless stumps, when past
bleeding, were cut clean off with axe or saw, a great many deals of
the future growth would be free from the annoyance both of knots
and plugs. With regard to fruit trees, by all means prune early;
but if neglected, cut freely without fearing to spoil the timber.
Some ointment, howeArer, is better than allowing the wound to fall
into chinks and furnish beds to fungi and moss.

CHOICE OF TREES FOR ESPALIERS. 99

to attempt such as require the greater heat and
protection of a wall. The observations formerly
made with regard to elevation, local shelter, and
subsoil, will require to be noticed also here, that
you may not plant such trees as have no fair chance
of realising your expectations. It should be a
maxim for all climates that fruit, good of its kind,
though the kind be inferior, is preferable to that of
a better nature, but imperfectly produced. A good
crop of codlings is better than a bad crop of golden
pippins. I have seen a tree of the latter sort oc-
cupying a space large enough to have yielded a
bushel of fruit, but from, which it was thought
something considerable to reap three or four apples
in a favourable season; and when they were ga-
thered, I have no doubt that the little disfigured
crabs, being all seed and no pulp, were greatly
inferior, even in point of flavour, to the worst apple
in the orchard that grows to a full size. For it
seems to be a principle in nature, that if a tree be
such as rarely to produce an average quantity, there
must be something in the circumstances of the case
which will mar also the quality. Yet it is no un-
common thing, whether in the cultivation of farm
or garden, to aim rather at fineness of kind than
excellence of quality, although it is the latter which
chiefly repays the cultivator, and shows the supe-
riority of his discernment. The temptation lies
either in the more honourable name, or in the higher
price which is obtained for the commodity of a finer
kind: for there is a pride in saying, I grow wheat,
and 1 rear bred sheep on my farm; or I have golden

100 CHOICE OF TREES FOR ESPALIERS.

pippins in my garden; but the wheat scanty in the
field is also light in the sack; the sheep dwindle
and die; and the pippins are not eatable, if so be
that there are any to eat. There is in this every
way a wrong judgment, and there cannot fail to
arise much discomfort from preferring a higher kind,
though of worse quality, to a better quality, though
of a lower kind; and the vanity of the whole idea
is brought to view, by comparing the peasant, of
either sex, nobly clad in native wool, with the rake
or drab that would be genteel in decayed finery.

Having your wall already furnished with the
best sorts that may suit your climate, you have
only to go a degree lower in the scale to make up
your espaliers. But should your wall be so limited
as not to afford room for so many of the better sorts
as might otherwise be admissible, it will be proper
to cultivate as espaliers certain trees which ought
in other circumstances to have a place on the wall.
That part of your rails which is opposite to the south
wall, and has some benefit from its reflection, is the
most favourable for such an experiment. At the
medium elevation the Ribston pippin will do well
in this situation; for though it will not come to
such perfect maturity it will yet be better than most
other fruits, and the tree will prove more healthy
than it usually does on the best wall. A jargonelle
pear, in the like circumstances, may be not unsuc-
cessfully tried; and in lower situations, failing the
extent of wall, a variety of the finer sorts of apples
and pears may be raised in this way. The less
favourable aspects of the espalier rows must of

LIST -OF TREES FOE ESrALIERS. 101

course be filled up with such as are coarser and
more hardy; and the subjoined list, from which a
selection may be made, is set down in the order of
that quality, beginning with the more delicate and
such as require the best aspect. It may be remarked
that none of the stone-fruits do well for training in

o

the espalier mode, save cherries, which bear for a
number of years on the old wood; but though they
admit of the protection of a net as well as on the
wall, yet this method is in other respects less eli-
gible, as the young wood cannot be laid in to the
same advantage.

Where the climate is the best, and there is little
or no wall, it would be well worth while, for the
sake of stone fruits, to fix on the common rails a
series of laths, about as close as the courses of a
brick building, and which would answer as well for
fastening the young shoots. The expence would
not be great, and the laths, which are made of the
best foreign fir, would certainly last for ten years
if favoured with a coat of paint.

LIST OF APPLES AND PEARS FOR THE ESPALIER ROWS.

APPLES. Yorkshire Green.

Ribston Pippin. Stone Pippin.

Nonpareil. White Hawthornden.
Thorle Pippin.

Royal Pearraain. PEARS.

Early Julian. Jargonelle.

Paradise Pippin. Green Pear of Yair.

Eve Apple. Grey Auchan.

Kentish Pippin. Summer Bergamot.

Irish Pitcher. Swan's-egg.

Carlisle Codling. Moorfowl-egg.

Nonsuch. Lammas Pear.

102 TYING ESPALIERS — WILLOWS.

The proper mode of fastening the branches to the
rails is not to be overlooked, and ought to be pro-
vided for in every garden. How often does it happen
that for want of a few willow trees, the easiest of all
things to cultivate, recourse is had to tying with
pack thread, or strands of bass matting — the latter
giving way in high winds, and leaving the tree to
its fate, the former indeed keeping its hold, but
cutting into the bark, and producing diseased
growth, which is sure to terminate in canker ! It
is therefore a great thing for the comfort of your
garden to have plenty of willows; there is no doing
without baskets, and the twigs required for tying
are innumerable. Several varieties of the willow
tribe answer well enough, but the black and the
golden are the best; and these, like most things of
a more delicate essence, are not the easiest to be had.
From slips they do not so certainly strike root, at
least on a dry soil, but by a little care in choosing
a shady place of some moisture you get rooted plants
which may be set any where. It is better to have
them planted at random in the shrubbery than in
regular crops, which, both by show and convenience,
attract the cupidity of tinkers; and to have some
growing up as trees (the golden is very ornamental),
and some cut over by the ground. The former, in
their tree or shrub form, with numerous but short
twigs, are not tempting to thieves — the latter will
be well hid; and both, as they afford shoots of all
sizes, will answer all your purposes. The tying of
espaliers, with an abundant provision of willows

FRUIT BANK. 103

possessed of unfailing toughness, and admitting of so
great despatch, is one of the pleasantest operations
of the garden. The appropriate knot, you will soon
discover, is a little different from that usually made
with twine; but this is the distinguishing property
of such ligatures, that they do not cut the bark by
contracting, when wetted, as hemp does : they
shrink with dryness, not as to length, but thick-
ness, and thus grow slacker in the summer's sun as
the branches they hold increase in the summer's
growth.

Supplementary to both wall and espaliers is the
following device, which has proved eminently suc-
cessful. Supposing that you have more garden
ground than is necessary for the supply of vegeta-
bles, and that some part of it may be spared for a
green shady walk amidst shrubs mingled with
standard fruit trees ; on the south side of a row of
evergreens, impervious to the eye, let a dry stone
wall be raised to the height of four or five feet, and
coped with large stones, merely for strength and
durability. Plant this on the north side with ivy
to assist the screen of shrubs, and in a short time
not one stone will appear. From the south side
take away all the good soil to a depth of two feet,
a breadth of five feet, and a length equal to that of
the wall, which may be sixty or a hundred feet as
you find convenient. This excavation, it is to be
understood, runs close by the building, the founda-
tion of which must, of course, have been secured by
perhaps a foot of depth, and which will yet be un-

104 FRUIT BANK.

injured, as the stones that cast up in removing the
earth will immediately be thrown to the base in room
of the materials taken away. Thus an effectual
provision is made against the springing up of docks,
nettles, or other troublesome weeds; the earth re-
moved will be an invaluable treasure, whether for
making compost or helping a thin soil, and the
excavation itself will afford a most convenient re-
ceptacle for the immense quantities of stones which
occur in trenching or raking the garden. Suppose
the filling up in this manner to be nearly completed,
let a row of large thin stones, set on edge, run along
the southern boundary, and rise two or three inches
above the surface of the ground. This will serve
to keep the mass of stones distinct from the earth,
that there may be no mingling in the process of
digging. You have then on the one side of this
excavation the low edging, and the other a wall of
four or five feet : and the design is, in the course
of time, to fill up, with the riddiings of the garden
or with clean stones, in whatever way, the whole
space from the summit of the low edging to the top
of the walk, to present an inclined plane, facing the
south and nearly at right angles to the rays of the
sun. On this fruit trees are to be trained.

But in order to save time, before the bank is
completed to its proper slope the trees may be
planted along the southern boundary, and trained,
for two or three years, upon poles laid from the
edging to the top of the wall, according to their
future destination. When the surface of the slop-

FRUIT BANK SUPERIOR TO WALL. 105

ing bank is raised within an inch, or two of its proper
height, let a layer of coarse sifted gravel be laid on
the top. This will much improve the appearance,
and increase the reflected heat, and, being free from
small sand and earthy particles, will give no birth
to annual weeds.

For the purpose of training, should peaches or
apricots be planted, a close trellis will be requisite;
but apples or pears will require nothing more than
common espalier rails laid on the gravel and held
in their places by two slight spars running across,
one at the top and the other at the bottom. In
the mean time, the ivy produces a beautiful and
beneficial effect, surmounting the wall and adding
to the closeness of shelter caused by the evergreen
shrubs. It should be clipped along the top after
the manner of box edging. Nothing can exceed the
real snugness of the trees so placed, or the beauty
of their glowing blossoms spread out under the eye:
and the quality of the fruit comes fully up to the
theoretic advantages with which it is favoured.
The heat is undoubtedly much greater than that
of the best wall, and the open flowers find, in their
humble height, a shelter, like the daisy of the field,
from the sweeping blast which often scatters the
petals of a higher tree like a shower of snow.

Experience has fully proved the suitableness of
this contrivance to all elevated situations. In some
places, very low and warm, the heat so powerfully
reflected might possibly be too great ; but in that
case figs and nectarines might be so exposed, and

106 FRUIT BANK EXCELLENT FOR RIBSTONS.

would certainly take all that they can get. Yet
judging by the hot summer of '26, when the
fruit attained a size and flavour little known in our
northern climate, I should not much fear the roast-
ing of either apples or pears by such method of cul-
tivation. On this sunny bank one place at least
should be reserved for the Ribston pippin, the chief
of the apple race, but whose virtues cannot be eli-
cited without plenty of warmth.

It has long been observed that the Ribston as a
tree thrives better in the orchard or in the espalier
rows than on the best wall, but then the fruit, not
sufficiently ripened, soon shrivels, eats tough, and
does not acquire the genuine flavour. On the other
hand, where the fruit is in the best circumstances
for ripening, the wood seems to be in the worst ;
for on the wall the leaves are generally blighted,
and the fruit is in consequence destroyed. It is
probable, as this evil does not occur to the standard
or espalier Ribston, that it is prevented by the
natural washing and cooling of showers and dew.
Hence the combined advantages of the above expo-
sure, by which the leaves get all the rains of the
orchard, and the fruit more than the heat of the
wall.

Standard trees is a term which does not signify
such as come up to a certain pitch of excellence, as
when we say a standard book, but such as have one
great quality, namely, the independence of standing
on their own legs, without requiring either to lean
against a wall or to have supports under their arms.

THI'EYES — GARDEN DOG. 107

We are not here to enter on an orchard disserta-
tion ; for in general the manse garden is too limited
for any thing so extensive as an orchard implies,
and it is seldom expedient to dispose of the glebe
in that way. Nevertheless some observations on
the cultivation of standard trees may be proper, as
no garden ought to be without them, and much
more than is usually accomplished might be done
with them, whether for the purpose of ornament or
shelter, or household economy.

Supposing that you plant considerably more trees
than your ground can at length accommodate, you
will have the benefit of their fruit for a few seasons ;
and then there is no more difficulty in their safe
removal than in the transplanting of forest trees.
It will generally be found too, that there are some
odd corners of deep soil about the outside of the
garden, where fruits of the coarser kinds might be
advantageously cultivated ; adding much, at the
same time, to the richness of appearance and to the
shelter of the place. The main objection to trees
so situated is their exposure to plunder : but if
thieves are much set on their work they seldom
make difficulty of breaking into the garden ; and, as
they want apples, not caring whether codling or
llibston, the readiest may perhaps satisfy their
longing, and save your more valuable treasure.

Besides, a dog, well placed and not very well
chained, will serve for both the inside and the out-
side of the garden. A whimper, as when he dreams,
is enough to make the thief s hair stand on end ;

108 PLANTING STANDARDS.

a growl will make him take to his heels; and if the
chain have once snapped, the report will serve for
the three next parishes at least during that year.
The trees thus defended from plunderers, or sub-
mitted to their discretion with a view to the defence
of such as are more valuable, need cause no hinder-
ance to the freedom of pasture ; as the pruning
knife will set the branches out of the reach of cattle,
and a handful of thorns, or a straw rope, about the
stem, till its strength be established, will be a suffi-
cient protection from rubbing or peeling, or that
venom, so deadly to trees, which unexpectedly re-
sides in the wool of sheep.

Do not scruple then to plant a superabundance
of standard apples and pears in your garden, as they
will bear for a number of years without sensible in-
jury to the under crops: and when they begin to be
troublesome, and have gained considerable height,
part of them may be carefully lifted to the glebe; or
should the axe be laid to others it will only destroy
what at first cost a shilling or less, and that after a
bountiful return in the production of fruit. Besides,
it is no small pleasure to send a cart-load of such
trees to a friend who possesses a naked garden.

Yet, though such redundant plantation be re-
commended, some part of the ground, in order to
have the best vegetables, where deep digging and
occasional trenching are requisite, should be kept
always entirely free from either root or branch of
standards.

Espaliers, subjected to the low training, do not

FLATTING STANDARDS. 109

spread their roots so mightily, and are not the worse
for being curtailed when they encounter the opera-
tion of trenching; but no other trees should be
allowed to interfere with the best vegetable plots.
Rhubarb, sea-kale, artichokes, common greens, tur-
nips, potatoes, and some others, which either require
no depth or have strong roots, suffer little from the
proximity of trees, and therefore a considerable por-
tion of the ground destined for culinary purposes
may also contribute to the store of fruit. What-
ever is kept in grass, for sweetness to the eye, may
be studded with standard trees; but avoid, as you
would the blow of a poker, the straight rows of tree
and gooseberry, as they are seen in orchards, and
not less obnoxious though they cut the sward in the
manner of the handsomest diagrams. Whatever
portion you allot for shrubbery may also contribute
to the store of apples: and the effect ef the ever-
greens, which show most beauty in winter, will, in
summer be much enlivened by the mingling of a
lighter green with the red or white blossom, and the
graceful bending of branches laden with various
coloured fruits.

Should you judge your soil too shallow or too
poor for a general planting in this way, and not un-
dergo the expence of trenching and manuring, the
next remedy, though a very inferior one, is to have
a succession of young trees. Almost any soil will
bear good fruit for a time. Set the tree on the
very top of the ground, gathering a little earth over
its roots, and spreading above some turf with the

110 FIGURE OF STANDARD TREES.

green side down, or rough manure, or stones, so as
to admit the rain and keep out the sun; and use
the pruning knife with a view to encourage fruit-
bearing rather than the growth of wood, taking care
to cut out from the middle the strongest branches,
and to leave those towards the outside which are
smaller and pendent. Thus, by causing the tree
to spread and diminishing its height, you lessen its
growing powers, promote fruitbearing, and retard
the descent of the roots.

With regard to the figure of young trees, in any
circumstances, it is better to have nothing to do
either with tying down the branches or with hoops
to keep them open, but to leave all to the knife.
Let the tree live on, in its own way, till it have
something to spare, and then it is easy to shape it
to your fancy. The main thing to make it spread
properly is to cut each of the outer circle of shoots
right over a bud that looks outwards. This must
be done at the rise of the sap, in spring, as it is not
safe, before the winter frosts, to expose the bud, on
which you depend for future growth, to the rawness
of an incision so near it. This bud, pointing out-
wards, will give rise to a shoot which will take a
direction considerably more horizontal than that to
which the tree is naturally disposed; and this, the
simplest operation, only requiring a little minute-
ness of attention, will promote the spreading of a
tree far more effectually than the clumsy artifice of
appending weights, or introducing hoops, and doing
mischief by so many knots and strings.

PRUNING STANDARDS. Ill

The removal of larger branches from the middle,
or of smaller twigs that point inwards, may be
effected any time in winter when the weather is
soft; and in general, as trees have plenty of
branches going in all directions, the judicious thin-
ning of these will be sufficient to give any form you
please — it being necessary to regard the position of
buds only in those cases where there is a great dis-
position to vertical growth with few lateral shoots.
When these are in ordinary abundance, they have
only to be thinned out, so as to keep the heart
open, and to supply an even balance of the branches
around the stem.

The worst error with regard to young standard
trees is that of allowing the stem to take a slanting
direction from the prevalence of high winds. The
help of a stake, at first necessary in planting, should
be continued till the tree be well established; but
if, from oversight, the bad position of the stem has
become incorrigible, the only remedy is, by saw and
knife to remove half the branches, and restore the
equilibrium, by giving the head a contrary inclina-
tion. If this is not done in due time the tree can-
not stand, as the weight increases at the longer
arm of the lever and overcomes the resistance of the
roots. Hence it is no uncommon thing to see a
fine fruit tree lying flat on its side, and after all
bearing as well as others; but it is not easy to en-
dure the sight without a feeling of compassion for
the tree, and of indignation against its owner. In
high and exposed situations the west or southwest

112 FIGURE OF STANDARD TREES.

wind, not so much by its frequency, compared with
the east, as by its greater force, gives uniformly an
eastward inclination to the heads of trees; but this
also may be corrected by a due attention to the use
of the knife. Begin by cutting off, on the west
side, such branches as slope away from the wind,
and lean towards the heart of the tree; leave those
lateral shoots which point westward to take lead in
the subsequent growth, and let the temporary loss
of wood which you thus occasion on the one side be
balanced by an equal reduction on the other. Thus
the branch on the most exposed side is made to
point to the wind like an arrow, and is able to
maintain its position, as it suffers the pressure only
on its extremity; whereas one that is more elevated
presents its side to the wind, and, like a flagstaff,
sustains the pressure over its whole length, till
bending away in an opposite direction, it finds re-
lief by presenting its lower extremity to the power
that assails it.

Let it not be supposed that all this care in pro-
moting an equal distribution of the tree is merely
to please the eye, or that the production of round
tops is the best calculated for that entertainment;
on the contrary, I would judge that tree by much
the handsomest that has the most decided bearing
against the worst wind; and certainly nothing can
be more unsightly than a tree so affected by the
sweep of the blast as to resemble a besom that has
been used to sweep only on one side. But there is
here a greater object than the pleasure of the eye.

.STANDARD TREES. 113

If you cannot make your tree spread in all direc-
tions, the consequence must be that you either want
room for the production of fruit, or you suffer crowd-
ing of the branches, from which you have fruit of
an inferior quality. Besides, the south aspect of
the tree is by far the most productive; and if you
do not effect a sufficient growth to the westward,
you have consequently less of that surface which
sees most of the sun.

Besides apples and pears, a few other kinds of
fruit may be conveniently cultivated on standard
trees; and it may save the inexperienced planter
from disappointment to give some notice of the
sorts and their relative chances of success. Cherries
and geens may be set in some out-of-the-way place,
or on the worst soil, for the ornament of their white
blossom, and for food to the birds. You will cer-
tainly get none of the fruit; but such trees, by
occupying the enemy for a time, will cause a diver-
sion in favour of your garden. The greengage
plum is copiously produced on standards, but will
rarely, except near the level of the sea, come to
maturity in that way; the yellow magnum as to
any chance of ripening is out of the question, and
the red magnum will not hang on the tree. It is
advisable to have one or two standards of the
Orleans plum, whose fruit comes to maturity when
that of the same kind on the wall is expended.

But by far the most profitable is the wild plum,
of which there are many varieties, and which, being

indigenous, or natural to this climate, requires neither

H

114 WILD. PLUMS — FRUIT ALLEY.

budding nor engrafting. A sucker from this root
soon grows a fine tree, and of so little delicacy that
it may be set in a hedge. The small yellow, or
yellow and pink coloured, is the best for eating; a
large purple, called the Whitcorn — but the name
is perhaps local — is best for preserving. A row of
such trees about the outside of the garden, with
some in the shrubbery, and one or two in the best
soil, will prove a valuable treasure. The fruit is
not greatly prized, but is always eaten; and it re-
joices the table for a whole year by excellent pre-
serves. No one can look without pleasure on those
trees covered all over with purple and golden fruit
in clusters and swarms. In blossom, towards the
end of April, they are the most beautiful objects in
nature — shooting into the sky the most picturesque
forms of aerial lightness, and white as the clothing
of angels. Yet is so bright a beauty associated with
a happier sight — the season of ripe plums and pre-
serves, and the smiles of children looking for a jelly
piece.

As a useful and interesting addition to the ordi-
nary methods of standard cultivation, let one or
both sides of some convenient walk be thickly
planted with paradise stocks; the rows to be each
four feet from the walk, and the trees in the row
not more than three feet apart. Supposing the
walk to be thirty yards in length, you will thus
have sixty young trees, which will cost, I believe,
less than two shillings. When they have stood
one or two years they may be grafted; and in case

FRUIT ALLEY. 115

that any should fail, as blanks where a row is de-
signed are never easily endured, it will be proper
to have a few spare plants, subjected, at the same
time, to the like operation, in order to fill up any
casual deficiency; or it may be better to have the
whole planted at first in some other part of the
garden, there to remain one year after grafting,
and then to complete the rows at once upon well
prepared ground. In this way there will be less
risk of blanks ; for though grafting be ever so care-
fully done, some, at least in dry soils and dry
seasons, will give way; but when you have trees
of your own lifting, it will be owing to mismanage-
ment alone if one in a hundred die by transplant-
ing. Supposing then, you have the paradise stocks,
whether by the walk sides or elsewhere, in readiness
for grafting, a great part of the interest in the
designed scheme is to be derived from your owu
handywork. In any of your rides, when you meet
with a good tree, whether remarkable for the abun-
dance or the flavour of its fruit, it is easy to procure
a few slips; and though you may not get the name,
you make sure of the quality, which is of more
consequence. Having grafted your trees, many
of them will bear the second or third year after
the operation; and it is astonishing how many
dozens of fine apples may be gathered from a little
thing not half the size of a gooseberry bush. After
bearing copiously for a few years, in the close order
of one to every yard, it may be necessary to take
out every alternate tree, giving room to those that

116 ENGRAFTING.

remain; and the compactness of the rows may,
during that period, be maintained by pruning to
smaller dimensions such as are destined to be re-
moved, and allowing those that are to remain to
extend their branches, before you have caused any
vacancy by extirpation. Thus your walk, more
beautiful in this case if it be of grass, will present
an alley bordered with close apple hedges groaning
under a load of various coloured fruits, and all of
your own selection. Such a prospect, easily and
certainly to be realised, may well induce you to
take the trouble, as occasion may suggest, of carry-
ing home a few slips, and also to put your hand to
the neat and interesting experiment of their inser-
tion.

The slips or shoots of one year's growth may be
gathered from trees not very old and free of canker,
at any time from the fall of the leaf to the opening
of the buds in spring; and they may be carried to
any distance, if drying be avoided, which is very
simply done by sticking them into a potato. In
every case, whether carried to a distance or not,
they should be taken from the tree at least a fort-
night before engrafting, in order that they may be
retarded whilst the tree on which they are to be
set is advancing; for thus they at once imbibe
moisture from the tree which is more advanced;
but if they were equally advanced, they would be
more liable to wither during the first few days after
their insertion. To preserve them after removal
from the tree, it is only necessary to set them in

ENGRAFTING. 117

the ground, covering them nearly to the top, and
rather in dry earth, under the shelter of a bush and
shaded from the sun.

Judge of the proper season for engrafting rather
by the opening of the leaf buds than by the day of
the month; but you will not be very far wrong by
taking the middle of March as the fit time for pears,
and that for apples two weeks later. Choose for
the operation a day when it is agreeable to be
out of doors — mild, but not sunny; and for this
latter inconvenience, early rising is an excellent
remedy. Have every thing in readiness — a mass
of equal parts of blue clay and cow's dung, wrought
to such consistence as to retain whatever form you
give it, a sharp knife, and plenty of strands of bass
matting previously steeped in water. The modes
of engrafting are numerous; but the main princi-
ple in all is to bring the inner bark of the stock
and of the slip or scion into close contact, and
fasten them in that position without the smallest
deviation. Wherefore, keeping these principles in
view, it will only be necessary to describe two modes
of applying it, and which will be found to answer
in every case — the one more convenient for young,
and the other for old trees, or such as have con-
siderable thickness of stem.

When the stock is young, and not thicker than
a finger, give it a smooth splice cut clean through,
about half a foot from the ground, and make the
cut two inches long: set the edge of the knife upon
the middle of the sloping cut, and, pressing down-

118 ENGllAFTING.

wards, raise a thin slice of the wood and bark, taking
in all the breadth of the first cut, and extending
to about half an inch in length. This is supposed
to resemble a tongue, and hence this mode of the
operation is called tongue grafting: prepare the
slip, which should not be above six inches long, in
a similar way; and it is no matter whether it be
the top, middle, or under section of last year's
shoot that you so prepare ; giving it the like sloping
cut, and raise up the like tongue from the middle
of that cut ; then apply the slip to the stock,
making the bark of both even on one side, insert-
ing the one tongue beneath the other, and giving
as much pressure downwards as to make a close
neat joining. Apply the bandage, taking care not to
twist, but to lay it flat, and with no more tightness
than is sufficient to keep the parts in contact. Take
then a handful of prepared clay, and press it all
round the tying in the form of an egg, smoothing
it with a little water, and making it adhere to the
bark both of twig and stem, so as to exclude the
air. In claying, the chief care is not to disturb
the joint; and if you have reason to think that any
derangement has taken place, you must punish
yourself by beginning the work afresh; that being
less vexatious than the subsequent discovery of a
bungled job, which can admit of no remedy for
twelve months to come.

As no small help to the success of the opera-
tion, take a piece of thick brown paper, and wrap
it round the clay, including also the scion as in a

ENGRAFTING. 119

tube. The paper may be kept in its place by pins,
or a tying of twine; and its great use is both to
prevent rains from washing off the clay, and the
sun from shrivelling the bark of the young shoot,
before its veins have received the strange but vital

O

fluid. About midsummer give relief to the knit
joint, by removing the clay and bandage; but as
the wind may prove trying to the recent graft, the
bond must be restored, and that so easy as not to
impede the circulation, and yet so firm as to guard
against a rupture of the union. In the case of
old trees, where the grafts are higher and more
exposed, where there is no elasticity in the old
stem, causing all the pressure to come on the weak
part, and where the graft, after it has grown a
whole year, is liable to be carried away, it is
necessary, not only to continue the matting ban-
dage, but, sometimes, to strengthen the joint, by
fastening a rod or switch below it, to the old stem,
and above it, to the young wood. This will make
sure against all hazards till the joining, encompas-
sed with new bark, has become as strong as any
part of the tree.

As to the mode of engrafting on old stocks, the
following will be found the most convenient in
every case, being at once the easiest to perform and
the surest of success. Cut off all the branches a
little above the stem, leaving as many stumps as
may serve for the insertion of ten or twelve young
shoots; make the cut smooth and horizontal. This
is better for preserving the wood in sap, and when

120 BUDDING.

the graft has grown a season or two, its awkward
seat may be reduced, so as to encourage the closing
of the bark. In improving the operation, having
smoothed the horizontal cut, take out, on the side
of the stump, a wedge-shaped piece of the bark,
two inches long, of a breadth, at the upper end,
equal to the diameter of the young shoot ; give the
slip a splice cut of the same length, and take a little
off each edge of the splice, bringing the extremity to
a point: set the point into the place prepared for its
reception, and press it gently down to a perfect
adaptation of the bark in all parts: and then apply
the fastening and clay as above directed. This is
the neatest of all the methods of engrafting, and
the least liable to fail or produce canker by any
fungous or unnatural growth.

Intimately connected with grafting is the nice
art of inserting a bud, from which proceeds a shoot,
then branches, and then a large spreading and fruit-
bearing tree, possessing in all its parts the same
qualities and producing the same fruits as that
from which the bud was at first abstracted. This
is one of the greatest wonders of art; and as we
do not see any natural process at all analogous to
this, or any ready way of anticipating the effect,
the first conception of the thing, giving rise to the
experiment, is to be regarded as one of the most
beautiful of human inventions. Certain parasiti-
cal plants which grow upon other trees afford no
analogy. In this case the sap of the tree becomes
merely the pabulum of the heterogeneous plant;

LJ

OFTH
THEORY OF BUDDING. 121

the tree is not converted into the parasite,
essential to the life of the latter that the tree bear
its own leaves, in order to prepare and continue the
aliment of the foster plant; but in the case of bud-
ding all may be cut off except what grows out of
the bud, and thus the whole nature and character
of the tree are completely changed. Again, the
seed of one species of tree is often sown by the
Tvinds, or otherwise, on the cleft of one of another
species ; but in this case also there is a total want
of analogy, for the decayed moss, and debris of old
bark washed down by the rains into the cleft, con-
stitute merely the alluvial soil in which the seed-
ling grows. Thus the mountain-ash may be seen
growing, as it were, out of the sycamore, or the
sycamore out of the body of the mountain-ash ;
but these trees are not, by such natural process,
mutually convertible the one into the other. But
by the art of budding or grafting, the mountain-
ash may become the stock on which no other leaf
than that of the pear should be suffered to unfold
itself, and from which an abundant crop of pears
may be gathered. Although nature, so far as I
know, presents nothing in her operations analogous
to the art in question, yet there may be observed
in her proceedings some things which might sug-
gest experiments in that art. In the dense forest,
owing to the crowding and crossing of branches, an
accidental union is sometimes exhibited; the winds
cause friction, by which the bark is eroded; thence
adhesion takes place, and then an entire incorpora-

122 THEORY OP BUDDING.

lion. This might lead to one mode of engrafting,
called inosculation; and that, again, to the inser-
tion of a twig, at once dissevered from the parent
tree, and set green into the sap of another, as in
the common artificial process. There would be the
same boldness of conjecture in this experiment as
in one that has of late been successfully performed
in the human body. The growing together of two
fingers, as by inosculation, above described, is the
first discovered fact; and from the knowledge of
this, a finger, which had been wholly cut off, was
lifted from the ground, carried some distance to
the chirurgeon, and, being artfully replaced, ad-
hered, and became fit for all its wonted functions.
After the success of grafting, there remained one
further trial of nature as to the freedoms which she
will sanction — namely, the insertion of a bud in-
stead of a twig ; and the intimation of her willing-
ness to give countenance to this might be gathered
from the fact, that though a graft die away from
the top downwards to the last bud, there is no
further difference as to the effect than a retarda-
tion caused by the loss of so much wood; and there-
fore it might be conjectured, that a thing so small
as a single bud would be sufficient to answer the
expectations of the engrafter. Thus budding and
grafting are virtually the same, the one being more
wonderful only in this, that the entire change of
character produced on the future tree by a single
bud is the result of means more slender and appar-
ently more inadequate.

OPERATION OF BUDDING. 123

It cannot be unworthy of remark, that a pheno-
menon so striking as that of the mountain-ash bear-
ing, instead of its own little, sour, and unwhole-
some berries, large, sweet, and nutricious pears, in
consequence of engrafting, has given rise to a Scrip-
tural metaphor most expressive of a like change in
our moral nature — one that is as true in point of
fact, as certainly accomplished by appointed means,
and as beneficial in its effects, comparing the fruits
of the old nature with those of the new. It be-
comes not immortal beings to admire the one mys-
tery and to overlook the other ; it becomes not me
to tell a fellow-creature the remarkable art by which
his trees may be fruitful without reminding him
that he is himself a tree to be engrafted ; and it
becomes neither him nor me to study the fruits that
we shall gather without considering the fruits which
we bear. May we who are gardeners in the Lord's
vineyard be wise in the heavenly art as well as in
the earthly, that we may see around us the blos-
soms and fruits of the engrafted word, which is
able to save the soul ; and may we give ourselves
earnestly to the work, lest the Lord of the vineyard
cut down our trees, because, having come and
sought fruit thereon, he found none.

The mode of performing the beautiful and inter-
esting operation of budding, or inoculating, is as
follows: — To procure the bud to be inserted, cut
off a shoot of one year's growth from an approved
tree, and from the side the most exposed to the sun.
Slice off a little of the wood an^bark, containing

124 OPERATION OF BUDDING.

the bud, and let the slice extend from half an inch
above the bud to one inch beneath it; then separ-
ate the woody part from the bark and bud, and ob-
serve narrowly whether the heart of the bud, that
is a small white knob like the head of a pin, has
remained with the wood, or come away with the
bark. If it adhere to the wood, the bud will be
found hollow — it has lost its heart, and will not
live. Make a few more trials, and if the event be
still untoward, the buds are not sufficiently matured,
and the operation must be delayed. This is a bet-
ter rule to go by than the day of the month ; but
to avoid the trouble of too many trials, let the first
be for cherries, about the middle of summer ; for
pears and plums, a fortnight later ; and as much
later again for apples. When you find that the
bud peels right, choose a cloudy day, or an early
hour, and let the operation be so quick as not to
allow of a change in the colour of the sap by the
action of the air. Have the shoots at hand; and
before separating the bud prepare the place for its
reception, by selecting a smooth part of the stem
or branch to be inoculated, and making, with a
sharp knife, a perpendicular incision two inches long
and quite through the bark; near the head of this
incision make a cross cut, so as to admit of freely
raising the bark. The flat ivory handle of a desk
knife, or a piece of polished wood so shaped, may be
used for disengagiug the bark without disturbing
the sap. Into this aperture insert the bud, with
its own bark attached to it, and slide all down till

FUTDRE CARE OF THE BUD. 125

the upper extremity fall in with the transverse in-
cision, taking care, at the same time, to have the
eye of the bud so placed as to look out in the mid-
dle— between the two sides of the overlapping bark.
Then apply a bandage of matting over all the in-
cision, but not over the projecting part of the bud,
and with such tightness as not to impede the cir-
culation, but merely to keep the inserted bark and
bud close to the wood of the tree. As at this sea-
son, the tree being in full growth, the tying will in
the course of two or three weeks become too tight,
it must then be undone, and applied again more
loosely. In any case where the operation may have
failed — which will be determined by the shrunk
and sapless appearance of the bud — let the bandage
be altogether removed, and let the curled edges of
the bark be neatly pared, that all may grow smooth
as before, lest the vacuity, with its covering of mat,
become a chamber in which multitudes of insects
will seek a shelter, and revel on the core of the tree,
enlarging their apartments as they increase their
population. In the course of the winter pruning,
such domiciles should be thoroughly erased, always
cutting deeper, until no brown speck appear: for
any remnant of unhealthy wood is unapt to take
on a covering of healthy bark. When the bud has
rightly taken effect, it will be found enlarged, and
closely embraced in the bosom that received it. In
some cases it will grow up during the season of its
insertion; but more frequently it will wait the re-
turn of spring, and then show a growth as vigorous

126 GARDEN ENEMIES.

as any shoot of the parent tree. When it is evi-
dent, on the return of spring, that the strange bud
has become naturalised, and is ready to commence
its growth, it should be encouraged, or directed ac-
cording to the design which you wish it to fulfil.
If your object is to have a diversity of fruit on the
same tree, and to produce from the bud one or more
branches, make a notch above the place of its in-
sertion, in order to impede the course of the sap,
and direct it into the channel of the bud: but if
you would have the whole tree to possess only the
quality of that part which you have inserted, cut
off all above the bud, and if any young shoots ap-
pear beneath it, let them be rubbed off with the
finger befere they gain strength or diminish the
resources of the wood which you wish to cherish.
Care must be early taken, whether the tree be a
standard or placed on a wall, to guide on their pro-
per path, or to guard from the violence of winds,
the young shoots proceeding from the bud.

Remedies for canker, mildew, green-fly, etc., may
be reserved for a separate section, containing a
general census of the garden enemies, and the mode
of dealing with each. You are supposed to have
done your work in the department of fruit trees;
and it may be as well to leave your enemies for a
time to do theirs, till you find out, by their works,
who and what they are, and so learn how to hinder
their operations — not expecting to get rid of the
agents. For it is remarkable that man, once hav-
ing dominion over all the creatures, is now so weak

, GARDEN ENEMIES. 127

that he cannot, by any strength or skill of which
he is possessed, extirpate or finally subdue the
smallest insect in the universe. But as garden ene-
mies are so different in different places, you might
deem it loss of time to read of the hostilities which
many of them commit, and with which you may
have nothing to do. We shall therefore, noticing

o ' o

only the more prevalent as we proceed, endeavour
elsewhere so to arrange a chapter of their offences
that the reader may consult that part only in which
he is concerned, it being probable that he will be
content to leave the rest alone. War of any kind
is indeed interesting to those that must wage it;
but to others it is only attractive of notice when a
certain greatness characterises the combatants on
either side — a circumstance that does not obtain in
the interminable conflicts of the gardener with the
green-fly, a creature of such slender make that it
cannot bear the dew on its wings. Judging by this
law of sympathy in regard to wars, there is reason
to apprehend that no one will care for reading
about the enemies of the garden, except in so far as
they make assaults upon himself, at once deriding
his skill and defeating his labours. I have a worm,
for instance, that infests my carrots, and that root
has had a finer relish since I found it so hard to
rear. Sometimes I gain advantage over my foe;
but as often, wofully foiled, I own the power of the
spoiler, and have to look with pity on labours lost
and counsels turned to foolishness. Again I ran-
sack all volumes of tactics, and feel tempted to call

128 GOOSEBERRY.

in whatever aid, be it wizard or witch, because the
enemy is mine own; but what others do with their
ear-wigs or red-spiders I do not read, because that
is not my affair.

Before leaving this department of the garden,
there are some fruits which, though of a minor race,
are well worthy of notice, and on which the skill of
the cultivator will not be thrown away. Of the
smaller fruits the gooseberry is the most important;
and considering its adaptation to various soils and
climates, as well as its agreeable flavour and emi-
nently wholesome qualities, it is perhaps the most
important of all the fruits which the gardens of our
country produce. It is amongst our luxuries what
the potato is among the necessaries of life: being
easily reared, it is the poor man's friend, and so ac-
ceptable to the rich that none are willing to dispense
with it. The gooseberry tree may be called the
vine of the north, for many would hesitate which to
prefer were the choice limited to one; and it is thus
an instance of those compensations by which the
Divine bounty is equalised to the nations. Italy
has the grape, but there the gooseberry will not
grow, or it will live only as an evergreen shrub,
incapable of producing fruit; and it is further plea-
sant to observe, that in the large field of the world
proper to the cultivation of our vine, its annual pro-
duce is less precarious than that of any other tree —
a further proof that the things which are really best
for man are also the most abundant and the most
easily procured. Were the pine apple, which sells

GOOSEBERRY — CATERPILLAR. 129

at one guinea per pound, as easy to be had as the
potato or the gooseberry no family would ever be
done with the physician. The gooseberry is pro-
duced in almost endless varieties; and as all of them
are good it is unnecessary to notice the different
sorts or the qualities of each. The main thing is
to avoid those neglects in the culture of this fruit,
or to overcome those enemies, by which the tree is
rendered unproductive. Unpruned, it grows after
the manner of a bush of rushes, and is wholly fruit-
less; and by the attacks of caterpillars it is often
seen without a leaf, in which case the fruit, though
abundant, is utterly useless. If you have old bushes
of the rushy form; you cannot have them too soon
removed from the ground, as they are quite incur-
able ; but if they stand on one stem, and are en-
cumbered with old wood, lay the saw to the heart
and clear out the large branches, bringing the tree
to the figure of a cup; and then with a pruning
knife take off so many of the young shoots as to
leave those that remain a handbreadth apart.

Towards the end of May the caterpillar makes
its appearance, and in a very short period completes
the work of destruction; but if it be observed in
time, a boy, hired at sixpence a-day, will in two or
three days, by creeping under the bushes and
gathering the caterpillars from the leaves, save the
whole of your crop. If you desire him to put a
notch in a small stick with his knife for every hun-
dred he kills, you give him an incredible stimulus
to perseverance. His sole aim is to add another

I

130 MORAL FEELINGS PROPER TO

sum to the amount of his past achievement; and
whilst this engages his mind by the supply of no-
velty, and the surprise of accumulating success, it
frees him from the contemplation of a field too
large for adventure, and of leaves more numerous
than his eye can survey.

The principle in this case is not unlike that
which prescribes small and separate tasks for a child,
or portions of study, adequate to an hour, for one of
riper years, without telling the one that the whole
book must be read, or showing the other all the circle
of science which his pathway surrounds. It is thus,
when the acquisition is not oppressive, but such as
to confer the pleasure which arises from progress,
that the next step, without reference to the com-
pleted circle is taken with desire and delight, — in
like manner as the worldly, though they aim not
at gaining the whole world, do not weary, all life
long, in laying field to field. It is to be presumed,
however, that in furnishing such a motive to the
diligence of your boy you have some dependence on
his truth; for nothing could be more easy than, in-
stead of killing his hundreds, to make his work
look well by repeating more notches on his stick.
Nevertheless the motive, true in nature, is calcu-
lated to work well; and if there be not truth, which
remains to be considered in the Appendix, the want
will be found in more ways than one, and the bad
working will not be amended by any motive that
either your head or heart can devise.

But whilst the writer is concerned for the morale

GARDEN AND ITS ENEMIES. 131

of the boy, he is reminded that he has some need
of looking after his own, lest he be judged some-
what hard of feeling when the reader perceives that
all this stirring of motive to the youthful servant
is for the work of death. The smallest creature is
wonderfully made ; and the shortest life is the Crea-
tor's boon, which, as man cannot give, he should be
cautious how he takes away, lest God inquire by
what right, and show the man that he is "crushed
before the moth." Yet, viewing the devastation
caused by locust and caterpillar, it is plain, as it
is humbling, that the highest creature is placed in
a field of strife with the lowest, and obliged often
to wage unequal war for the bread that sustains
him. And hence, what mercy may not safely spare,
justice may of necessity demand; but the Maker
of all stands between the high and the low, and will
discern the motive, whether wanton or needful, that
inflicts either pain or death upon any thing that
lives.

The philosophy as well as the right feeling and
piety proper to this theme are best given by one
who lived much in a garden, where he caught, in
the hue of its flowers, the polish of the hardest
virtues, or drew out those softest threads of feeling
which, like the floating gossamer, were faintly seen
as they shone in purple light amidst the rays of his
genius, or seen too well when wet and weighed down
with the dew of tears that fell from a heart of deep
and solitary woe, and who yet felt no breaking of
such slender cords when, in love to the sinless

132 PROPER MORAL FEELING.

beauties of creation, whether fruits or flowers, he
put forth his hand to save them, by killing the
reptiles that made them a prey.

" I would not enter on my list of friends
(Though graced with polish'd manners and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility) the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
An inadvertent step may crush the snail
That crawls at evening in the public path;
But he that has humanity, forewarn 'd,
Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.
The creeping vermin, loathsome to the sight,
And charged perhaps with venom, that intrudes,
A visitor unwelcome, into scenes
Sacred to neatness and repose — the alcove,
The chamber, or refectory — may die:
A necessary act incurs no blame.
Not so when, held within their proper bounds,
And guiltless of offence, they range the air,
Or take their pastime in the spacious field;
There they are privileged; and he that hunts
Or harms them there is guilty of a wrong —
Disturbs the economy of Nature's realm,
Who, when she form'd, designed them an abode.
The sum is this. If man's convenience, health,
Or safety, interfere, his rights and claims
Are paramount, and must extinguish theirs.
Else they are all — the meanest things that are —
As free to live and to enjoy that life
As God was free to form them at the first,
Who in his sovereign wisdom made them all.
Ye, therefore, who love mercy, teach your sons
To love it too. The spring-time of our years
Is soon dishonour'd and defiled in most
By budding ills, that ask a prudent hand
To check them. But, alas! none sooner shoots,
If unrestrain'd, into luxuriant growth,
Than cruelty, most devilish of them all

REMEDY FOR CATERPILLAR. 133

Mercy to him that shows it is the rule

And righteous limitation of its act,

By which Heaven moves in pardoning guilty man ;

And he that shows none, being ripe in years,

And conscious of the outrage he commits,

Shall seek it, and not find it, in his turn." — COWPBR.

But though the above method of dealing with
the caterpillar be sufficiently successful, it is much
better for your gooseberry plantation to prevent as
far as possible the breeding of that worm. And
to this end let the bushes be pruned as soon as the
leaf is down, and let all rubbish be raked clear off
the ground; then scrape with a hoe the surface
earth from the stem of each bush to the depth of
two or three inches, not exposing the roots ; and
let all remain in this state till the middle of winter.
By this I suppose the frost reaches and destroys
the larvae lodged by instinct near to their future
provision. In digging the ground, make a deep
furrow, into which the mound-like rings made by
the hoe will be levelled, when a little fresh earth
may be laid next to the roots in room of that which
has previously been removed. For many years,
since I have fallen on this expedient, I have had no
caterpillar, or none to cause any trouble. Soapy
water, which is best applied in soft weather, and
when the earth has been drawn from the roots, con-
tributes not a little to prevent the ravages of this
insidious and abominable reptile. The suds are
an excellent manure, and serve to accomplish your
object, either by killing the larvae or promoting in
the trees a more healthy vegetation.

134 GOOSEBERRY PLANTATION — SLIPS.

It is a matter yet undecided, in many cases,
whether the bad thriving of plants is the effect of
those devastations which are committed by the
various tribes of insects, or whether it is, that
wherever plants are sickly from any cause they are
sure to suffer by the more fatal and frequent as-
saults of such foes; and, therefore, though we may
be ignorant as to the natural history of such crea-
tures, our plain and practical rule is to promote a
healthy vegetation, by the seasonable digging of the
ground, the best manure, and the free admission of
light and air; for if the growth be vigorous, the in-
sect tribes will either desist from their attacks or
they will make but little impression. But when,
through our neglect of known duty, or ignorance of
what may be easily known, our crops languish, and
are in no condition to afford sustenance to man, it
seems to be the law of nature, that before they al-
together vanish from the ground they shall at least
serve for food to some species of beings; and thus
in nature all fragments are gathered up, that nothing
may be lost.

By all means have your gooseberries in a quarter
by themselves, and not in single rows among flower
borders or scattered all over the garden. Besides
obtaining the advantages of the above mode of cul-
tivation, you will thus avoid the unsightly aspect
of ground every where trodden in the fruit season,
and strewed with glaring and filthy refuse in every
place. Should your bushes have grown too old,
raise a sufficiency of young plants to supply a new

MANAGEMENT OF GOOSEBERRY SLIPS. 135

plantation on other ground, keeping the old for a
few years, till the young have come into plentiful
bearing. It is not necessary to be troubled with
a tally of the slip which you raise: let them be
selected of the best sorts, and of sufficient variety.
The slips must be of the last year's growth, cut to
the length of nine inches, and having every bud
carefully cut off with the knife, except three or four
next to the top or upper extremity of the slip ; for
it is better to have the natural top of the slip cut
off by a few inches, as the buds are there weaker
and too frequent. If care be not taken to extract
the buds from that part of the slip which is inserted
in the ground they will become suckers, which can-
not afterwards be easily got rid of. Let the slips
so prepared be set in rich border ground, to a depth
equal to half their length, and in rows one foot apart.
The sooner that this is done after the fall of the leaf
the better : the ground should be kept clean and
stirred up between the rows: and in the course of
two years you may thus have an abundant supply
for a new gooseberry plantation.

If the ground on which they are to be set require
trenching, it should undergo that operation a year
or two before, in order that the new soil which is
turned up may be enriched and incorporated with
the old : and well is it worth while to be at so much
pains, as the making of such a plantation, if rightly
done, will only once be required in a lifetime. The
young plants may either be placed at their proper
distances of four or five feet in all directions,

136 CURRANTS.

allowing some low growing crops to occupy the
intervening space, or they may be set twice as thick,
with a view to subsequent thinning as they increase
in size. In pruning, endeavour always to give the
tree a proper balance on its own stem, and allow
no branch to acquire a greater length than is con-
sistent with self-support. In this way you are
freed from the plague of supporting the fruit with
forked sticks, or seeing it laid along the ground
and covered with the slime of snails. A goose-
berry tree of the earliest kind may be trained
on some odd piece of wall for the surprise of having
fruit a month earlier than anybody else ; and a few
may be fastened to poles, and carried to any height,
lopping off all the branches, save two or three,
which must be tied as they advance in growth, and
which will thus yield a great deal of fruit without
occupying almost any room.

Currants, black or red, do well either as stand-
ards or trained on a wall. On that of a north
aspect you may have red currants so late in the
season as the frost will suffer them to hang on the
tree. It is worth while to train the red and white
currant on a wall in the manner of other fruit
trees, as they bear on spurs or snags, and the same
branches yield a crop for many years ; but the
black currant, which requires a constant succession
of young wood, if treated in this way would take
as much nailing as a peach or apricot; and as it is
little worthy of so much pains, it may be held to
the wall with a line of tarred cord, which costs

'CURRANTS — RASPS. 137

little, and is sold in the shops under the name of
oakum. In this way the trees occupy little room,
and it is easy, as the branches are all loose, to re-
move annually such as are effete, giving room to
those which are in a proper state for bearing.

The red currant, as a standard, is rendered very
productive by a mode of treatment that is nowise
gentle or promising in appearance. In the season
of pruning, let the whole tree be stumped down into
the figure of a hardworn birch besom, and let the
young shoots which grow up in the summer be cut
in July, within a handbreadth of the old stumps,
and with as little discrimination as in pruning a
hedge. Then in winter, what remains of the young
shoots must be reduced to the same destroyed-like
appearance as before. A method so unlikely is
not a little ingenious; and which, being defended
by success, may also be explained by the nature of
the tree. Left to its own sprawling growth, the
sap has too far to ascend, and the leaves are too
scanty to exclude the sun, which the fruit does not
love. When the branches are long the fruit will
be found small, and hanging in single rows, each
like a string of small beads; but in the reduced
form the fruit is concentrated, and grows large and
in bunches that fill the hand. There is a thick
clothing of leaves, under which the fruit is cherished
as to its growth; and for its ripening, the shearing
of the young shoots admits the sun at the proper
season.

Of rasps, the best are the red and the white

138 STRAWBERRIES.

Antwerp — the white for eating, and the red for
preserves. Give the plants plenty of room, some-
what varying, according to the strength of the soil,
say four or five feet between the rows, and three
or four between each plant in the row. The wood
that bears one year must be altogether removed the
next; and of the shoots that spring up in the sum-
mer, five or six of the strongest should be selected
for bearing. These must be reduced to the height
of four or five feet, and fastened to poles. The
rest of the young shoots must be cleared away.
Let the ground be well dug in the course of the
winter, and manured with ashes, which seem pecu-
liarly appropriate to the fineness of fibre for which
the root of this plant is remarkable.

Of strawberries there is an endless variety.
Some of the Virginia or Roseberry should be had
for the quality of coming early — some of the haut-
boy sorts for superior flavour — and of the Alpine,
if you will, for lateness. But as new sorts are con-
tinually introduced, and as renovation from seed is
a decided advantage, the best rule is to observe in
any garden a good variety, and obtain young plants
about the beginning of August. Set these in rows,
eighteen or twenty inches apart, and one foot dis-
tant in the row. By planting at this early season,
as the roots get established before winter, and are
not liable to be thrown out by the frost, you will
have a considerable crop the first year. Let the
ground be well manured before planting, and every
second year afterwards. In the course of five or

STRAWBERRIES. 139

six years a new plantation should be made. To-
wards the end of autumn the leaves should be
mown, in order to give the young buds, which are
then forming for next year's growth, the benefit of
the free admission of light and of air. By the
time that you require a new plantation, some new
species will have got into vogue, and which, from
its newness or change of climate, perhaps will be
more productive than plants raised from those of
your own garden; and thus it is unnecessary to
particularise varieties, or to offer more than these
cursory remarks on the cultivation of this excellent
fruit.

PART SECOND.

VEGETABLES.

TTEGETABLES are not good for food, or pro-
f fitable to the grower except they grow well;
but the size to which they attain in a given time
is not the only criterion of successful cultivation ;
for there is an overgrowth which, as well as bad
thriving, is prejudicial to every good quality of
potherb production. The pea, which cannot be
too plump and large, may be judged an excep-
tion; but if the stalk be too luxuriant it will not
produce the pea: an overswollen and consequently
hollow-hearted potato, is a further instance of the
waste that is occasioned by overkindness to the
plant, and a hard, stringy, ill rounded turnip
affords an example of the bad quality of the vege-
table from bad thriving, and of loss to the cultiva-
tor by poverty of soil. We club the interests of
the whole of the vegetable tribes, then, when we
consult first for the ground on which they are to
be reared, keeping quality and economy equally in
view, remembering that the great waste is the

142 DEPTH OF SOIL.

failure of a crop, and that crops will fail by either
extreme of penury or pampering.

The most essential requisite to a good garden
soil is sufficiency of depth. Eighteen inches may
do, but no labour or expence will be so well repaid
as that which is employed in obtaining a depth of
two feet. This may not be practicable at the first
trenching, but let this be your aim, and your plans
may easily be directed to its ultimate attainment.
Suppose at the first, you have only one foot of good
soil, and a wretched clay, or till, or mere gravel,
beneath ; in that case put down all the good soil,
and bring up only six inches of the bad. This,
being wrought, in the course of future digging,
into combination with an equal part of the buried
stratum, will be greatly improved. After a few
years bring up, by a second trenching, other six
inches of the subsoil, which, in its turn, will be in-
corporated with the remaining half of the surface
earth at first deposited, and you will then have a
soil of one character throughout all its depth of
two feet, and adequate to all the purposes of good
gardening.

Many resources may be had for helping the
under stratum when first exposed. Besides the
necessary and common expedients of dung and
lime, a great deal of earth may be gathered with-
out causing damage by its removal — as in the for-
mation of gravel walks, in which case a very con-
siderable depth of loose stones may be substituted
for excellent soil, or in the clearing of ditches, or

TRENCHING. 143

making an excavation for a sunk fence, or for some
bit of road leading to a field, and where the sur-
face mould, being generally kept in a puddled con-
dition, is there an inconvenience and of no use
whatever. A great deal, in most cases, might
thus be collected, and often would be were its value
justly appreciated. Such heaps, when mingled
with lime in the proportion of one of lime to six of
earth, constitute a manure which, taking bulk for
bulk, is equal in value to the best dung; and having
this additional advantage, that as its substance can-
not be consumed, it adds depth to a thin soil, and
communicates an everlasting benefit.

The great advantage of a deep soil, besides the *,
more obvious one of allowing the roots of plants to
get well down, is its aptitude for equalising the •'
supplies of moisture. There subsists no sympathy ^
between the surface and a hard subsoil. If the
former is drenched with rain the latter refuses to
have any thing to do with it, and if the former is
parched the latter will yield none of its own mois-
ture; again, if the subsoil be pure gravel it readily
takes in the superabundant waters, but it soon
squanders them, and then has nothing to give back
to the surface in its greatest thirst. But when
you acquire a sufficient depth of soil you have a
large quantity of homogeneous matter which acts
sympathetically throughout, and is all nearly alike
wet, or alike dry, and consequently not so liable to
suffer injury by the too lotag continuance of rain or
drought. This improvement, then, as it renders

144 REPEATED TRENCHING.

the elements of nature more subservient to the pur-
poses of vegetation, is permanent, and cannot wear
out or lose its effect, as that of manuring, at what-
ever expence, must certainly do.

But though permanent in this respect, it is not
to be inferred that there is no further need of sub-
sequent trenching. A repetition of this work, at
any future period, gives the great benefit of rest to
that part of the soil which has been exhausted by
continual bearing. We are aware that some theo-
rists decry the notion of exhaustion, and contend
that nothing more is needful to a vigorous growth
than the proper supplies of heat and moisture —
inferring, at the same time, that all manures are
serviceable only in so far as they give the land an
aptitude for the retaining of moisture and heat.
But whilst they bury thermometers and hygro-
meters at various depths, for the purpose of expe-
riments, they overlook those phenomena which
take place above ground, and which are sufficient
to establish the fact, that by repose the soil is
strengthened for the labour of future production.
Hence the well ascertained benefit of a succession
of crops; hence the law, that when an old forest
dies out, and nature is left to herself, trees of the
same kind do not spring up in room of the decayed;
and hence the fact now becomes appalling to the
husbandman, that in many places where it has been
too often sown on the same ground, though heat
and moisture be in all respects the same as in for-
mer times, red clover almost refuses to grow.

REPEATED TRENCHING. 145

A new trenching of the ground once in eight or
ten years, in respect of giving newness and fresh- (
ness to the soil, is equal to an eight or ten years'
fallow — a mode of renovation which would be death
to man; whereas trenching both renovates the soil
and continues the supplies of human wants. There
can be no doubt that some advantage is gained also
by burying the larvae of countless insects; for whilst
the leaves of plants in other parts of the garden are
eaten and decayed, every blade on the newly trenched
ground is green and entire. Trenching furnishes an
exclusive system of production, leaving nothing on /
the surface but what the cultivator designs. An-
nual weeds are scarcely to be noticed as an exception, /
they are so easily destroyed, and all bad and deeply
established roots are sent to a lower region, there to
rot at their leisure. Worms, snails, grubs, and the
like, share the same fate; and for a length of time
show no families on the earth, which to them has
suffered a ruinous convulsion. In this, your new '
empire, every thing favourable to production conies
into your service, and every thing hostile is expelled.
Animal bodies, formerly destructive, now minister
to fertility by their decomposition: the earth, heav-
ing and porous, like a fermenting substance, seems
to borrow warmth from the very rains which chill and
check the vegetation of the neighbouring grounds,
and the intense heat which elsewhere burns upon
a sickly growth seems here to cool, by drawing up
a copious vapour, nourishing the roots and spreading

a broad dark leaf as a cover from the sun.

K

146 THEORY OF TRENCHING.

As nature*^ best bounty is depth of soil, so trench-
ing, which intimates that gift, is beyond all doubt
the very greatest of all the improvements which man
can make on the surface of the ground. Whether
for garden or field, there is herein a secret virtue,
which even at this late period is but little disclosed.
Compare the millions of acres on which men have
for centuries only scraped a few inches with the
plough, and see how little of the land yielding bread
has yet submitted to a more substantial cultivation.
The same seeds are ever committed to the same
particles of mould; some of them now scarcely
vegetate, and crops of other sorts, but recently in-
troduced, are not what they were. Man cannot
create a new plant to diversify the labours of the
earth in her productions, but man can bring up new
earth to the task of producing: this is the true
power which nature has given him, and which he
has yet scarcely learned to exert. When an acre
of ground sells for fifty pounds, and its depth of
soil is only six inches, it is certain that the same
portion may be made as well worth a hundred
pounds by doubling the depth of its soil; and one
fourth of this profit would be sufficient to cover the
expence of the operation. It is said that the man
who plants a tree is a benefactor of his species,
and so he is; but that man is more the benefactor of
his species who trenches as much ground as a tree will
cover; for the tree dies and the ground is no better
than it was; but that which is trenched has received
a benefit which it will not lose till the end of time.

GARDEN TRENCHING — MANURE. 147

As to the mode of trenching for the garden, it is
perhaps advisable to put all the earth through a
search or riddle, of which the wires are one inch
apart. This may appear too expensive, and may
not be necessary for those portions which are de-
signed for vegetables of the stronger and coarser
kinds; but such method will ultimately prove the
cheapest in regard to all those places which are
used for flowers and small seeds. Stones must be
got rid of; and if they remain to be gathered one
by one with the hand as often as the ground is dug,
it is manifest that instead of disposing of a hundred
at once, as in using the search, the loss of time by
individual liftings will be nearly as a hundred to one.

The next thing /to be considered for the success
of vegetable produce is the preparation of manures.
The dunghill should be kept in two distinct por- [
tions, the one turned over so as to undergo the pro-
cess of fermentation and decomposition — whilst the
other is in the process of being collected. It is
wretched management to have the dung so little de-
cayed when laid on the ground as to contain the live
seeds of hay and oats, as if nature did not give you
enough of weeds without those of your own sowing.
To avoid the sluggardly sight of ryegrass springing
thicker than a bed of cresses, as well as to give the
designed crops the full benefit of their manure, it
is necessary to have that portion of the dunghill
which is to be applied previous to the winter dig-
ging, made up into a fermenting heap six months
before. As soon as this portion has been carried

148 ECONOMY OF MANURE.

away, let the other, which has been added in the
course of the summer, be turned over on the place
of that removed, so as to make room for a separate
and fresh accumulation.

All manner of weeds and refuse of the garden,
which are of the soft nature and easily decayed,
may be carried to the new heap, where they will
soon be covered and prevented from wasting away;
but all thick and hard stalks and roots, which can-
not in a short time be sufficiently decomposed, should
form a heap elsewhere; and to which additions may
be made from a thousand sources. This new com-
position should not resemble a work that is finished
and complete, having a beginning, a middle, and
an end, but should rather have only the middle en-
tire, without a finish at either extremity. From
the oldest part of the lengthened mound something
may at any time be removed for use, whilst new
materials continue to be deposited at the opposite
termination. When any garden rubbish is carried
thither, let it be always covered with a sprinkling
of earth, so as to prevent the evaporation of sap and
promote decomposition: and, for the supply of this
heap, let it be a great and fixed principle that every
thing is manure except stones, and let nothing be
burnt for the sake of clearing either garden or glebe.

With great prodigality thousands of cart-loads
of valuable manure are annually burnt upon the
fields : the ashes amount to nothing — the main

O

substance is dissipated in smoke, to the enriching
of the clouds and the damage of a poor soil. Quick-

ECONOMY OF MANURE. 149

ens, docks, thistles, hedge and gooseberry primings,
furze, broom, every thing of the wood kind not fit
for fuel, if covered with a little earth, will rot down
in one year and constitute a manure of excellent \
quality whether for garden or field. Keep clean •'
doors, clean roads, clean entrances by every gate
— the only luxury that enriches; for thus the un-
clean stepping which annoys both eye and foot will
in time become gold in your hand. Wherever this
plan of gathering from all quarters is pursued, the
amount will be so great as to provoke the wonder
whence it came, or whether it would have gone had
it not been collected. Evaporation on the surface
of the earth is like the insensible perspiration- — you
see not whither the substance goes, but, by con-
sidering the ingesta, you perceive how much has
been lost; and so, by viewing the congesta in this
case, you perceive how much has been gained.
But to make the idea of value more tangible, it N
may be certainly affirmed that every cubic yard of (
this omnium gatherum, when mixed with a small
proportion of lime, is worth five shillings; and ^
that with no sensible outlay you may acquire, in
the course of two or three years, the invaluable
treasure of sixty cart-loads of the best manure,
which will make all around you to flow with milk
and honey.

After the above preparations, the raising of crops
becomes pleasant and profitable, as the work is easy
and the remuneration sure. We suppose the soil
now to be in a good state, both as to depth and

150 CROPS AND MANURE.

richness, and the first thing with regard to crop-
ping is the economy of manure. Let one half of
your garden receive a rich supply one year, the
other half the year following, and so on alternately.
Corresponding to this arrangement, let such crops
as require immediate manure be distinguished from
those which thrive sufficiently well or better with-
out it, and let them be disposed accordingly. The
following may be successfully raised on such ground
as has been well manured the year before, namely,
pease, beans, carrots, parsnips, radishes, curled kale,
late turnips, sown in July; with these may be
classed the potato, which in rich garden ground
will grow a good crop without a fresh dunging and
prove of better quality. But when the ground is
less rich, a mere sprinkling in the potato drill will
be sufficient; and thus it is still to be regarded
apart from those vegetables which cannot be judi-
ciously cultivated without a recent and liberal
supply of manure.

Considering the varieties here enumerated, as
well as the quantity of each that is usually required,
it is obvious that you have plenty in this list to
occupy one half of the ground which is allotted for
culinary productions. In this method of manuring
and of distributing the different sorts of crops, the
pea requires a special notice. The borders, on ac-
count of the wall fruit trees, must be kept clear of
it: it ought not to be frequently on the same
ground; it thrives best on that which is newly
trenched; it requires a large space, say a fourth

SYSTEM OF CROPPING. 151

of the vegetable department. Wherefore let your
crops be so arranged that the pea may be only once
in four years on the same ground ; and as often as
you accomplish the trenching of any interior plot,
lay a little lime on the surface and sow peas. They
will not suffer by their worst enemy, the snail;
they will present a strong stalk, with dry leaves
and a load of delicious food.

By this attention to the system of cropping a ,
great deal of manure may be saved, to the benefit
of the purse and glebe, without causing any defi-
ciency in any of the vegetable productions. The
ground at the same time will be kept in better con- /
dition than it would be by an annual dunging; and
the manure itself communicates far more benefit -
when applied at longer intervals, as when more fre-\
quently afforded, it loses something of its effect by (
every repetition. By this method too you make •
sure of a rotation of crops, having no difficulty in
remembering what portion of your garden has been
last manured, and consequently of knowing what
ought not to be sown or planted. The whole
ground should be dug with a deep rough furrow,
and the dung well covered in before the winter.

For giving more energy to the soil, and avoid-
ing an unnecessary expenditure of manure, if you
have more garden ground than is requisite for the
supply of vegetables, it is of excellent use to lay
some part down in grass, to remain a few years.
Sow red and white clover, about twice as thick as
is usual in the fields, with the ordinary proportion

152 SEASONS FOR VARIOUS CROPS.

of perennial ryegrass and a small sprinkling of
barley. The grass, besides proving a great con-
venience, is a valuable crop, and raised at no ex-
pence of labour; and the ground which it occupies
will afterwards be far more sensible to the stimulus
of manure, showing, in the garden as in the field,
the benefit of rest from bearing in too long suc-
cession the same sort of produce.

Having offered these preliminary observations,
with a view to the general success of the vegetable
department, it remains now to consider the best
mode of securing the needful attention, in due
season to its individual productions.

Season is the chief thing to be observed, as no
art of man can make up for the loss of time, and
the difficulty of redeeming it may be seen in a late
sown and worthless crop. But it is not easy to
the inexperienced gardener to recollect what should
be done in the several months as they proceed.
To meet this difficulty, some have arranged their
directions for the garden by making the months of
the year the heads of their chapters, and setting
down in each the work appropriate to the time.
But this, which seems a simple and perfect method,
happens in reality to be the most confused and in-
convenient that has yet been devised. The pre-
paration of the ground for any crop is to be found
in one month, the sowing in another, and the future
operations necessary to its culture must be sought
at a venture, under some of the twelve heads, and
most probably will not be sought at all. How

VEGETABLES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER. 153

much easier is the process, if you are interested
about the production of an artichoke, to go to that
article, and find all you want in one page. Let
the doing once follow the reading, and then there
is no more to learn, and no forgetting of what has
once been so acquired. But still the chance is that
something which should be done in March will not
be thought of till April, — and this leads me to re-
commend that horticultural treatise of most delec-
table brevity anually printed in the Edinburgh '
Almanack.

Whoever remembers that an account of every day
must be given will see the importance of consider-
ing, before the day be far gone, what ought to be
done; and whoever acts on this principle will think
it no hard task to look five times in the year at the
Gardener's Calender. Suppose you find in the
work for the month some notice of the artichoke;
then, by referring to this book, which is designed
to be no bigger than an almanack, you will find, as
easily as looking out the letter A of a dictionary,
all that you require for bringing to your table the
rich pulp of that delicious plant. In alluding to the
dictionary mode of finding what the reader wants,
there is, besides the conveniency of the plan,
this reason for its adoption, that the writer finds
great difficulty in settling the claims of precedence
amongst the members of the herbal family — so
numerous, and all so fair and good ; and therefore
he throws the responsibility of setting one above
another on some person or persons long since de-

154 ARTICHOKE — ASPARAGUS.

ceased, who arbitrarily, and perhaps unwarrantably,
set A before B. Wherefore, to proceed with A :
The Artichoke is a delicious and wholesome ve^e-

o

table, provided it be itself eaten rather than used
as a spoon. It is propagated by offsets from the
roots ; and as part of the offsets require to be
cleared away from old plants in order to leave no
more stems for next crop than have room to grow,
there is no difficulty in finding materials for a young
plantation. Choose the deepest of your soil, keep-
ing off the borders with this as with all high-grow-
ing crops, in order not to shade the wall fruit ;
and in April, for each row of plants make a ditch
two feet deep and three feet wide, on the bottom of
which spread a layer of manure four inches thick.
Then fill in half the earth, putting that lowest
which was formerly on the top; and with the other
half let more dung be mixed in the course of filling
up the trench. Set the plants, three in a clump,
eighteen inches separate ; and let the nearest part
of each clump be at least a yard distant from the
nearest part of the next. The roots will grow like
stakes, penetrating the under stratum of manure,
and send up strong stems, with large heads, for
seven years, without requiring any more trouble
than a rough digging of the ground before winter,
and a slight covering of litter in severe frosts.

Asparagus is no doubt a good thing; but in
point of produce it is to the potato or turnip, or
almost any other crop, in the proportion of some-
thing like one to a hundred. If you are not ham-

' ASPARAGUS. 255

pered as to ground or other means, then it is well
to have it ; for of all luxuries those of the vegeta-
ble kind are the most harmless ; but it is a good
rule either to have it in plenty or not at all. No
invidious dish should ever be seen on any table;
for no good taste can relish that of which there is
not enough for every one. The following is the
mode of cultivating this herb. — Sow the seed in
March, in drills six inches apart and less than one
inch deep. Cover the bed, in the end of October,
with litter or short loose dung, to protect the seed-
lings in winter. In dry weather, next spring, raise
the plants with a strong fork, which avoids cutting
the roots, and transfer them to the proper quarter.
This operation may also be done in summer, when
the plants are a foot long, taking care to water
them regulary after transplanting. The soil for
their reception must be rich and light, and trenched
two and a half feet deep, with a thick bed of manure
at the bottom. Till, clay, or wet subsoil, is out of
the question. Avoid the drying of the roots by
sun or air in the time of transplanting. Make a
trench perpendicular on one side, and of a depth
equal to to the length of the roots, which are to be
set one foot from each other, and in rows two feet
and a half apart. Onions, carrots, or cauliflower,
may for a year or two occupy the intervening spaces.
In October, the stalks are cut over, and the ground
dug between the rows, taking care to avoid the
roots: and the summer culture consists of weeding,
and stirring up the soil with a fork. By the third

156 BEANS.

or fourth year you begin to eat ; but then only
the stronger plants may be cut ; and care must
always be taken to leave beneath the incision a bud
for the succeeding growth. A square pole of ground
is the least that can be depended on to furnish a
dish at each cutting. If your garden be near the
sea, and consist much of sand, you have a twofold
advantage for the rearing of this favourite vegeta-
ble— the soil is the most suitable, and seaweed is
the best manure.

Beans. — Of the many varieties of this garden
pulse choose at least two — the white-blossom, hav-
ing the remarkable property, though black in itself,
of not tinging the broth in which it is boiled, as
the white varieties do, and the Windsor, or other
large sort, which from its size renders the operation
of blanching less troublesome. For an early pro-
duction, sow a part of each sort about the middle
of February, if the ground be tolerably dry; if
otherwise, as the seed is apt to decay with too
much wet, the sowing must be delayed. A later
crop may be sown in April. This pulse has no oc-
casion for manure provided it succeed a crop which
had a sufficient allowance the year before. As the
early sown beans vegetate slowly, the mice are apt
to find them out, and may probably finish them be-
fore their growth is well begun. It is necessary,
therefore, to adopt one of the following precautions :
steep the seed in train oil for a few hours ; or wet
it with water and then dust it over with a farthing's
worth of pounded rosin ; or sprinkle the sown drill

BEET. 157

with chopped furze before covering in the mould.
Any one of these expedients will be completely suc-
cessful. Avoid too thick sowing, which admits of
no growth but straw. Let the drills be eighteen
inches apart, and the seeds of the larger sorts four
or five inches separate — those of the smaller, three
or four inches from each other in the drill. In the
subsequent culture, to correct the hardness which
the soil is apt to contract from heavy rains in
spring, let it be well stirred up between the drills;
and let the summer hoeings be so frequent as to
leave no vestige of a weed, and to keep the soil well
up about the stems of the plants, which greatly
promotes the fruitfulness of the bean. If the sum-
mer prove wet, and the growth too luxuriant, the
tops of the stalks should be shorn, in order to admit
more air and encourage the filling of the pods.

Beet. — Eed beet (the white is not worthy of cul-
tivation) is a very saccharine and wholesome vege-
table, and makes an excellent pickle. Sow the seed
about the middle of April, and on deep ground,
manured for the preceding crop, llecent manuring
causes the roots to grow fibrous and distorted, and
too early sowing disposes the plant to run to seed.
The drills should be eighteen inches apart, and the
plants thinned to six or eight inches from each
other. In lifting this crop, care must be taken not
to break the taproot. The beet may be stored in
sand or pitted in the garden before any severe frosts
have come on. In making the pit, the chief
thing is to provide for getting up the roots safely

158 BROCOLI.

as they are wanted. If any cut or fracture ensue,
the juice drains off in the boiling, and the pulp is
rendered useless. Let the pit be made in dry
ground, six inches deep, two feet wide, and of such
length as the bulk of the crop may require. Lay
the roots across the trench, in layers, with earth
between; and thus, as their position is known, they
are easily exhumated without inflicting any wound.
The pit should be ridged up and beaten smooth, to
turn off the rain.

Brocoli. — This is one of the best of vegetables,
and comes in a season of no great plenty. It is
now unfailing in many gardens where, half a century
ago, it was as little to be seen as a pine-apple. It
may be tried in any climate, even though it should
often fail, as no loss of ground is sustained by the
trial. The plants are set in good time after a crop
of peas or early potatoes has been removed ; and
the brocoli again is out of the way in due season
for being succeeded by various summer crops. It
is not necessary to be troubled with the many va-
rieties of this plant. The sulphur is the best, and
should grow, being well manured, to a circumference
of from twenty to thirty inches of solid flower — one
stock yielding a perfect feast to a whole family.
For an autumn crop, the seed is sown in April; and
for a spring crop next year, it is sown in the end of
May. The winter sometimes proves too hard for this
plant, and may cause the loss of half your crop; but
plant on, as the ground is not lost, and in general
you will have pleasant food instead of waste land,

BROCOLI. 159

and enjoy a real luxury without the sin of extrava-
gance. The purple variety is more hardy, and may
be set thicker, as it does not grow to half the size
of the former. For the spring crop, which has the
winter to endure, the warmest and most sheltered
border is in general to be chosen ; but as it will
sometimes be found less injured by frost in the open
quarters, it may be as well to give chances.

To keep the heart of the plant near the surface
of the ground is the best security; and to accom-
plish this, let the seedling plants be early thinned,
to avoid long stems ; and in transplanting, give
them plenty of room — the larger sort, twenty by
fifteen inches, and the smaller somewhat less. In
low and warm districts, it is found of advantage,
about the end of autumn, to lift the full grown brocoli
stocks, and plunge them up to the neck in the soil,
or so to recline them that their heads may rest on
the surface of the ground ; but in higher places,
where fresh rooting, late in the season, is more
doubtful, it is better to avoid, by the above me-
thods, the evil of long stalks than to depend on this
second planting for a cure. At medium elevations,
the spring crop will best stand the winter when the
plants have been set about the middle of July.
When the flowering advances more rapidly than
the crop can be consumed, it answers well to take
up a portion of the stocks, with all their roots and
leaves, and hang them, with their heads down, on
any back wall, out of the way, and in open air, but
not exposed to the sun. In this position they keep

160 BRUSSELS-SPROUTS — CABBAGE.

fresh and good for some weeks: they suffer nothing
from rain, as the flower is protected by the hang-
ing leaves.

o

Brussels Sprouts. — So called from the numerous
sprouting heads which arrange themselves in a pyr-
amidal form around the stem. This is the most
delicate variety of the kale tribe: it is easily reared,
and comes in a season of scarcity, namely, from the
dead of winter till well on in the spring; and as it
neither requires a rich soil, nor is tender as to cli-
mate, it is difficult to account for its greater pre-
valence in the southern than in the northern parts
of the island. As it occupies less breadth it may
be planted thicker than common greens. Sow the
seed in March, and plant after a shower in June.

Cabbage. — This is a principal, long standing, and
substantial vegetable — excellent for a cow or such
of our own species as have the like powers of diges-
tion ; and it is rather the consciousness of impo-
tency than refined taste that will make any one
turn away from the snowy flakes and flavorous
mastication afforded by this queen of potherbs. To
begin with that which falls most within the reach
of human capacity — the early sugar-loaf cabbage,
which is a light and tender vegetable when taken at
the size of lettuce and beginning to change its colour
from green to white — the main fault of the early
cabbage is, that it usually comes not till far on in
May, when the sun checks its growth and hardens
its fibre into wood. In March and April it is soft
and juicy; and the cultivator has himself to blame

' CABBAGE. 161

if it be not then in abundance, constituting the
chief wealth and luxury of the garden. Make a
plantation on a warm border early in September,
from seedlings two months old. In ordinary alti-
tudes not one plant will die in- winter: in spring
some of them will show a disposition to run to seed;
but cut before they run, — in the green leaf they are
excellent. Those planted out a month later will
succeed this first crop, and may be eaten in all
states, from the half blanched leaf to the solid boll.
The early cabbage is equally good in the end of
autumn, and for a considerable period of the winter;
and it is not a little preposterous, that the most
common season of its use is just that in which it is
least fit to be eaten. Manure should not be spared,
as the quality of tenderness is in proportion to the
vigour of growth.

The late cabbage is the most valuable crop for
cows which the garden can produce. All summer
the leaves are inexhaustible, and then the huge solid
and savoury bolls cause the brutes in very gladness
to overflow with milk. Cover the cabbage plot
thick with the richest manure. Nothing on either
garden or farm will make a better return. But the
great thing is to have the plants right. Some
bunches are commonly purchased at the spring
fairs ; they come home yellow and pliant, having
just acquired, by decay, the proper tenderness and
saccharine flavour for the soft lip of the snail.
Planted in this state, they all vanish, or the field

is wretched with blanks in a few days. More

L

162 CABBAGE.

plants are afterwards inserted ; but the ground has
become hard, the season is gone, and the sickly crop
remains to be finished by the caterpillar. This is
nonsense. A penny worth of seed and less wit
might save all this vexation. Sow on the first of
August, or earlier if your climate be cold; and two
months after sowing, take up two or three hundred
of the best plants and dibble them into a warm
border, three inches asunder. Thus treated, they
grow short-stemmed and thick-necked, with a bark
which the snail can no more injure than that of an
oak. Early in February the fresh green leaf ap-
pears, and the plant begins to gather strength for
its summer's work. From the middle to the end
of this month, when the weather is fresh and the
ground dry, the plants may be taken up with the
ball of earth which adheres to the many fibres pushed
from the root in consequence of the previous trans-
planting, and transferred to a large open quarter
duly prepared for their reception. Such plants
never feel their removal. There is no heat to
wither them, and slight frosts do not affect them.
The ground, having been dug before winter with
a deep rough furrow, mellowed with frost and
swollen with rich manure, may be stirred from the
bottom and well loosened, but not turned over,
and the plants set at the distance of three feet by
two.

The only objection to the advantage of retaining
a ball of earth is the gall-nut-like excresence which
is sometimes found on the roots of the plants. If

' CARROT-WORM. 163

such appear they must be pinched off; but the dis-
ease does not occur on newly trenched ground. Snails
are worse in April than in March, and worse in May,
if the weather be wet, than in April; but this ene-
my is altogether overcome by having your plants
strong, early set, and so managed that their growth
is never suspended. By attention to the above
methods, you will see your cabbage field in ample
foliage whilst your neighbours are only planting,
or needlessly filling blanks, and complaining that
the garden is a mere waste of money, as nothing
can be saved from the enails. Of the cabbage crop,
a few stocks, not of the largest size, but chosen for
their firmness, may be sunk in a furrow with their
heads down, and covered up to the roots; by which
means they keep all winter, and may be used in a
season when the garden yields fewest varieties.
There is a red sort which is used for pickles, and
sour krout. If you are afflicted with scurvy, and
subject to no acidity of stomach, you may indulge
in vinegar and cabbage leaves.

Carrot. — This root should grow eighteen inches
long and nine in circumference; but for the table
it is better at half that size. It is saccharine and
nutritive, admirable for milch cows, and not bad
food for horses. Well boiled, it may be eaten to
the amount of three ounces to the sedentary, and
by labourers as they please. The cultivation of it
is in most places of this country the greatest trial
of the gardener's patience and skill. When the
plants have attained the thickness of a feather, are

164 CARROT-WORM.

nicely thinned, and have spread their finely pic-
turesque and thriving leaves, a worm, with great
prodigality destroying its own stores, cuts the only
root the plant has, and it immediately dies. If
any get further advanced before they are so at-
tacked, they do not altogether disappear, but main-
tain a sickly growth, become stringy, and are
unfit for use. The progress of the enemy below
ground is marked by the withering of the leaves;
but there is little fruit of the discovery save the
intimation that the crop will all be destroyed.

Such noxious creatures, it would seem, are mul-
tiplied by our cultivation of their appropriate food.
The carrot, it is probable, when first introduced,
would have few enemies ; but now the rearing of
it is generally precarious, and the attempt often
abortive. The turnip, too, of so great importance
in modern husbandry, is likely to prove, by the dis-
ease called " fingers and toes," that the insect caus-
ing that disease has spread over the land, in conse-
quence of being nourished by the very crops which
it is now powerful enough to destroy. If this be
the law of insect population, we must draw upon
the bounties of nature for a new plant, or shift the
old to a remote and altogether new soil. Were
the carrot every where abandoned for a term of
years, it might perhaps be resumed again with en-
tire success. But as we are not patriots enough,
by common consent, to consult for the prosperity of
the next a<re, we must be content to feed the carrot-

. O 5

worm, though it take all to itself, or so to moderate

CAR110T-WORM. 165

its ravages that we may have some share in what
remains. No effectual remedy is yet known ; but
by various expedients it is still possible to raise
good carrots ; and it is a remarkable fact, that the
difficulties which require an increase of industry, or
the ingenuity of a new resource, heighten the flav-
our of this excellent vegetable.

1. To annoy the enemy, trench the ground in
October or November, mixing with the upper stra-
tum a moderate portion of old manure, and give a
fresh digging immediately before sowing. The
larvse, if such there be, are thus buried.

2. It will always be found that the worm is
worse in some parts of the garden than in others.
Sow in several places each season.

3. Sow at different times from the first of March
to the middle of May. The insect which has its
season, will not hit the crowquill size of the diffe-
rent sowings, at which period of advancement the
attack is ruinous.

4. Sow onions and carrots either mixed in broad-
cast or in alternate drills.

5. Water the young plants with a strong soap
lee as soon as the insect makes it appearance, and
repeat the operation so long as the plant does not
seem to suffer by the affusion.

6. Manure the ground at the autumn or spring
digging with soot or salt. The latter must not be
applied in the proportion of more than forty bushels
to the acre. In too large quantity it may kill the

166 CARROT-WORM.

insect ; but it will also prevent every kind of vege-
table growth.

7. With the above adjuncts always adopt one
grand rule — namely, that of putting the crop into
the best condition for thriving, as it invariably fol-
lows that the dwindling growth of bad cultivation is
the most assailed by all manner of insect depreda-
tors. Have the ground deep dug or trenched and
ridged up before winter. If the under stratum of
the trench be too poor mix it with a moderate por-
tion of old dung. Carrots will do well after onions
or celery without additional manure; but in all
cases the soil must be rich, though the roots must
not be allowed to come in contact with manure re-
cently applied.

About the end of April, when a great deal of
annual weeds have begun to vegetate, and when the
ground is very dry, break down the ridges, and dig
afresh, killing the annuals and making the mould
as fine as meal. Sow in drills about an inch in
depth and eighteen inches from each other; and by
several thinnings leave the plants ultimately nine
inches apart, stirring up the ground at each weed-
ing with a hoe or strong fork. The early-horn is
the most delicate; the long red is the best for a
late crop; and the Altringham, it is said, is the
least liable to become the prey of worms. The seed
requires to be well rubbed before sowing, in order
that it may separate freely, and not occasion blanks
or thick patches, which prove detrimental to the
crop.

•CAULIFLOWER. 167

Cauliflower — Beckoned by many the best flower
of the garden — is certainly the most delicate of
vegetable food. To have this crop the earliest that
your climate will admit of, the first care is the man-
agement of the young plants. Sow a quarter of an
ounce of seed, or twice that quantity, about the
middle of August, on a dry bed, the least likely to
be infected with snails. About the end of Sep-
tember, dibble the strongest of the plants close to
the foot of a south wall, where the fallen leaves of
the fruit trees will afford a considerable protection
from the frost. Mats or the like covering may be
serviceable in severe weather. But to make sure
of plants in the spring, it is well worthwhile to have
a small frame, say four feet square, with a sliding
glass top, and which may serve also for other things.
Set this frame upon earth, a little raised for the
sake of dryness, and dibble into it a hundred plants,
about the end of October. Keep the roof a little
open, except in very hard weather. This slight
attention is no task, as there is much pleasure in
seeing the fresh green leaves when all else is buried
under snow. In a severe storm, the frame besides
being close shut, may require a mat or other cover-
ing; but in few winters, at a medium elevation, is
such care necessary, it being found that, though
the soil be hard frozen about the plants, they never
die when so situated; and indeed it is rather quick
thawing, and frequent changes, than hard frost,
that prove destructive to most vegetables.

About the end of March, when the weather is

168 CAULIFLOWER.

soft, take up a few of the plants with a trowel, so
as to lift with each a little ball of earth, and set
them on the warmest border ground, into which
plenty of rich and well decayed manure has been
dug before winter. A fortnight later, plant some
more in the same way. So transplanted, these take
root immediately, and bear the slight spring frosts
without injury. These advantages you have by
raising your own plants: they are at hand and you
can choose your time to a nicety; they are short-
necked and hardy, being not too crowded in the
frame, and are lifted with earth adhering to their
roots; whereas those reared for sale, besides cost-
ing five or seven shillings a hundred, are wiredrawn
and soft as grass, and half withered before you get
them. They can endure no frost ; they are long
in taking root; and in some sunny day you find
they have gone out of sight.

A spring sowing of cauliflower comes in time to
succeed the crops raised from winter plants; and the
succession may be kept up till November or Decem-
ber. At any time when the flowering advances
too rapidly, the stocks may be retarded or pre-
served from frost in the manner recommended for
brocoli. Some have transplanted the latest por-
tion of the crop into earth deposited under the roof
of a shed ; and by sheltering, airing, watering, and
picking off withered leaves, the cauliflower season
may no doubt be prolonged ; but this trouble will
seldom be judged necessary, as other things come
instead and in better season, and what is lost by

CELERY. 169

the temporary absence of a friend is regained by the
improved relish of next meeting.

Celery. — Of this there are several varieties; but
the best for all purposes is the upright, not turnip-
rooted, and that which has solid, not hollow stalks.
Celery is the lightest of raw vegetables, and excel-
lent in soups or stewed. To have plants in good
time a little artificial heat is necessary. The seed
is sown on a decayed hotbed early in March ; and
the seedlings are removed about the end of April,
to a rich sheltered border, where they are planted
a handbreadth apart, that they may become strong
and fibrous rooted. These qualities are perhaps
better secured by wetting and beating a piece of
ground, so as to be impervious to the roots; and
then laying down well wrought compost to the depth
of four inches, and upon this sowing the seed in
small drills, to be well thinned as the seedlings ad-
vance. As the plants, on reaching the hard sub-
stratum, are prevented from making long tap-roots,
they send out numerous fibres, a mode of growth
which checks the disposition to run to seed ; and by
this method of rearing they also become strong
enough, without transplanting, for being at once
removed to the trenches.

These are made in June, for receiving the plants
when they have attained to the thickness of a writ-
ing quill. The soil should be rich, at least two
feet deep of good mould. The trenches are cut one
foot in depth, something more in width, and three
feet from each other. High ridges, of course, rise

170 CHIVES — CRESS.

between. Into the bottom of each trench, a good
supply of old manure must be dug. Peatmoss is
very congenial if mixed with dung a year before and
prepared by several turnings. This trouble will be
well repaid by the next crop of carrots. On the
bottom of the trench, in a single row, dibble the
celery plants five or six inches apart, having previ-
ously cropped any long roots and also the leaves.
Watering is necessary for a few days in dry weather.
As the plants advance the earth is drawn towards
them, the intervening mounds become deep furrows,
and the celery drill a high ridge. After the last
earthing up, about the beginning of winter, the
soil must be beat into the shape of a roof, surmounted
only by the leaves, to prevent the rains from rotting
the stems and roots of the plants. It is by these
successive coverings that the celery is produced in
long leafstalks, and also thoroughly blanched — a
quality without which it is not eatable.

Chives. — A small mild species of onion. It is
perennial, and grows wild in some parts of the
country. The leaves chiefly are used as seasoning
or salad. It is propagated by parting the clustered
bulbs, and may be planted so as to form an edging —
not to flower borders, but along any of the vegetable
quarters. In this way it will serve without removal
for several years.

Cress. — Plain or curled is of little consequence.
To have the first green thing of spring, dust the
seed thick into a shallow drill by the foot of a south
wall: or take a saucer and teacup, cover the latter

, CUCUMBER. 171

with flannel and invert it, fill the saucer and soak
the flannel with water, and throw upon it as much
seed as will stick. The apparatus set on a man-
telpiece will be verdant in a few days. Any of the
early sowings in the garden which happen not to
be used as a crop will produce plenty of seed.

Cucumber — Though the native of a warm climate,
is in this more easily reared than digested. It is
downright bad food for most stomachs, and certainly
by no one who has ever had complaint of that organ
ought this fruit ever to be tasted. It is less plea-
sant to detail the modes of cultivating a plant which
to some is at best not noxious, whilst to others it is
pernicious; yet as it is pleasant to see it grow, and
being at least to some eaters harmless and desirable,
whilst the fruit in its infant state is much esteemed
for pickling, it deserves as well as many of its neigh-
bours to have a place. In the manse garden, how-
ever, it were quite out of place if it must be treated
with all that art which is requisite to present it in
all its varieties, and in all those seasons in which
with due care it is capable of being produced.

It is a very tender annual raised from seed, and,
which is singular, the seed is better for being some
years old. As there are so many sorts — early short
prickly, early long prickly, most long prickly, long
smooth green, Dutch or white short prickly, long
green Turkey, white Turkey, etc. — the simplest
way is to save the seed of that sort which best suits
the palate. The fruit must be thoroughly rip e,
and its seed washed from the pulp and dried in

172 CUCUMBER.

paper. The proper soil is light rich black earth,
manured from a heap of decayed vegetable matter,
with a moderate portion of old and well decayed
dung. Early crops can be raised only by the arti-
ficial heat of flued pits or hotbeds; and this of
course must require a constant gardener to regulate
the heat, dissipate the vapour, admit air, and ex-
clude a five minutes' breath of frost. In the south
of P]ngland large cucumbers are abundantly pro-
duced from drills in the open air, and hence their
cheapness in the market: but in the northern parts
of the island, the most that can be done without
forcing is to raise fruit of a smaller size, by sowing
under a handglass in May, and planting out on a
sheltered border in June. The male and female
flowers are on the same plant, but under glass some
movement by the hand is necessary to effect that
mixture of pollen which in the open air is made by
the breeze or the wings of the bee.

To save the time lost by transplanting, to have
also a quicker growth and larger fruit with the least
trouble, pits are made in the ground eighteen inches
deep, at the distance of four feet from each other;
they are then filled with manure in fermentation,
and which is covered over with six inches of mould.
There the seed is sown in patches, and the seedlings
afterwards thinned ; a small frame or box, having
the top covered with oiled paper, or cotton cloth at
nearly as little cost, anointed with wax dissolved in
turpentine, is set over each. This last apparatus,
of remarkable cheapness, is for many garden pur-

' DANDELION. 173

poses nearly as good as glass. The covers remain,
night and day, till settled warm weather in June:
and thus a good crop may be raised without much
trouble or expence. The young plants require to
be checked in their growth, by pinching off the bud
of the runner at the first joint; whence lateral
shoots will proceed, and which are more given to
fruitbearing. The shoots are commonly pricked
to the ground to prevent tossing; but the plant,
having tendrils, proves its adaptation to climbing,
and by giving it a few stakes, low branching or laid
on the ground, it will raise its fruit from the damp
earth, presenting it free of spots and better flavoured.
The vacant spaces of the sloping trellis, or gravel
fruit bank, previously described, could not but afford
to this plant such a field as would delight its rambles.
Dandelion — Is used as salad, chiefly by the
French. It is said, when well blanched, to lose its
extreme bitterness; and it has got, by the ceaseless
greed of new things, into the garden books and cul-
tivation of this country. Those who desire to feed
on it may find plenty by the wayside. It is the
most troublesome of all garden weeds. It is peren-
nial, flowers early, and has winged seeds. The
light down skims along the ground till it is inter-
rupted by the box edgings or the stems of fruit
trees. In such places, finding shelter, it takes root,
and there is no getting it dislodged. The best im-
plement for the management of this plant is a blunt
chisel with a long handle. By working this care-
fully down, the root may be extracted without up-

174 ENDIVE — FENNEL.

rooting the box or inflicting canker on the fruit
trees. The next resource is industry to prevent a
single plant from ripening its seed: and to match
its perennial virtue, let no piece of ground be dug
without first scrutinising every inch for this deli-
cate salad herb, in order that its roots may be
carefully gathered and stored — in the bottom of
the dunghill.

Endive. — The curled leaved sorts of this are the
best, — namely, the white for earlier crops, and the
green for standing the winter. Late sowing, by
the end of May or beginning of June, prevents the
nuisance of running to flower. Sow thin, and when
the plants are three inches high, set them in good
soil, newly dug, and in drills one foot asunder. In
dry weather, tie up the leaves for blanching when
they have grown a foot high. As it is pleasant to
have things fresh from the garden in the storms of
winter, a few plants, in the beginning of November,
may be set in a trench and earthed up nearly to the
head, by which means they will get white for use
in six weeks. All that is further necessary to ob-
serve is to sow at intervals, according as you wish
to prolong the eating of endive. This plant must
be worthy of some attention, having kept its place
in our gardens for two hundred years : and as quick
eating is necessary to prevent flowering, there can
be no difficulty in procuring seed.

Fennel — Is a perennial plant used for sauces.
One variety is named sweet, another azorian, and a
third common. The azorian is the most delicate

FRENCH BEANS — GARLIC — KALE. 175

as to climate ; the common will grow anywhere,
and needs no skill for its cultivation. Reaching to
the height of four or five feet, it is very ornamental;
and it is readily propagated by offsets.

French Beans — See Kidney Beans.

Garlic — Not designed for food to man in a state
of society; and hermits, if they choose, may find
enough of it growing wild in the woods and glens
which they naturally frequent.

Kale. — Nobody could be troubled with all the
varieties of kale. Some tall sorts, yielding a suc-
cession of leaves, while they grow to four or five
feet in height, are good for cows ; but the dwarf
curled is the only one which it is worth while to
plant in the garden for the use of the table. It is re-
markably tender, and has this quality in proportion
to the paleness of green and the degree of curl which
adorns its leaf. Such is the plaiting of its edges,
that the leaf of the best specimens resembles a
sponge, and is fully as thick as it is broad. Choose
such a stock, and save the seed, which will serve for
many years. As this vegetable loses much of its
delicacy when raised from plants that have stood the
previous winter, it is soon enough to sow in April
or March. As soon as the seedlings show the curl
of the leaf, thin them well out, or transplant a por-
tion, setting them a handbreadth asunder, in order
to preserve the dwarf quality and avoid long stems —
taking care also to select the plants, for the parent
stock does not uniformly yield seed after its kind.

Nothing can be easier than this attention to the

176 KALE — HORSE RADISH.

growing of kale; and there is nothing in which the
advantage of high breeding is more discernible. For
though kale be of universal cultivation, and though
the species be the same, yet it is rare to meet with
good greens ; and of no two edible substances is
there a greater difference than subsists between the
pale, soft, and deep-fringed leaves we have described,
and the dark green or dingy red, hard-ribbed, and
leather-apron-like foliage of a common kale-yard.
After early potatoes or peas have been removed,
set the plants prepared as above, in rows two feet
wide by eighteen inches. The ground being well
dug will require no manure after potatoes, but a
little after peas or such crops as have been raised
without previous manure. Should the stems, from
the proximity of a wall or scarcity of air, get too
high, the whole crop may be lifted in October, in
order to be plunged up to the neck by a fresh dig-
ging, or laid in a slope, so that the heads may rest
on the ground. This prevents the subsiding of a
snow-wreath from carrying the leaves before it,
which it does in the case of tall stocks, leaving
nothing but bare poles. By this method the kale
will stand any winter, and may be dug out from
beneath the snow entire, and so tender as to melt
in the mouth. Salt to kale is proverbial ; and at
a season when powdered meat is not heating to the
nerves, its union with well boiled pulpy greens gives
a relish which nothing at a king's table might im-
prove.

Horse Eadish — Is as facile of growth as docks ;

INDIAN CRESS. 177

but even docks, if they were useful, would require
some care to have them good. The proper sets are
either whole roots or the upper half; and the main
thing to know is the depth at which they should be
placed. One inexperienced in the ways of bad weeds
might be surprised to find from how great a depth
a buried dock will set up its face: so is it with this
stimulant and stomachic root. The sets should be
put in deep rich earth, and, if not too clayey, the
tops of the sets should be at least a foot below the
surface. From these, numbers of upright roots will
arise, and all, of course, a foot long before coming
to leaf above ground. Of these the strongest may
be at any time selected for use, and cut down to a
good length without injury to the parent root. A
single row in any out-of-the-way place, may be
sufficient; and which will continue in good bearing
for five or six years. A new plantation, however,
must be made one year before removing the old.

Indian cress. — This plant, so well known to
children as a principle ornament in their little gar-
dens, is a native of South America. There it in-
dures several seasons; but as it cannot stand our
winters, it appears in this country only as an annual.
It is remarkable for the long period in which its fine
orange flowers1 are produced, and for the great
height to which they are reared. Favoured with
shelter and support, it will grow seven feet high,
and blossom from midsummer till it is killed bv the

t

winter frost. The leaves hang curiously by the

i There is now also a beautiful dark variety.

M

178 JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE.

centre, and bend their stalks in such a way as to
catch any object for support. The pods are used
for pickles; the leaves and flowers for salad; and
the seed is gathered ripe in September. Manure
added to the soil increases the growth, but lessens
the beauty and fruitfulness of this plant.

Jerusalem Artichoke. — There are few corruptions
more dishonourable to our language than the name
of this plant. Artichoke, from the resemblance of
flavour, is all well; but what has Jerusalem to do
in the matter? The plant is a species of sunflower
(Helianthus tuberosus) and therefore the Italians
have properly called it girasole; and we having
learned their name, of which they pronounce all the
four syllables, making the g soft, have innocently
thought they were speaking of Jeruselem. This
plant flowers occasionally in our climate, but never
ripens its seed; it grows eight or ten feet high, and
yields a good crop of tubers, buried in a mass of
small fibres, at the foot of each stalk. It is an excel-
lent vegetable, and in a place of moderate shelter is
as easily produced as potatoes. The cutting of the
sets, the mode of planting, manuring, and hoeing,
differ in nothing worthy of notice from the respect-
tive operations of potato culture. Some complain
of the difficulty of getting the ground cleared of the
roots, and, sloven like, resign a portion of the gar-
den to be overrun with the tubers year after year,
and thus gather what they can, of the worst quality,
from the confusion of chance growth and the just
sterility of lazy cultivation The potato, long

KIDNEY BEANS — LEEKS. 179

treated in the same way, and for the same reason,
was bad and unprofitable; and hence, from sloth
or wrong judgment, founded on ignorance, this in-
valuable boon was retained in the country a hundred
years before it reached the families of the poor! To
get rid of stray roots, whether artichoke or potato
do not sow onions for the next crop, as the seedling
beds will be sadly defaced by the strong growth of
the lurking roots, but wait for a late crop: and
when all that is alive of the ungathered bulbs has
come to light, in May apply the spade, and make
an entire extirpation, and the cleared ground will
be in good time and good condition for a full crop
of turnips, cabbages, kale, or brocoli.

Kidney Beans. — The dwarf varieties are the best,
as they bear well and need no support. The scar-
let runner is worthy of notice as a beautiful flower,
and useful by its rambling growth, for ornamenting
any object which in itself might be a deformity.
The low growing sorts are sown towards the end of
April, in drills two feet asunder, three inches separ-
ate in the drill, and covered in with two inches of
mould. Earlier sowings are apt to perish with
frost; if a succession of crops is wanted, more seed
may be sown any time in May or June. When
eaten young and tender, the pods are delicious, but
if not taken in time they become like tow in the
mouth, and the crop is entirely lost.

Leeks. — It is often questioned, whether hare or
leek soup has the preference; and the decision
which is usually given in favour of that one which

ISO LEEKS.

happens to be present shows that both are esteemed
good things, and that the leek makes one of the best

O O '

soups. The Scotch leek, as it endures the hardest
winter, and is the better for all the frost it gets, is
undoubtedly the best variety for this country. No-
thing can be worse than a small, hard, ill thriven
leek, and few things are better than one that is fully
grown to the thickness of a cane, blanched to the
whiteness of snow, and which falls in the boiling
like stewed apples. The first thing is to have seed-
ling plants in due season. In high situations where
they do not spring early, it is better to procure
plants from a warmer climate, and which is the
more convenient as they do not readily suffer by
carriage. There is no advantage in very early sow-
ing, as the seed waits for heat. The first of April
is soon enough; and it is a good rule to sow pretty
thick for shelter, and at more breadth than is neces-
sary for a supply of plants; for it so happens, that
out of the greater multidude of chances, plants of a
good size are more early procured. This principle
ought to be noticed in garden competitions — as a
larger field, without better cultivation, has for an
extraordinary production, the advantage over one
that is smaller. In the beginning of July, on the
removal of some early crop, dig plentifully into the
ground old black well decayed manure, and in soft
weather take up the seedling leeks, select the larg-
est, crop them at both ends, and throw aside all that
have suckers; make deep holes with the dibble, in
rows one foot by six inches, and let the plants drop

LEEKS. 181

in nearly up to the head. Leave the holes open,
sending down only as much earth as may serve to
cover the roots. The open space encourages the
swelling of the stem, and answers perfectly for
blanching — while the slight covering is of use
partly to prevent withering, and partly the strange
vexation of finding your plants lying full length on
the surface, being hauled up by worms.

It is no bad plan, if you cannot have your plants
early, to avoid transplanting altogether. With this
intention, gather the ground into small ridges eigh-
teen inches apart, and sow the seed in the furrows
between each ridge. Thin out, and let the plants
grow where they have been sown; and the inter-
vening mounds will serve for earthing up and
blanching the leeks. A great part of the best grow-
ing season, which is lost by the sickness of trans-
planting, is thus saved to the still growing and
vigorous plant; and in this way very large and
excellent crops may be raised, though at somewhat
greater expence, the ground not yielding as by the
former method, two crops in the season. It is of
advantage to raise your own seed, as you can make
sure of having it a year old, from which the crop is
less liable to suffer by shooting. Let a few of the
largest leeks be set any time in October or Febru-
ary, within a foot of a south wall, to which, as they
grow up, they may be held by a string. They
will ripen their seed, in common years, at a moder-
ate elevation. Should the season be unfavourable,
a few of the heads may be drawn together, and

182 LETTUCE.

placed behind a handglass well fastened to the wall,
which will exclude rain and frost, and admit, till
late in autumn, the benefit of the declining sun.

Lettuce. — Of it there are many varieties ; but
two or three of the best may suffice. Of the tall
growing sort, named cross or ice lettuce, the green
is the fittest for this climate. To have it early, it
may be sown by a south wall in February, or for
convenience, along with onions or carrots. The seed
cannot be too lightly covered. When the seedlings
are three or four inches high, they may be trans-
planted in showery weather, in rows one foot apart
in each direction. By tying the leaves together
near the top, when well grown, they soon become
beautifully blanched and delicate. Of the cabbage
kind, the brown is best for standing the winter,
and eats very tenderly in spring. It may be sown
in drills on a warm dry border in A ugust, and must
be well thinned and cleared, in order to get hardy
before the frosts come on. Another cabbage lettuce.

o

which has obtained the nume of drumhead, blanches
well of its own accord, and is the most tender of
all the tribe. It does not stand the winter, but is
excellent for summer and autumn use. To have
lettuce at all times, no other rule is necessary than
to make successive sowings, keeping pace with the
eating or the shooting of the crops. The milky
juice common to this family is an opiate, and has
been used medicinally.

Mangold, or Mangel-wurzel — a species of beet.
The French, probably from mistaking the German

, MANGEL-WURZEL. 183

name, have called this " root of scarcity" — a great
misnomer certainly, as it will grow by good man-
agement to the amount of forty tons per acre. As
it begins now to be largely cultivated, it is more
properly allied to the farm than to the garden, but
as some part of the latter, both for the sake of eco-
nomy and the benefit arising from a change of crop,
is fitly allotted to the feeding of cows, this new
plant is well worthy of a place. It should grow
to the size of a sturdy leg; but if it attain only to
the thickness of your wrist, either your ground
wants trenching, or you have committed some error
in the cultivation; and it will be important, there-
fore, either to acquire the needful art, or to aban-
don a crop which, without proper management, will
prove indeed the " root of scarcity." If your soil
wants depth, rather choose for it a plant that grows
above ground: this must get down, but it will not
like an iron pike, force its way through rock or till.
It must not only have an easy road, but something
good beneath to invite it downwards.

With regard to transplanting, though recom-
mended by respectable writers, it may be observed,
that in a climate where all the growing season is
needful, no loss in this way ought to be sustained.
Where a single root of this mangold may grow to
the weight of thirty or even fifty pounds the grower
cannot easily go wrong; but here, as there is a loss
of time by transplanting, so the loss to the crop is
irreparable — as is the case with the Swedish tur-
nip, though it agrees not ill with the like operation.

184 MANGEL WURZEL.

To have the benefit of transplanting, without sus-
taining any loss, its proper use is merely to fill any
blanks that may occur and for this purpose a
small bed should be sown a week earlier than the
main crop.

For the principal sowing, let the ground be dug
or ploughed with manure before winter; for this
plant, like radish, carrot, or red beet, does not agree
with dung newly deposited. Let the soil be deeply
stirred up in spring, and, if too shallow, drawn into
high drills two feet apart. In plough management,
first make a set of drills, and then reverse them.
This double operation is only equal to one plough-
ing, but it leaves the ground in drills, and every
inch has been turned and loosened. In the dryest
weather as near the beginning of April as may be,
slightly rake or smooth with the harrow the tops of
the drills, on the summit of which sow thin and
regular, in small ruts two inches deep; the drills
to be afterwards thinned out to the distance of one
foot or fifteen inches, according to the strength of
the soil. In preparing seedlings for transplanting,
they may be cropped as to the leaves; but the tap-
root must not be touched, but let down at full
length, leaving the upper part of the roof a little
above the surface of the ground, according to the
natural growth of the plant. The fittest season
is in showery weather, and when the seedlings are
the thickness of a writing quill. From this crop
a profusion of leaves may be gathered for cows in
the course of the summer without injury to the
growing plants.

MARJORAM — MELON. 1<

Marjoram. — Three sorts of this are cultivated.
That called pot is perennial, and is propagated by
cuttings or slips. Of sweet marjoram, the seed,
which is imported, not ripening in this country,
must be sown every year, as the plant is biennial,
and not ready for use in the first year of its
growth. The flowers are gathered in July, and
dried in the shade. Winter sweet marjoram is
perennial. It is propagated by parting the roots
in autumn, and requires a dry bed and good shelter.
All three belong to the trashy tribe of culinary
articles used not for food but pernicious sauce.

Melon. — Great chieftain of the fruit race, though
usually ranked with the productions of the kitchen
garden. The varieties, it seems, amount to nearly
a score, of which three fourths are cultivated and
variously recommended. To the less knowing they
are nearly all one, having all the flavour and form
peculiar to the melon. No sooner is the crust broken
than the red gold appears, and the sweetest per-
fumes are exhaled. The odour is itself a feast to
the nerves of the delicate who may feast no further;
and to the strong a premonition that they are in
danger. The seductions of this little world of
pleasure are generally feared ; nevertheless, as in
the greater instance " bit by bit the world is
swallowed."

Whether the melon ought to be admitted into
the manse garden is a question which the following
may help to solve. The author once had thoughts
of cultivating this fruit, and of giving its process of

186

MELON.

culture a place is this manual. The breadth of
glass seemed not very formidable, and the requisite
heat is not that of actual combustion. Nay, there
arises from this very thing an argument of beauti-
ful economy. A dunghill must ferment somewhere,
and its heat is dissipated. Instead of giving this
warmth to the unthankful winds, why not apply it
to the production of the rich odour and nectarine
juice of the melon? Full of this argument, the
next thing was to get the needful science ; and pro-
ceeding in this search the title of" Chap. I, Melon
Garden," proved not a little staggering. Then
came something about the convenience of a cart
road leading to the interior, namely, of the " melon
garden" — another staggerer. But still a wheel-
barrow road might do; and " melon garden," after
all, might signify only a part of the garden sepa-
rated from the rest by a holly hedge. But next
came the various sets of hotbeds and hot ridges,
the one-light and two-light frames ; the thermo-
metrical trials ; the decay, the revival, and the pre-
servation of heat; the opening of the glass for air,
and the hazard of a shower: the awnings for the
sun and the mattings for the frost; the constant
waterings, with the cautions not to wet a leaf; the
drying of the seed by animal heat, that, is, by car-
rying it in the pocket, and keeping it till five years
old ; the cautious turning of the fruit, like a pa-
tient in bed, with this greater care, that whereas
the patient may at any time be turned either way,
the last turning of the melon must be remembered

MELON MUSHROOM.

187

in order that the next day may observe a contrary
direction, lest by several turnings in one way the
head should fall off; and with this care of turning
the fruit, the contrary caution is necessary with re-
gard to the leaves, which must not be permitted to
turn by the casual breeze, but must all have their faces
set full to the sun, and be kept in that position, for
which purpose a liberal use of pegs is recommended.
How much further such lore must be carried the
writer is not aware, as at this stage he was arrested
by a considerable commotion of disgust, not only
with the pains necessary to produce the fruits, but
with the fruits themselves, and scarcely failing to
include the eaters. But as disgust is no argument
to those whose head is happily unaffected by the
liver, the sounder reasoning for them may thus
proceed: —

The melon is not a crop of which the expence of
rearing is in proportion to the quantity reared;
the constancy of care is the main cost; and that
required for a single fruit is as much as that re-
quired for a hundred; and as it is by hundreds
that the market is supplied, when you buy one, you
pay only in the proportion of one to a hundred; and
therefore it is a hundred times cheaper to buy
than to rear a melon. To which add, that compar-
ing the multifarious recipes of cultivation with the
resourses of the manse, it is ten to one that, with
much toil, but failing in some point, even a single
melon should not be reared.

Mushrooms — May be cultivated by those who

188 MUSHROOM.

desire to study the artificial production of their
spawn; for all other ends it were better to leave
them alone. These mushroom beds require as
much attention as a porter brewery, without yield-
ing its profit, and withall, this fungus, nursed under
filthy straw in the dark and dryrot atmosphere of
a shed, has neither the fine flavour nor the whole-
someness of those which are sprinkled by nature
and shine like the galaxy on azure pastures. It is
true that in some years the mushroom is not pro-
duced; but it is also true, that as it furnishes a
most delicious but somewhat dangerous feast, there
is safety in long periods of restriction; and for its
better use — that of the savoury and not hurtful
sauce which it yields — it may be gathered in some
seasons to the amount of cart loads; and the pro-
duce will keep, like the corn of Egypt, till plenty
return. ,

This plant, like the best of virtues, has its coun-
terfeits; and let neither man, woman, nor child,
gather, stew, boil, eat, or sip of any fungus without
a discriminating knowledge, gained by sight and
smell and locality, which no paper description can
possibly convey; and let not those who have the
spawn of their own manufacture, without such know-
ledge, confide in their artificial productions. " Ex-
cessive moisture, " says the most experimental of
gardeners, " is not only apt to destroy the spawn,"
(and what sort of spawn may come instead?) "but
it debases the flavour of such fungi as are produced
under it. And such excess of moisture, he ob-

ONIONS. 189

serves, is supposed to render the " salutary sorts
less so, and to make the unwholesome kinds more
acrimonious. Hence it would appear that the
scientific produce is not absolutely safe, but may in
certain cases be as dangerous as that which is
gathered from the stumps of old trees or from under
a hedge.

Onions — Is the most precious crop of the gar-
den, and precious just because the highest cultiva-
tion is requisite for the attainment of the highest
produce ; and more art being necessary, there are
more failures, which serve to enhance the price.
It is needless to attend to all the varieties of the
onion. The cultivator who depends on new sorts
is like the invalid who is always changing his medi-
cines, but who had much better apply with more
exactness the common and well known rules of
health. One sort of onion differs far less from
another than the degree of skill in different hands,
or the degree of quality in different soils. The
best sort for keeping is the Strasburgh, and for a
large crop the white Spanish ; the silver-skinned
is beautiful, and the dwarf-grown of that sort are
the handsomest for pickles. The soil cannot be
too light if it be rich with old manure, incorpora-
ted by digging about the end of autumn. It is of

t' OO O

advantage in the course of winter, after the manure
has become amalgamated with the soil, to ridge up
the earth like potato drills, which, by pulverizing
and drying, prepares for early sowing. As the
seed may be ill ripened, or mixed with what is too

190 ONIONS.

old, it is of use to prove it , in order to avoid blanks,
which in drilled crops are never to be tolerated, as
well as to guard against sowing too thick, which
gives weakness to the plants, and much trouble of
thinning at a time when the ground ought not to
be touched. To try the vegetative powers of the
seed, put a few grains into a flowerpot, which place
on a shelf of the kitchen, and observe how many
of them spring up.

In February, or as soon as the ground is dry,
prepare for sowing by levelling down the ridges, —
not by digging, for it were wrong to bury that part
of the soil which is in the best condition, being dry
and mellowed by the frost; and as the roots seek
but little depth, they will not encounter the less
favourable soil which lies beneath, and will derive
no benefit from the best if it be put lowest by the
spade. When the ground is finely raked, make
the drills half an inch deep and one foot apart. It
is of great consequence to have an hour or two of
sunshine before sowing. To form the drills, it
answers well to lay down the handle of the rake,
where its length may be nearly equal to that of
the drill, and to walk along it, which will make an
equal impression of the proper depth, and save a
good deal of time and of poaching about in shifting
and setting the line. Having sown the seed, make
no further use of the rake than merely to obliterate
the drills.

Drilling is greatly preferable to broadcast, as
the former admits of the hoe, which both saves

ONIONS. 191

trouble of weeding and promotes the growth of the
crop. Of the seedlings make two thinnings, the
first to give air to the plants as soon as they can
be handled, the second to be final, leaving the plants
a handbreadth apart; and that those which are ex-
tracted may not be lost, they may be planted in
close drills, on any spare piece of ground, for occa-
sional use. Thus the main crop has fair play, and
suffers no molestation by unskilful intruders till
ripe for gathering. After thinning, the ground
should be hoed and watered; and it is easy to con-
duct the hoe in such a way as to leave no foot-
marks. The maturity of the crop is known by the
withering of the leaves, but as some individuals
may prove refractory in not decaying along with
the rest, it is convenient to have their necks broken
or twisted a week before reaping, that the ground
may be all cleared at once. Much wet after ripe-
ness is injurious; should a few dry days occur, the
whole crop may be spread along the side of the
gravel walk and exposed to the sun; but if there
be a threatening of much rain, the onions had
better been spread in a single layer on the garret
floor. A selection should be made of such bulbs as
have small necks for keeping longest. Tight tying
in strings, to be hung up in the kitchen, is some
trouble, but effectually prevents growing.

One or two ounces of seed may be sown in
August, for a spring and early summer crop. At
a medium elevation, the middle of August is the
proper season, and sooner or later from the begin-

192 ONIONS.

ning to the end of the month, according as your
situation is near the mountains or on the level
the sea. The exactness of season is in this case
important, and is best learned by trial; if too late,
the seedlings are thrown out by the frost in winter:
if too early, the plants all shoot in summer. Some
in any case will shoot; but by pinching off the
pruriant bud, good keeping bulbs may be secured.
There is a tree sort, which bears its bulbs at the
top of a long stalk; and another called the potato
onion, which bears below ground according to its
name. This last is capable of producing well, but
is only to be preferred where the raising of a crop
from seed is found to be precarious. A worm or
maggot is the main enemy. Observe the rule of
manuring as above, do not sow again for a time on
the spot that has once been infested by the worm;
try ground that has been long under a different
sort of crop — as strawberries, artichokes, rhubarb,
or seakale. It is not probable that any remaining
scent of the removed crop offends the maggot;
but very likely it is that the foresight of the par-
ent judged the places bearing such crops unsuita-
ble for the deposition of her larvae during the pre-
vious year. Transplanting may also have a good
effect in saving onions from the destructive maggot.
With this intention very early sowing must be ob-
served, and the roots may be soaked in a solution
of soot mingled with earth. By sowing a small bed
about midsummer, very thickly, and on the poorest
soil, either that which is gravelly or under the

P4RSLEY — PARSNIPS. 193

shade of trees, an immense number of small bulbs,
like beads, may be raised, and kept through the
winter, to be planted out in spring. It is said that
they grow very large and excellent onions: and
the method ought certainly to be tried in cold and
wet climates, where early sowing is impracticable.

Parsley. — That you may not be tempted to dig
up what you have sown, it is well to be apprised of
the fact that the seed of this plant will lie in the
ground five or six weeks before springing. The
curled variety is the prettiest for an edging in the
garden, as well as for a garnish upon the table;
it has also this advantage, that it prevents all risk
of mistaking, for the salutary kind, that herb called
fool's parsley, which is poisonous, and very like the
common or plain-leaved sort. Sow early in March.
The seed is readily procured from any plants that
remain uncropped the second year. As it is plea-*
sant to have green leaves in a long winter storm,
a drill may be covered by laying down some pea
stakes, and sloping over these in hard weather a few
branches of spruce, such defence being preferable to
straw, the sight of which is hard to be endured in
the garden.

Parsnips. — Once much in vogue, now falling
into disuse. The whole fact it may not be easy to
explain; but the present decline of parsnip culti-
vation is not wonderful to the writer, who, having
great benevolence toward all the tribes of culinary
vegetables, and wishing none to be excepted from

the highest proof of love — namely, that of eating

N

194 PEAS.

the object — has long tried to acquire a relish for
this plant, in which, however, he has not been able
to succeed. The parsnip agrees with a deep and
rich but not recently manured soil. It may be
sown in March, either broadcast or in drills one
foot apart, and thinned to half that distance. It
is not injured by frost, and may be taken up as
required; or to have the ground properly cultiva-
ted, the whole crop may be gathered in October,
and pitted like potatoes.

Peas. — Nothing can be more idle than, to study
the endless varieties of peas. To collect parcels,
label, sow in patches, keep tallies, boil in several
pots, and write the taste in separate pages, is
scarcely consistent with the use of ordinary intel-
lect, or with the idea that life has other ends than
eating. But as there are always some minds which
have a predilection for such science, the result of
their experiments, which they have no unwilling-
ness to communicate, is one of the things which
may be safely taken upon credit to the saving of
one^s time. But with all this trouble of nice dis-
tinctions there is no great profit; a law of nature
is perpetually against the trifler; for by the in-
termingling of pollen his catalogues are soon con-
founded. Get seed from a respectable merchant
and raise a good crop, and you will never eat a bad
pea.

For the first crop sow early- frame or Charlton;
the former is so named because, being the earliest,
it has been used for sowing under glass frames.

PEAS. 195

For late crops sow dwarf marrowfat or blue Prus-
sian, both of which are excellent, and grow only to
a, moderate height. Those sorts which require
staking seven feet high are a pest, as they shadow
so much of the ground, or become, if not duly sup-
ported, unfruitful by falling in heaps over the
stakes and choking one another. The early-frame
may be sown about the end of October, along a
south wall or on a warm border to stand the win-
ter. As they generally prove but thin and low,
and are soon removed, little injury is done to the
trees. As the crop is precarious it is as well not
to be troubled with more than a pound of seed
sown in this way. The pea agrees well with trans
planting; and for the earliest crop it is much surer
to raise seedlings in thick rows under a frame, to
be planted out in the end of February. For a
later crop, seed may be sown on the open ground
at the same time; and onwards to the first of July
you may sow for a succession of crops, according
to your demand, observing to make the last of an
early sort.

The chief thing in the management of peas is to
divide the ground used for such crops as are cleared
off every year into four parts, allotting one to the
pea in succession. It becomes unprolific when too
frequently on the same soil. By this method you
avoid the ugliness of stakes in all places of the
garden; and make the remembrance easy as to
the application of manure, which is of importance,
as peas grow only to straw on soil that is too

196 PEAS.

rich, and ought not to be sown except on ground
that has been manured for the previous crop.
Begin sowing the pea quarter at the side remotest
from the sun, that the subsequent portions of the
crop may not suffer shading by those more ad-
vanced. Sow two drills six inches apart, and the
next two at the distance of four feet. This wide
space may serve for a crop of spinach. A very
simple art in staking is worthy of notice : shape
the branches flat like a wall tree; insert the largest,
one to every yard, and fill the intervals with short
ones having branches near the ground. By this
means the peas have more air, and a fourth part of
the wood commonly used will be quite sufficient.
Small twine is better than nothing where stakes
cannot be had. There is a dwarf sort of pea — not
otherwise to be preferred — which needs no support.
Frequent hoeing, whilst it promotes the fruitful-
ness of the crop, has an excellent effect in disturb-
ing the slug. This enemy, when very troublesome,
may be further treated with quick lime, which, ad-
hering to its slimy skin, disposes the creature to
rub itself below ground, and to travel less on the
surface. Some have supposed that the mouse will
not find out your newly sown peas, unless through
carelessness some straggling seeds be left uncovered;
but careful hiding will be no security, as the mouse
has an excellent nose; and it is better to meet its
delicate sense with that which it cannot relish. —
See the harmless use of rosin for that purpose, as
previously stated under the article, Beans.

1 EARLY POTATO/ 197

Potato. — The introduction of this invaluable root
to our island — the prejudices which were long en-
tertained respecting it — its culture carried on by the
most defective process for more than a century, and
the consequent slowness with which it reached the
families of the poor to enrich them (whilst the im-
poverishing tobacco plant, brought from America at
the same time, spread with rapidity over Europe) —
its now almost universal cultivation, affording the
chief subsistence of so many human beings, and pro-
ducing so great effects on the physical and moral
condition of the empire — might constitute the mate-
rials of a history, due to this plant more than to any
other production of the vegetable kingdom as yet
known in these realms, or perhaps in the whole
world. But how to have the earliest and how to
have the best crops are the only objects at present
in view. The former is promoted by very early
planting, as may be judged by observing the appear-
ance in spring of such stray roots as have escaped
the severity of winter. But this advantage of an
early start is not without certain hinderances: when
the leaves are frost-bitten the plant is more than
retarded — the nature of its growth is changed; and
again, the soil, exposed after early planting to the
spring rains, gets too hard for the very delicate
fibres of the roots, and becomes also much colder by
reason of its compactness. To have then, both the
advantage of early growth and freedom from these
evils, in January lay some cuttings or whole pota-
toes, of the ash-leaved sort or of the early-frame,

198 EARLY POTATO.

on boards covered two inches deep with moist sand,
chaff, or sawdust, in a place where there is light
and some heat. The loose covering encourages the
growth of fibrous roots, which may be lifted from
the board entire, with the chaff or other matter
adhering, and in the best condition for transplant-
ing. In the beginning of March, on ground newly
dug, by the foot of a south wall, where small frosts
have little effect, set the well grown plants in a
drill four inches deep, with a sprinkling of dry old
dung both above and below. Branches of spruce
fir or rough-twined ropes of straw, held a few inches
above the drill, may be used when needful as a de-
fence from hoarfrost. The planting must be later
according to the climate and to the degree of frost
usual at that early season. It is needless to men-
tion, that planting under cover in a hotbed is a
surer way to the early production of a few handfuls
of indifferent potatoes; but it is somewhat curious,
and perhaps less known, that potatoes covered with
earth on a cellar floor, without the access of light
or air, though they produce no leaves, may be taken
up in winter with pretty large young tubers, which,
however, have little of the mealy quality and as
little of a good flavour.

It is far easier, however, to have old potatoes in
good condition than to contend with nature for the
production of new ones; and as those raised by
forcing are neither palatable nor wholesome, we
shall turn to what is more useful — the obtaining
of a good early crop in due season. The sorts that

, LATE POTATO. 199

have been named, as they have little profusion of
leaves, may be planted before a south wall, without
injury to the trees, and will thus come very early
to maturity. An ingenious friend has assured me,
on his own experiment, that if early potatoes, de-
signed for seed, be taken up not sufficiently ripened,
and left exposed on the surface for some weeks —
bleaching in the weather (to use an Irishism) — till
they become green, will produce a much earlier crop
next year. The middle of March, at a medium
elevation, is soon enough for planting when the safe
conduct of the crop is to be entrusted to the ele-
ments; and even then it is better to put the dung-
above the sets; for so placed, as it excludes the
frost, it admits of a shallower covering of earth,
and thus favours the fruitfulness of the potato.
The drills may be two feet separate for the ash-
leaved, and a little more for those sorts which grow
more luxuriantly.

. Of late potatoes, one of the best varieties now
in use is that called the don; it is dark, with white
spots, high flavoured, solid, nutritious, and keeps
long. Though not so numerous at the stalk, it
yields as much weight per acre as any other sort —
as it produces very few that are not full sized. It
is convenient however to plant some of the white
varieties, which are better for eating in the early
part of the season. The drills for late crops should
be thirty inches asunder, and the sets nine or ten.
In the garden, the most careful gathering is im-
portant on account of the succeeding crop. — See
Jerusalem Artichoke.

200 DISEASE OF THE POTATO.

The worst evil (at least till of late years) inci-
dent to the cultivation of potatoes has been curled
leaf. The nature of the disease is not well known;
but it is pretty certain a remedy may be found in
saving for seed a portion of the previous crop before
it has come to maturity. For this purpose, either
plant late, or take up as soon as the leaves turn
yellow — at least a fortnight before that ripeness in
which the tubers fall easily from the stalks, or,
which is better, procure potatoes for seed from a
high district, where perfect ripening is incompatible
with the climate. Exhaustion of the vegetative
powers is the probable cause of curl; hence the
advantage of premature gathering, and the propriety
of cutting off the flowers before the seed-berries
begin to form — the ripening of which goes far to
diminish the strength of the root. It is supposed,
and not without good reason, that every variety of
the potato propagated by cuttings, as well as every
species of fruit trees not indigenous and renewed
by engrafting, have only a certain age to which
they can attain; hence no favourite sort continues
long to flourish, and hence new varieties must be
sought by sowing the seed.

But a more recent evil, and far more ruinous,
being already of considerable extent and still pro-
gressive, is the perishing of the seed or sets before
springing up. This prevails both in Britain and
Ireland, as well as in the smaller islands along the
coasts; and though only of a few years1 duration,
yet as the malady has been met by seasons differing
from one another in dryness and moisture, heat and

THEORY OF THE DISEASE. ' 201

cold, it becomes more alarming, as it goes on not-
withstanding such variations and is gaining ground
from year to year.

The first thing the mind does in such a case is
to seek out the cause of the disease, in order thence
to deduce the cure. But the multitude of causes
which continue to be assigned is proof that no suf-
ficient one has as yet been discovered; hence the
remedies, as in all such cases, are perplexing by
their variety, and wearisome because of their doubt-
ful or hopeless application. To account for the
disease by the state of the soil, the character of the
season, the heat of the manure, the preparation of
the sets, or the period of their exposure to the sun,
must be vain, seeing that all such causes have oc-
curred in the course of a hundred years without
producing the effect that is now deplored.

The author, though he cannot boast of bringing
forward a cure, is yet led to the humble task of
recording the malady, in order that his book may
not be inconsistent with the events of history be-
longing to the things of which it treats, or seem
guilty of a glaring anachronism, as it would, were
he, in writing of the potato, to take no notice of its
failure, at a time when the subject is under debate,
and greatly interesting not only by the loss which
the grower sustains, but by the progress of an evil
as yet unremedied and threatening the food on
which millions of our race depend. It may not be
without use, however, to remark, that though we
have had the experience of a hundred years with-
out such failure, yet is the event not so anomalous

202 THEORY OF THE POTATO FAILURE.

as its novelty and importance would make it ap-
pear. The diseases of wheat, have, from time to
time, been as threatening; and had we as much
depended for our food on red clover or carrot or
turnip as on the potato, the loss to the grower had
ere now been as deeply felt, and the hopes of the
consumer had been as darkly clouded.

The whole circumstances of the potato failure fall
in with the course of general laws which men must
study for their life, and in which it will be found
that no quarrel with the arrangements of providence
can be justly entertained. It may seem indeed like
a snare laid for mortals, that first a prolific plant
should increase the means of subsistence; that next
the population should multiply according to the
enlarged provision; and that lastly the plant, hav-
ing led to the increase of population, should itself
dwindle and leave the people to die. But who laid
the snare? Providence is coo bountiful in the rich
variety of its productions to countenance the sup-
position that the Giver of all good ever designed
any portion of the human race to live on potatoes
alone. The fact of ill health resulting from such
fare — the very structure of man's frame — and the
varied bounty of nature's gifts — conspire to prove
that disorder has been introduced into the economy
of nature, when human beings have laid their plan
of life so low as that which befits only the lowest
of the brute creation.

Let this plan be carried a certain length, and
there proceeds an excess of potato cultivation. But
this is none of nature's plan; and with this the laws

THEORY OF THE POTATO FAILURE. 203

of vegetable production will not agree. Let it be
remembered with what vigour any plant new to
the soil takes the earth, and how kindly the earth
gives welcome to the stranger, if at all there be a
fair adaptation of climate; and let it be remembered
too, that this mutual understanding of soil and
plant continues uninterrupted only till there be an
undue interference with the law that insists on di-
versified productions; and then it will be judged no
anomalous thing that the potato at a certain period
should be reduced, as it now is, to a precarious
growth.

Yet in all this, while we find nothing to blame,
we will find much to admire. The Creator, who
abhors idols, will not suffer one plant to be the
sole dependence of rational creatures; and if they
will so depend for their life they must be poor and
sickly, and see their idol broken before their eyes.
Not that any plant must cease to grow. Turnip,
carrot, and red clover, still live, so will the potato:
but its cultivation to excess will not do; it must be
content with a more limited field, and allow of other
things, in fair proportion, agreeably at once to the
constitution of man, and of the ground on which he
lives.

The moral part of the Almighty's scheme ought
not to be overlooked. It is not the feeding of man's
body alone, but the exercise of man's mind, that
the Deity promotes by his beneficent arrange-
ments. When men first begin to cultivate the
ground, they are weak and ignorant like infants
at the breast, and the earth gives her abundance

204 THEORY OF THE POTATO FAILURE.

solicited by little labour or skill. But there is
given to the soil a law of decreasing fertility, which
must be met by an increase of science; and for
this attainment men have time whilst they are
nourished by an easy bounty, and must proceed,
by new inventions of art, to compensate the
diminishing fertility of nature. But there is
another law of decrease similar to this, and leading
to the like effects; there is the decreasing aptitude
of the plant to the soil, in consequence both of less
favour shown by the ground and of more worms fed
by the plant; and which, being at first dependants,
become at length so numerous as to assume the
attitude of foes and the power of destroyers. And
here also ingenuity and industry must be stimulated
both to discover the way of the spoilers and to give
to the ground a more laborious tillage. Thus it is
so ordered that the moral part of our nature is ad-
vanced by the necessity and difficulty of providing
the things on which we depend for our physical
subsistence. The law is good, and the effect will be
still to produce the potato, but at somewhat more
of cost — and to introduce slowly, and therefore
safely, a change to a better state of things in the
condition of those to whom the potato has been
the only staff of bread. The plant is indeed excel-
lent in its proper place; and there is no fear for its
production to the amount that is really beneficial.
But out of its proper sphere it is a curse; and now,
as might be expected, the intimation is given that
it shall not remain to occupy the only place in man's
eye to the exclusion of other gifts, and shall not go

} IS

STORING OF POTATOES. 205

on to be the too easy and sole subsistence of mil-
lions, to perpetuate their generations in the misery
of physical weakness and moral degradation.

Before this new malady occurred there appeared
a vast amount of human life thrown into abject
dependence on the thriving of a single root — always
surpassing by their numbers the limits of its larg-
est supplies, and either learning the patience of
famine or being tempted to steal, and, under the
one engrossing care of maintaining existence, unable
to look higher for the consolations of a salutary
affliction or the hope that purifies heavenward aim;
and hence neither will piety nor patriotism com-
plain though no specific or effectual cure of this
malady should be found; for then it will appear that
in the very laws of vegetable production there is laid
a check to the worst of moral evils, as well as an
incentive to the virtues that adorn humanity and
prepare for a world to come.1

1 Whilst the author most humbly and gratefully confesses, that
the kindness of Providence, in the bountiful potato crop of last
summer, seems to have turned the above theory to foolishness ;
and whilst he sincerely hopes that the present and future years
will prove as favourable ; yet would he not rashly obliterate what
may serve as a memorial of past calamity — may induce more
vigilance and precaution on the part of cultivators, and lead all to
a deeper feeling of dependence on Him who blesseth the springing
of the earth. And besides this good reason for preserving the
above record, the author is persuaded, that should his views hap-
pily never be realized, yet will some of the previous reflections be
found not only true in themselves, but conducive to the prosperity
of agriculture in the poorest countries, and to the best interests of
humanity.

The author takes leave to add, which could not be known by
the date of the present Volume, that the theory to which the above
Note refers, was printed verbatim, in a former edition, at least ten
years ago, when there had been only slight indications of the po-

206 STORING OF POTATOES.

With regard to the storing of potatoes out of
doors and their safety in winter, the progress of
frost ought to be observed. As soon as it has got
to the depth of seven inches in the ground the po-
tato pits are in danger, and may certainly be saved
by covering them with a thick coat of litter or a
plentiful supply of whins. The other difficulties
are incessant growing in spring, or shrivelling when
the growth is checked by dry air. Some recipes
that have been given to the public are quite falla-
cious. A dip in boiling water settles the ques-
tion as to growth, but the potato soon decays; salt
prevents all vegetation, but if to such an extent it
be mingled with soil for covering potatoes it des-
troys them. The extraction of the buds, though
it impedes the growth only for a time, is the most
common and for general use the best remedy, to-
gether with clean sweeping, thin spreading, and
occasional turning in an open well aired place.
This, however, cannot prevent shrivelling; but the
following though somewhat troublesome operation
seems to answer all ends, and may be tried with a
few, for very long keeping, after the more common
methods have failed. Make a pit two feet deep, in
a shady place, as on the north side of a wall ;
drench the pit with water; then tumble in the po-
tatoes, previously cleared of their shoots, and drench

tato failure; and surely the recent calamities of famine and pesti-
lence, caused by the almost total destruction of that root on which
the poor so miserably depended for their subsistence, cannot fail to
draw attention to those interests with which the above specula-
tions were formerly to the writer, and now to the public, so dread-
fully invested.

RADISH, 207

them also ; lay over them a green turf with the
grass downward, to be also watered ; and heap up
the earth, beating it as hard and compact as pos-
sible. The rationale of the process is excellent,
the evils both of growing and shrivelling, being
equally provided against; the coolness secured by
shading, depth, drenching, and solidity of covering,
prevents growth, whilst the moisture supplied, in-
stead of causing injury, only serves to counteract
the drying influence of the season. It may be
necessary to repeat the operation, with a frequency
according to circumstances ; and with such care
potatoes may be kept fresh and good till September
— a period to which it can scarcely be expedient to
continue their preservation, although it cannot be
unimportant, at least for some time after the recent
crops come in, to have the power of choosing be-
tween the ripe mealiness of the old and the green
saponaceous consistence of the new.

Eadish. — There are more varieties of it than are
worthy of notice: the salmon radish, which is long-
rooted, and the red or white turnip-rooted, are suf-
ficient. The long-rooted may be sown in January
by those who will take the trouble of protecting it
from frost. Any of the sorts sown in February or
March, by the foot of a south wall, will do without
further shelter. They are all useless in the heat
of summer, as they grow hard and hot ; but from
the middle of August they are again as good as in
spring. The ground should be deep delved and
rich, but not recently manured. The seed is sown
in drills no deeper than to admit of being covered,

208 RHUBARB.

and the plants may be thinned to two or three
inches. As radishes are soon removed, it does no
harm, and saves ground, to sow broadcast a little of
the seed along with any drilled crop, such as onions,
carrots, or spinach. The turnip-rooted is a neat
pretty little bite ; and of the long-rooted it is re-
markable, that if it be sown in holes made with a
small dibble and left open the plant will grow
thicker and more tender. This accords with what
was observed in regard to leeks, and may perhaps
be true of some other plants. The young seed
pods of the radish afford a subsistence for capsicums.
Rhubarb — Excellent for tarts in the early part
of the season, before gooseberries make their ap-
pearance. Two sorts of it are cultivated ; that
having the pointed and palmated leaf springs earlier,
but does not sooner get ready for use ; the other,
which is rounder, and not so deeply cut in the leaf,
has a thicker leaf stalk, and is best for the table.
The roots of both are medicinal; but it is not cer-
tain that either sort is the same as that which
yields the Turkey rhubarb. To have a good supply
for tarts, set a dozen or more of cuttings of the
roots, reserving to each a part of the crown or top,
on deep rich ground, in rows four feet apart and
three feet distant in the row, taking care to have
none less than a yard from the walk or box edging.
As soon as the leaves have decayed, dig, with plenty
of manure, between the plants, avoiding the roots,
and taking care not to crush the buds, which are
scarcely visible, but on which the crop for next

ROSEMARY — SAGE — SAVOYS. 209

year depends. It is by such culture and good feed-
ing that the leaf stalks are numerous, ponderous,
and full of juice. The flower stems, in order to
preserve the strength of the roots, should be all cut
oft' as soon as their height declares their intention.
In moist weather, towards the end of autumn, the
young leaves become as tender as those of spring.
By putting large wooden boxes, coarsely made of
slabs, over a few of the roots, and heaping stable
litter over them to remain all winter, tarts may be
had very early: the leaves are blanched, but the
flavour is not impaired. The same plantation will
continue productive for seven years; but a new one
should be made a year or two before removing the
old; and in the mean time some light crop may be
raised on the new ground which is but thinly occu-
pied by the young plants.

Rosemary — Of which the best things are the
name, and its being used as the emblem of remem-
brance. A slip of the root may be set in a dry
sheltered place. It is aromatic, and used medicin-
ally and for flavour. If the frost be not too much
for it, it remains ever green ; and, like a nettle, it
likes to get its root under an old wall, where it is
not easily molested.

Sage — One of the trash tribe, a perfect abomi-
nation— used for stuffing ducks, and fools who feed
for apoplexy.

Savoys — Seen in the melting hoarfrost, with little
pools on the crumpled leaves and the whole figure
not fairly boiled, but like a half-unfolded rose, pro-

0

210 SEAKALE.

voke a watering of the teeth in the anticipation of
a pulpy and reeking mouthful, when the winter sun
has set. The cultivation of this excellent herb dif-
fers in nothing material from that of curled kale,
save to promote a freer boll it requires a soil some-
what richer. To have large and solid bolls, which
are preferable only for cows, it is necessary to sow
the seed in autumn, aud plant early in spring, after
the manner of late cabbage.

SeaJcale. — A delicious vegetable, little inferior to
asparagus, and ten times more abundant, with less
of cost. For this, as for all crops that are deep-
rooted and stand long on the same ground, the soil
must be well trenched and made good to the depth
of two feet. It cannot be too light: an addition of
sand is necessary to a soil that has too much clay;
but few gardens that have been trenched and under
crop for some years will prove faulty for the pro-
duction of seakale. Seedling plants may be pro-
cured from the nurseries; if not, sow the seed
very thin, in drills two inches deep, and two feet
asunder. This sowing of a continuous drill is
merely to secure enough of plants, for ultimately
they are left eighteen inches apart in the row. In
winter, when the leaves have vanished, dig between
the drills, and spread over the plants a light cover-
ing of loose dry dung to shelter them from frost.
No crop is to be expected till the second winter
after sowing; but things of slight growth — such
as spinach, early turnips, or lettuce — may be raised
between the drills during the previous summers.

SEAKALE. 211

To blanch the seakale, without which it is not
fit to be eaten, procure pots, made for the purpose,
with moveable lids, and place them over the plants
in the end of the second autumn; then heap up
stable litter till the pots are covered a few inches
overhead. The moveable lids are very convenient
for observing whether the plants are ready for cut-
ting, without turning and cooling their warm bed:
and few sights are more interesting than the open-
ing of their dark abode in the dead of winter, and
the extracting of the ponderous curled shoots in
full vigour of growth, white as snow, and glossy
and fragile as spun glass. Blanching may be
attained with less trouble if forcing be not re-
quired. You may have excellent seakale in April
from drills ridged up with earth; in which case,
every pair of drills must have greater distance for
the convenience of mounding, and the plants may
be so much closer in the bed. Straw, in contact
with the plants, is unsuitable to blanching, as it
communicates a bad flavour; but raked leaves do
well, perhaps fern, sand certainly; coal ashes are
recommended, but the idea is abominable. Where
the plant grows wild, as it does by the seashore in
several parts of England, it is gathered in the finest
condition, being whitened by the sand which the
waves throw out, and which the winds pile gently
over its head in the manner of a snow wreath. As
the earthenware of the flowerpot kind is expensive
and liable to be broken, the author has long used
coarse wooden boxes, or bars of paling along each

212 SPINACH.

side of the drill, for keeping the dung from contact,
and which at no cost answers perfectly well; loose
boards laid on the top of the boxes or across the
bars, admit of insepection; and light is easily ex-
cluded by having the litter more copious. It may
be observed, that the art of cultivating this plant
is an invaluable acquisition to a high climate, where
the garden yields so little in winter and spring, and
where the coldness, so hurtful to other things, is
no hinderance to this, as more or less stable dung
will compensate all the varieties of temperature
from the seacoast to the height of a thousand feet.
Spinach. — As convenient to the sower as it is
agreeable to the eater. It comes early in spring,
when there is no great plenty. It is not nice as
to soil, and suits all seasons. It fills up odd cor-
ners; and as it soon arrives at maturity, it serves
to occupy for a time those blanks which necessarily
occur in crops of larger growth and longer duration.
It is sown in shallow drills as wide between as to
admit the hoe. The summer crops do no good
after the first cutting, and may therefore be allowed
to grow as thick as grass ; but plants that have
to stand the winter, and sprout again after the
spring cutting, must have a certain strength of
root and thickness of stem. The sort having
prickly seed and a triangular leaf, being the more
hardy, is the fittest for winter ; that which has
smooth seed and a blunt round leaf is the best for
summer crops. The winter crop is sown in the
beginning of August, and by the end of autumn so

, TANSY THISTLE. 213

thinned as to stand in single plants; a fresh
hoeing and further thinning of the drills, to the
distance of ahandbreadth,being reserved till spring.
The round-leafed variety may be sown any time
from the first of February, when the ground is dry,
till the season for sowing the winter crop. There
is a wild sort, which grows every where as a weed,
and may be known by a beautiful purple meal, of
changing hue like the dove's neck, with which the
heart of the leaf is sprinkled: it is said when culti-
vated to be nothing inferior to the garden spinach.
Plants designed for seed should be thinned to the
distance of eight or ten inches. This is the only
vegetable in common use that has the male and
female flowers on different plants — a circumstance
which causes no trouble in the raising of seed, as
it is sure to happen that of a considerable number
of plants there will be some of both sexes.

Tansy. — Used for puddings, etc., is propagated
by parting the roots. Care must be taken not to
place it near to any box edging or gravel walk.

Thistle. — Needlessly brought into gardens, as it
is ready enough to come of its own accord. Several
varieties have been cultivated, and of course have
not been spared the labours of the pen as they have
engaged those of the spade. It is said of the milk
thistle, which is a native variety, that its stalks,
in the second year of its cultivation, being peeled
and steeped in water, lose a portion of their bitter-
ness; and of the cotton thistle, another pest of the
fields, that with due attention to thinning, hoeing,

214 THYME — TURNIP.

blanching, peeling, and boiling, it may also be eaten.
As there are more members of the same family,
which still flourish in memorial of the curse, those
who delight in them may be regaled with greater
variety; but to such persons one of the tribe is
particularly recommended, namely, the sow thistle,
which has this additional aptness, that it may be
eaten either boiled or raw.

Thyme. — This sweet plant, were it not cultivated
for kitchen use, ought rather to be ranked among
the flowers. The broad and narrow leaved and
the lemon-scented are the chief varieties which are
cultivated. Used for making a border, if it be
regularly cut over, it will last for many years.
Seedlings, where the plants have not been cropped,
grow up of their own accord, and may be trans-
planted, or the seed, which is gathered ripe in
autumn, may be sown in spring; but the plant is
more easily propagated by slips or by parting the
roots. A dry and rather poor soil is the most fa-
vourable to its growth and the strength of its fra-
grance.

Turnip. — The ambitious, who by early sowing
strive for the earliest turnips, reap after a season
of fair promise, the futility of their scheme in a
crop of shot stems, with bulbs no bigger than a
radish. It is difficult to say whether the turnip
is annual or biennial : the season of sowing, the
state of the weather, the richness or poverty of the
soil, may determine the issue — whether the growth
shall immediately proceed to the production of

TURNIP. 215

flower stalks, or go only to the swelling of the root
and leave the operation of seed-bearing to another
year. There is room for much speculation as to a
procedure apparently so sportive and arbitrary;
but, which is more important, the fact is certain,
that in every case of too early sowing, as in Feb-
ruary or the beginning of March, however well the
crop may appear for a time, there will be no useful
produce at all. Late crops will shoot in consequence
of standing too long after having formed their bulbs;
but these will shoot the first thing they do — a cir-
cumstance not easily accounted for, but its being
known is enough to direct the sower.

To have turnips early then, the rule is to pro-
mote a rapid growth. Let the ground be well pul-
verised by water digging and ridging, dry, and full
of rich and well decayed manure. Sow about the
beginning of April, in drills of the least depth and
one foot apart. Drilling is the best mode for all
crops of this kind, whether late or early, in garden
or field. The early Dutch is the best to begin with ;
the stone for the next crop, and the yellow bullock
or the late Dutch yellow for a winter crop. For
an autumn crop, when it grows to a good size, the
Malta turnip, remarkable for its beautiful orange
shape and colour and thin skin, is much to be re-
commended. The slug and some fly are trouble-
some; but sow thick that there may be enough for
all; and make frequent use of the hoe, which both
annoys the enemy and delights the young plants.
Successive sowings may be made throughout the

216 TURNIP,.

summer till near the end of July, when the ground,
after potatoes or peas, (in the latter case requiring
a little manure,) may be economically employed in
raising a large and valuable turnip crop for the
winter and spring. Too much strength of soil for
autumn growth, when the season itself does so
much, is injudicious, as the turnip gets cleft in the
root, and becomes unwholesome.

The Swedish turnip, of excellent use in husban-
dry, is scarcely an acquisition to the garden, as it
rarely grows without strings, and as the yellow
Dutch, which is more palatable, stands the frost
sufficiently well. The young leaves of the winter
crop, which begin to unfold in March, are exten-
sively used as a market vegetable in the south of
England, and are really good, though their flavour
is scarcely known to the northern inhabitants. It
is to be observed, however, that such sprouts quickly
deteriorate the bulbs, a few only of which ought to
be left in the ground for yielding a supply of greens.
The spring growth may be checked, and the turnip
preserved a little longer in good condition, by
storing amidst dry sand on the cellar floor, or by
deep pitting in a dry soil.

For winter use the turnip is never so good as
when freshly taken from the ground — though not
growing, yet in a state ready to grow. A moderate
degree of frost, when the turnip is required for use,
may be disengaged by steeping in cold water; and
as frost proves destructive rather from quick thaw-
ing than from intensity, the following method of

TURNIP, ENEMIES — SNAIL, FLY. 217

preserving is the best for all purposes: — Injury is
rarely sustained before the middle of winter; at
which period take up the crop, separating for the
table the well shaped bulbs — which by that one ar-
gues all other good qualities — and consigning the
remainder to the cows. It is immaterial whether
the taproots be cut off or not, but the leaves must be
kept entire. Make a rut with the spade six inches
deep, into which place the turnips in close order,
and cover them an inch or two overhead, allowing
the leaves, which serve both to exclude the frost
and to maintain the growing powers of the plant,
to spread above ground. The covering of the first
drill prepares for the second ; and as the order is
nearly as close in the one direction as in the other,
very little ground is occupied, and the work is not
tedious. In the farm the like operation is quickly
performed with the help of the plough.

With regard to the enemies of this crop, a sprink-
ling of quick lime, which must be repeated after
rain, has been found to check the ravages whether
of slugs or of the fly. Should these spoilers, how-
ever, continue till the appearance of vegetation is
almost gone, it is yet surprising, if there be plants,
how soon they gather strength and cover the
ground; and though no remnant should be spared,
it is yet seldom necessary to want a crop. Dig the
ground afresh, and the second sowing will in all
probability advance unmolested: the snails are put
out of the way, and drier weather may impede their
travels. The fly indeed will but rarely renew its at-

218 TURNIP ENEMIES — FINGER-AND-TOE.

tacks, either because its short life, in the interim, has
come to a close, or because it has been driven by the
famine of its land to seek a subsistence elsewhere.

But a much more untractable difficulty, and in
all likelihood caused by an insect of another race, is
encountered in a disease of this root known by the
descriptive name of finger-and-toe, of recent origin,
now spreading over the country, and sparing neither
garden nor farm. It has already rendered the cul-
tivation of turnip in many fields abortive; and in
some gardens, to the regret of their owners, this
most wholesome of roots has been necessarily aban-
doned. Not being able to prescribe a cure, it is of
some importance, as it may save the trouble of ex-
periments already made, to tell what will not be a
cure. Neither liming nor trenching will; neither
remote nor recent manuring, nor sowing without
dung, is of any avail: and there is no distinction
of Swedish or globe or yellow or greentop or red in
respect of this disease. And whilst it is true that if
the crop has suffered one year it will, tried on the same
ground the year following, prove worse or altogether
nugatory; it is equally true, that the disease has
shown its worst type where turnip had never grown
before since the creation of the world. I allude to
a piece of road, time out of mind a highway, taken
up, trenched, and added to the adjacent field. The
field was in turnips, and the disease was more or
less over the field; but on the line of old road the
crop was ridiculous.

Much might be said in the way of reasonable

TURNIP. 219

conjecture, but nothing is more useless. Let pre-
miums be offered; let the microscope be called
in; let many experiments be made; and, if no-
thing will do, recourse must be had to a plant
of some other kind, till the new insect, or rather
till the insect that has found in the turnip a
new supply of food, and has multiplied according
to the extent of its provision, be starved by the
change, and compelled to draw in the boundaries of
its empire, leaving some other creature to grow
great in its turn by feeding on the new and substi-
tuted plant. Thus it would appear, that agricul-
ture, without any clog appended by unpropitious
laws of the State, or ruin inflicted by Gothic inva-
sions, has in nature certain restrictions which deny
to her a course at once surely and indefinitely pro-
gressive— that whilst the territories reclaimed from
sterility are yet held, and the wealth they have
produced is yet unimpaired, the knowledge that has
been slowly and laboriously gotten must needs be
abandoned, and the cultivator must turn back,
with childlike effort, to get new skill of things yet
unknown and untried. Thus there will never be a
time in which it may be said that nothing new has
to be learned; thus industry is stimulated, whilst
pride is repressed — repressed, in the present in-
stance, by the discovery that the labour and science
of an age which have been carried so far in the
turnip husbandry as to change the face of the
country, and to effect all its economical arrangements,
may be marred by an enemy, keeping pace in the

220 VEGETABLE MARROW.

progress of its power with the progress of man's
improvements, and by the very help of man becom-
ing so great as to drive him from the field, yet all
the while so hardly visible as to require the use of
the microscope that we may learn the fact or man-
ner of its existence!

Vegetable Marrow, or Succada — A species of
gourd, the pulp of which, from its richness and fla-
vour, has been called marrow — a more harmless
luxury than the animal sort, as being cheaper and
less productive of vapours and vertigo. In lower
situations it may be sown in March under a hand-
glass, and planted out in May before a wall or trellis,
the one or other being requisite not only for warmth
and shelter, but for the support of the runners and
fruit. The reader may be reminded of the gravel
bank for fruit trees, previously described, which
cannot fail to have the most perfect aptitude to the
training of succada on the vacant spaces between
the trees.

It may here be remarked, that for the implement
handglass, with very little skill of the hands, may
be substituted an article that costs almost nothing.
Let four boards, each twenty inches long and four
broad, set on edge, be nailed together in the form
of a square; insert on the upper edge a few willows,
and tie them together at the top, making either a
dome or pavilion roof, which cover with strong white
cartridge paper. This, rubbed with linseed oil,
turns rain, admits plenty of light, is better than
glass for striking all manner of slips, and as good

VEGETABLE MARROW. 221

for tender seedlings in the months of spring. In
higher situations a little help of warm dung will be
requisite ; but as the trouble of making a hotbed
might be judged too much to be exchanged for the
privilege of eating marrow, the author defers the
process till speaking of certain beauties and curio-
sities of the flower department, when it will appear
that the same apparatus which serves for succada
will serve also for amaranths and marigolds, and
prevent the foolishness of continual sowing what
does not once in ten years yield the recompence of
a flower; and when it will further appear, that by
a new construction of the hotbed frame, a cover of
varnished cloth, at sixpence a yard, will answer all
the purposes of expensive glass, supplying at a lit-
tle cost all that requires artificial heat, so far as
use or ornament needs to be consulted for the manse
garden.

PART THIRD.

FLOWERS,

WHICH may not be overlooked seeing that every
garden will have them ; but as rules of utility
are demonstrable, whilst those of taste are merely
arbitrary, there is less to do with this than with
either of the preceding departments. And as all
agree in having flowers, but differ most widely as
to the extent to which the fancy ought to be carried,
the following method is adopted in accommodation
to these circumstances: — First, to make some gen-
eral observations, by attending to which every one
may cultivate flowers to what extent he pleases ;
and then to give a small list of some of the prin-
cipal ornaments of the garden, set down in alpha-
betical order, with particular directions for each.
Such method, it is apprehended, will suit the taste
and convenience of most persons for which this lit-
tle Work is designed. To none, perhaps, save the
idle, the curious in botany, who plant to gain a
science, or the apprenticed, who must know their
calling, can the enormous list of plants and flowers,

224 EVERGREEN SHRUBS.

grassy and fibrous, bulbous, and tuberous, annual,
biennial, and perennial, hardy, semihardy, and
tender, indigenous and exotic, be otherwise than
frightful and sickening. The sight is a source of
melancholy, always bringing the littleness of our
time into contact with an infinity of little things
craving the attention that is due to other matters
in hand ; and may not lady florists, whose neat
fingers take pleasure in tying a carnation, enjoy
the beauty of flowers without shuddering at the
Greek with which they are aspersed? Surely in
their eyes such garden catalogues of unmeasured
length and dead language have all the sterility and
the ugliness of a Hebrew lexicon.

It is supposed, though the manse be not in the
garden, that around the doors are other things than
oats, potatoes, or pasturage. We suppose shrubs,
agreeably to what has been previously written; and
with these we associate the flowers, as having, in
their juxtaposition, the same agreement as of sisters,
of whom the elder cherish and help to rear the
younger. Of shrubs, many are to be regarded as
flowers developed on a large scale ; nothing can
exceed the soft beauty of the rhododendron, spread
over a large space, or, flowering at an opposite sea-
son, the pink and snowy laurustinus, fit to fill a
room with its clustered blossoms. These 1 would
not clip for the best eyed polyanthus. It is sup-
posed, as formerly planned, that the outer wall of
shrubs, dense and high with hollys and laurels, is
already furnished. And here it may be proper to

EVERGREEN SHRUBS. 225

mention some of the more delicate sorts which may
be selected for growing within the defence: phylerea,
of several varieties ; alaternus, gold and silver va-
riegated, grows by layers certainly, by slips pretty
well; arborvitse, easily propagated in the same way,
and which will grow a large tree where it has room,
but having no beauty except in good shelter; of the
same character the yew, glorious for its country's
defence, and though venerable in years, looking
young with berries of brighter hue than polished
coral ; the evergreen thorn, which, with the help
of a wall, though it can stand alone, will glow all
winter with an. incredible profusion of scarlet fruit —
it agrees ill with lifting, but is easily propagated
by layers ; various kalmias, pretty, but tender,
requiring shelter and peatmoss, which last is not
thrown away on the rhododendrons, or on the aucuba
japonica, of olive green and spotted leaf, very foreign
and tender looking, but growing surely from slips,
and more hardy in the spring frosts than common
laurel ; the arbutus, having red bark, a beautiful
evergreen, to which a fixed place should be assigned,
as it cannot endure flitting; the sweet bay, requir-
ing the best of shelter, and not very patient of re-
moval ; the ilex or evergreen oak, not remarkably
beautiful, but interesting on account of the diffi-
culty of getting it to grow;1 the pyrus japonica,

1 To overcome the shyness of these oaks which yet grow to large
forest trees, it has of late been found wise, as often not one in ten
outlived transplanting, to rear the seedlings in flowerpots. By no
means have one from a nursery unless it come in a pot ; and if the

P

226 TRANSPLANTING OF SHRUBS.

of sorts, that having scarlet flowers being as worthy
of a piece of wall as a peach, — when well grown it
abhors transplanting; the box tree, variegated and
plain, raised from slips, by layers, freely, and having
a turfy root, cares nothing for transplanting. These,
with some of the junipers, and a few hardy exotic
heaths, with Irish ivy for every bit of cold dark
wall, where fruit is out of the question, may serve
to clothe the space between the outer defence and
the flower borders, giving shelter to the house and
to all manner of flowers, and from perpetual verdure
making winter more cheerful than summer can be
to a tasteless and uncultivated abode.

In transplanting any of these beauties — often
requisite, and the most interesting of garden opera-
tions— success may be insured any time in summer
by using mats for a shade, and regular watering ;
but the best seasons are the beginning of September,
in moist weather, and of May, when the young
shoots are commencing. The main care is the
lifting : any ordinary workman is sure to murder
your plant. Take the spade and mark out a ring
as wide as the branches ; and then order a trench,
without the slightest reference to the lifting of the
tree, and see it straight down as deep as any roots

earth will not lift entirely from the pot, plant all together; taking
care to crack the earthenware that the roots in their own time
may put it out of the way. With the like care, till it become
more hardy, may be bred the evergreen berberry, a new plant from
California, of great beauty with its red clustering fruit amidst a
profusion of green winter foliage; and to which, from the fate of
its amiable discoverer, a melancholy interest will long be attached.

DECIDUOUS SHRUBS. 227

can be. Then, for the first time, let it be under-
stood that the pick may work in beneath, towards
the centre. The more earth that can be got to
adhere the better; but failing that, let the roots in
their new stance be spread in successive tiers, with
layers of fine mould interposed — watering, staking,
and tying, as noticed in the planting of hollys.

The following, not ever green, may be added ;
for though the former list may afford enough of
beauty for the winter, it will always be found that
the best assortment of evergreens have a certain
dullness in summer, unless relieved by deciduous
plants, which have brighter blossoms and livelier
tints of green. Wherefore have roses without
number — the Ayrshire for sprawling over any thing
that ought to be hid, and the Indian, once the
tenant of a flowerpot, now the hardiest of garden
roses, bringing forth its sweet buds till they are nipt
in December. It is of the easiest multiplication
by slips: of a hundred, inserted in light soil with
a mixture of peatmoss, few will fail to become trees.
The mizereon, of pink or red or white blossom,
yielding the most delightful odours, but which must
be extirpated before infant hands have access to its
berries: the azelia — of many sorts — remarkable for
the brightness of its flowers, and deserving the best
shelter, with a soil aided by sand and peatmoss:
white broom, of spray-like figure, and in a good
summer almost as white as snow — the seed may be
gathered and sown in a flowerpot for safety, but
neither slips nor layers do well: lilacs, of different

228 WALKS.

colours, to be kept remote from the flower borders ;
the Persian, as it grows low, may be nearer, and
the Siberian, lately introduced, having a better leaf
than the Persian and a richer profusion of blossoms :
laburnums, which cost nothing, growing up every-
where like ash seedlings, must not be unlimited, as
they show too much yellow, but appear well at in-
tervals towards the outer boundary — the seed is
poisonous: a purple beech may have a place where
it can get up as a tree; in like maner, a few ser-
vices, the under side of the leaf, like frosted silver,
being most beautiful in a summer wind; and the
walnut, worthy to be preferred for its sweet scent
and fruit, perhaps, some future year; the dwarf
almond may be admitted to the verge of the walk,
as it rises to no height: its blossom is that of the
peach, but its fruit is never seen except in low situa-
tions; and the tree-peony cannot have too good a
place; it is, as yet, scarce and costly, and of slow
growth; near a south wall it thrives well, at least
three hundred feet above the level of the sea, and is
the most gorgeous of all shrub flowers.

Nothing more can be done for the comfort and
beauty of this department without due attention to
the foundation of walks: and judging by what may
often be seen, as well as by the trouble of cleaning
those that are ill made, few things connected with
the garden are worthy of a more particular notice.
In making walks amongst shrubs and flowers, dry-
ness and variety of edging are the chief things to
be promoted — there not being here, as along a fruit

' BOX EDGING. 229

wall, for the sake of the trees, any scruple as to the
burying of stones; and there ought to be none as
to the trouble of a two feet excavation; for every
cart load of earth so saved is worth money, and the
convenience of depositing stones in placeof the earth
will save a great expence of carriage. Box, though
tiresome if there be no other, is by far the best
edging for general use; but the planting of it is
often bungled or done at a needless expence. Take
up with a spade a portion of the edging that has
grown too old, and part the roots: one yard of the
old will serve for ten of the new — a supply that is
not obtained from the nurseries without cost. In
parting, tear all the old bush down into the smallest
shreds; throw away every one that is thicker than
a crowquill; and cut off all the roots beneath the
uppermost tier of fibres — a single fibre is enough ;
with none the plant may do, but it is not neccessary
to try it. The plants so trimmed should be about
four inches in length. Having filled the excava-
tion with stones, all to four inches left for gravel,
on either side of the walk, dig the surface, set the
line to a nicety, using many pins at every turn, to
make the windings easy, bring the level exactly to
the line, and beat all smooth and firm, so that the
earth may stand cutting. With a trowel, cut by
the line to the depth of three inches, pulling the
earth towards the walk; and lay the green tops of
the plants to the line, setting their heads above
it, not more than one inch, and all touching one
another. The roots will vary a little in depth, but

230 PLANTING OF BOX.

let a few plants be held exact at the top with one
hand, whilst the earth is applied to the unequal
roots with the other. The reverse rule of evenness,
providing for the roots and notthe tops, is frequently
adopted ; hence the straggling appearance that en-
sues; some leaning out, and others in; some set
like a tree, having a stem from which branches pro-
ceed, and others having branches sunk up to the
middle. The effect is a strong feeling of indigna-
tion; and remarkable it is, that though correctness
of lining be of small repute in matters of taste, yet
where a line ought to be and is designed few things
are harder to be endured than unmeaning devia-
tions— as in the case of ill-set teeth, or the attempted
dash of a clumsy handwriting. Box may be planted
in September, October, or November; in February,
March, or April. To wet clay, brought up by new
trenching, coal ashes may be added ; and to avoid
rotting by long moisture without growth, the plants
may be set in May or June.

For other edging sea-pink is very good, but it
soon gets deformed with blanks, unless taken up
and replanted : whereas box, annually clipt in
autumn, will serve for the half of a lifetime: Lon-
don-pride admits of paring, and will last for five
years: coarse polyanthus or primrose does well be-
neath trees. Should the root of an old tree come
in the way, it is easy to keep up the green line by
planting periwinkle, which needs little soil, or ivy
at some distance, and leading the runners past the
tree, where they will take root all the way, and

OTHER EDGING — GRAVEL. 231

being dipt, make a handsome appearance. The
propensity of ivy to run up the tree is easily coun-
teracted : but should it be indulged, few things are
more beautiful, and the tree is there rather for or-
nament than for the value of its timber. Double-
daisy and cowslips may be used, and may be kept
any length of time by occasional lifting and part-
ing of the roots. Hepatica — blue and red mingled
make a beautiful edging, and will last an age ; but
the most brilliant of all is dwarf-gentian : it lasts
long, but must have half a foot in breadth to se-
cure plenty of its sky blue dazzling flowers. The
pansy or tricoulered violet is also fine, but must be
replanted every year. For any place where the
walk gets amongst high shrubs or trees, or where
a sloping bank is of difficult keeping, there is
nothing so fit for a low hedge as butcherVbroom;
it suffers no injury by drop or shade, and grows
immoveably strong ; and not agreeing with the
shears, it is in such a place more suitable in the
natural sluggishness of its growth.

In the graveling of walks, any rule for the avoid-
ing of unnecessary expence, and the subsequent
trouble of weeding, must be a desirable object. Let
the top stratum of stones be such as are raked from
the surface of the garden in dry weather, and made
perfectly clean by sifting; which is by far the
readiest way of getting quit of them in clearing
the ground. By such method, the top stratum
being of small stones, much less gravel, whieh
perhaps must be brought from a considerable dis-

232 SORTING GRAYEL.

tance, will suffice. To have no unnecessary car-
riage, the gravel at the pit or river side must un-
dergo one sifting with a search one inch between
the wires disposing of all large pebbles. Of stuff
in this state walks are commonly made, and the
result is evil continually. The small sand is a
seedling bed for all manner of weeds, and the
coarser part compacted with it renders hoeing
almost impractible; nor is the work well over till
in showery weather there is need to begin it again.
Thus the coarse and fine work to each other's hands,
the one giving birth to weeds and the other pro-
tecting them. Divide and govern — dissolve the
compact and the conquest is easy. Use a quarter-
inch search for second sifting, and apply the coarse
to one part of the walks and the fine to another.
The coarse, it is true, does not bind ; but that is
the beauty of it: it will not grow one weed for
many years. No feet are idle on such a walk :
every one who comes into the garden does some
good; the gravel is continually shuffled about, and
an immense deal of work is saved to the hoe. For
dryness it is admirable — a property which makes
the roughness a pleasure, as every one feels in walk-
ing on the sea-beach, though much rougher and
not more dry. And now for the small sort, which
is almost pure sand, and in most cases will be three
to one of the gravel : it binds and grows weeds ;
but the Dutch hoe pares it as easily as moss is
scraped from a tree. For the wheels of a little
coach such walks have the smoothness of marble ;

REMEDY 'FOR FOUL GRAYEL.

and as to the raking of leaves, on gravel the

is imperfect — on this as neat as the sweeping of a

floor.

Where a walk, having plenty of gravel, has got
foul in course of time, by awkward gardeners or by
pretty pattens stepping off the vegetable grounds,
there should still be no endurance of the mixture
of stones — to prevent the killing of weeds — with
garden mould — to encourage their growth. In the
season of haymaking, from the solid bottom rake
all the gravel into ridges, to be turned over once
or twice, and lie till the soil with which it is
mingled become dry as dust, and every vile plant
be reduced to powder ; then apply the small sieve
— the expence of which operation would go little
way in bringing fresh materials from a distance ; — •
and having saved, by this sifting, a good deal of
top-dressing from grass, replace the gravel; and you
will have no more to do with it for some years.

On the farther side of the flower walk, that is
next the garden fence, there will be, according to
the mode of planting already recommended, a grad-
ual declivity in the bank of foliage from the higher,
hardier, and outer rows, to the lower, inner, and
more delicate. Such arrangement is good for shel-
ter and beauty, as well as for promoting the health
and vigour of whatever is planted; and to complete
this outer screen, it will now be proper to mention
a few of those flowers which fitly mingle with shrubs,
giving liveliness to the dark evergreen, and com-
bining with those that blossom to diversify and pro-

234 SHRUBBERY FLOWERS.

long the gayeties of summer. The chief is the
hollyhock, not over nice, majestic, long flowering,
and of many colours. The black, not truly named,
is rich as it is rare; and for this reason some notice
of the hollyhock shall be given in the alphabetical
list. The giant sunflower, too coarse for beds or
borders, is excellent to the amount of a dozen, at
long distances, amongst laurels. It must have air,
that it may branch out, and carry many heads on
a treelike stem. More of this also will be found
in the list above named. The most convenient
thing for filling all vacuities, and giving honey
sweetness to the garden, is wallflower. Late in
autumn, or after the spring digging, proceed all
over the ground with choice plants, very dark,
called bloody, some double, and the whole as plen-
tiful as a crop of greens. Not individually fine,
this plant owes its good eflect to extent, and to the
quantity of breeze which it perfumes. To have it
good of its kind may be worthy of a separate no-
tice. Several of the larger species of iris agree well
with the neighbourhood of shrubs, and thrive in
the shade. The lily-of-the-valley, shooting early
its fine dark leaf, rolled like a cigar, and shortly
after its modest snowy flower, may be allowed to
run thickly over a square yard or two, beneath a
spreading laurel, which may be slightly pruned for
its bower. Queen-of-the-meadow, double or single
— the latter only is scented — agrees with the shade;
and also sweet woodruff, remarkable, when dried in
paper, for the time it retains the odour of new-

FLOWER BORDER — SPRING FLOWERS. 235

mown hay. Soledago or golden-rod, with some of
the hundred varieties of campanula or bellflower,
monkshood — yellow or blue, columbine, and per-
ennial larkspur — growing seven feet in height, may
serve at distances, according to their size, for fore-
ground to the shrubbery.

Verging towards the walk, a strip, say five feet
broad, running between the gravel and the shrubs,
and perhaps an equal breadth on the other side, for
fibrous perennials and bulbous roots, with spaces
here and there for the admission of annuals, de-
serves particular culture. If the soil has too much
clay, coal ashes will give it porosity and serve for
manure. They must be sifted, a labour that is not
lost to the economy of fuel; and nothing is more
useless to the ground than a cinder, or uglier on a
bed of flowers. Trenching is in all cases to be un-
derstood; and if the soil be dry, as stones cannot
be tolerated in the sowing of annuals, there is no
harm in sifting with wires one inch apart. It must
not be supposed that a sieve of such width trans-
mits stones of anything like a corresponding bulk;
neither does the acquired fineness cause any dam-
age, save in clays, which with raking and rains and
heat take on a coat like the plaster of a wall — a
fault which a few cart loads of sand will correct. A
mixture of peatmoss is of service to the beautiful
varieties of rhododendron, the kalmais, and all
manner of heaths.

With regard to a selection of flowers for the
borders so prepared, it were needless to give a

236 SPRING FLOWERS.

thousand names and descriptions; the mere name
serves not the cause of botany: and no description
on paper conveys any idea of a plant as it grows.
The only rule, then, is to pick up at intervals, ac-
cording to your fancy, and to stop when you have
no more ground.

As the summer has plenty of riches, and as the
shrubbery makes the most of winter, it may be pro-
per to notice a few flowers which give beauty to the
spring. They are not numerous as to kinds, and
for effect, therefore, there must be many of each.
The crocus — tiresome if only yellow — cannot be too
abundant if its various hues are blended. It is
easily raised from seed ; its bulbs quickly multiply
of their own accord; and they may be bought at
sixpence a hundred. It is not agreeable in beds or
patches, but fine when set as a fringe to the flower
borders, and perfectly beautiful as studding to a
piece of smooth green sward. For this purpose
have a long stick with a dibble point, and to regu-
late the depth insert a cross bit of wood, to set the
foot on, three inches from the extremity. Let one
person perambulate the ground, making holes, and
another follow with two baskets, one containing a
thousand bulbs, and the other sifted earth or sand
to cover them. Hepatica or liverwort is the next
in value as a flower of spring. The double blue is
rather delicate ; the other sorts — single blue, red
and white single or double — are hardy. The root
is a solid turf, and the only art of propagating is to
divide by cutting straight down. Plant at inter-

ANNUAL FLOWERS. 237

vals along the flower border, taking care to alter-
nate the colours. The Christmas rose, flowering
so early, as the name imports, has still something
to add to this more genial season. The snowdrop
is fine upon grass, along with the crocus ; on the
borders, if abundant, it must be in small spots well
distant. Different species of Narcissus are valu-
able before summer comes with her full hand :
namely, the daffodil, which needs no care ; the
jonquil, of sweetest perfume, but more delicate,
requiring shelter and a free soil, rather rich but not
with recent manure. Add for spring beauty, prim-
roses, single, double, and of various hues ; a large
assortment of the auricula and polyanthus, not the
highly cultivated of either, which will be noticed
in their place, but such as are hardy and show
plenty of colour; some patches of anemone, raised
from seed : and various exotic heaths, giving early
food to the bee and anticipating the glow of summer.
Omitting the endless list of bulbous and fibrous
perennials, which maybe collected by degrees, as
hinted above, the names of a moderate assortment
of annuals cannot fail to be useful. Annuals are
not to be picked up as other flowers may be ; the
seed must be ordered, and the names may either
not be known or may not occur; besides, mistakes
might arise from not distinguishing between such
as agree with common sowing and those that re-
quire the help of a hotbed. Of the under list,
which are hardy enough for ordinary shelter and
elevation, ten or twenty, according to the means of

238 LIST OF ANNUAL FLOWERS.

accomodation, may be chosen for one year; for
the next a like portion, proceeding further in the
list; and so on till the catalogue be exhausted —
getting in this way both the pleasure of new things,
and an easy acquaintance with such as are fairer to
the eye or better suited to the climate.

Adonis-flower — several varieties: pheasant's-eye the most showy.

Agrostemma-co3li-rosa.

Allyson — sweet-scented.

Amaranths; greater, or love-lies-bleeding — lesser, or prince's-

feather.

Antirrhinum, or Snapdragon: many varieties; the best are large,
flowering, and bicoloured — properly biennial, but if early sown
it will flower the same year.
Atriplex, called also red spinach.
Balm — blue, red, white, hoary.
Balsam, yellow, or Touch-me-not; so called from its capsules ex-

ploding on being touched.
Belvidere — resembling a cypress tree.
Bladder-ketmia; — see Ketmia.
Borage — purple, red, variegated.
Candy-tuft — white and purple.

Catchfly, Lobels — many varieties and very ornamental ; the red
' and white are beautiful when mingled.
Caterpillar plant; the pods give rise to the name.
Cayanus, or Blue-bottle — of various sorts.
Clarkia-pulchella.

Clary — purple and red topped, of fine appearance.
Corcopsis-tinctoria — brown and orange.
Gilla-capitata.
Globe Thistle.
Gourds; some one of about forty varieties may be tried in a warm

sheltered place. See list for hotbed frame.
Hawkweed — red and purple; the yellow is paltry.

LIST 0? ANNUAL FLOWERS. 239

Heart's-ease, or Pansy ; properly a violet — common tricoloured
large Dutch, yellow, purple. They flower the first year, but
may be continued by parting the roots in autumn.
Hollyhock, — Chinese, variegated, double, single.
Honeywort — greater, small, purple.
Indian Cress — a new dark variety.
Kaulfussia-ameloides.

Ketmia, Bladder, or Flower-of-an hour. Its blossoms cannot en-
dure the sun, but are produced in long succession.
Kidney Bean, Runner — large scarlet, large white.
Larkspur — of many fine varieties, which may all be had from the

same parcel of seed.
Lavatera — red, purple, white.

Love-in-a-mist, or Fennel flower — blue, white, yellow, double.
Lupine — common, yellow, blue, white, sweet-scented.
Lychnis — dwarf annual and purple.
Mallow — curled, scarlet, Venetian.
Malope-grandiflora — crimson and purple.
Marigold — common large double, orange-coloured, lemon-coloured,

red, ranunculus-flowered.
Mignionette — the sweetest of all — ought to be sown largely and at

different times for a succession. The earliest will yield ripe

seed.

Mullberry-blite.
Nigella: — see Love-in-a-mist.
Nolana-prostrata .
CE n othera- Lindleyan a.
Palma- Christi ; remarkable for large palmated leaves ; tall, dwarf,

red-stalked.
Pea, sweet scented — of which there are many varieties — may be

sown on very dry ground about the end of February, to give

early flowers and ripe seed ; afterwards at any time till the

middle of May.
Poppy — many sorts — bad enough weeds, that need no sowing;

the cat-nation and dwarf-corn are worthy of a place.
Russian-stock.
Scabious, sweet — starry-flowered.

240 SOWING 'OP ANNUALS.

Schizanthus-pennatus — of sorts.

Snail Plants ; taking the name from the form of the seed-pods —

perhaps a dozen varieties.
Snapdragon : — see Antirrhinum.
Stockgillyflower, Ten-week's-stock — red, purple, white, scarlet,

variegated — each double, wallflower-leaved, of various colours,

single and double; well worthy of a | place in the alphabetical

articles, which see.
Strawberry -blite ; the fruit resembling the strawberry, but not

eatable.

Sultan-flower, or Sweet-sultan — yellow, purple, red, white.
Sunflower; giant, dwarf — each double — yellow, pale yellow. See

notice in alphabetical order.
Tobacco Plant — long-broad-riarrow-Ieaved. Once sown in^ this

country in the fields for a crop, but requires management to

bring it to flower.

Venus'-looking-glass — blue, purple, white.
Virgin-stock — purple and white.
Xeranthemum, or Everlasting-flower — white, red, purple, and

blue; remarkable for keeping its colour and form when dried.

For the sowing of the above, the last week of
April (but earlier according to climate) or the first
of May, when the weather is fair and the ground
in the finest state of dryness, is the proper season,
although some sorts may be sown at different times
for a succession of flowers. Too little earth can
scarcely be given for a covering, considering how
many annuals, self-sown, get none at all. Those
seeds which are almost invisible may be laid on a
smooth bed and merely sprinkled with dust after
the manner of powdering hair. A common garden
basket, with a few handfuls of loose earth, answers
well for sifting over the seeds a dust as fine as

FLOWERS REQUIRING PARTICULAR NOTICE. 241

themselves. There can be no doubt that many
beauties are lost by coarse hands that make their
bed a grave. The lightest powdering is to the
amaranth as much as a plough furrow is to the
bean. To mark the seedbed and save it from the
hoe, it is usual to adopt the spell of drawing a circle
around it; others sow in a ring, on the principle of
the argand lamp, admitting air into the centre, and
causing the flowers to burn with a clearer light.

O O

The following less hardy annuals, whether for
beauty or curious growth, are worthy of the help
which they require in a small hotbed frame ; namely,
the marigolds, African and French ; amaranths, or
love-lies-bleeding and prince's- feather: all of which
are of uncertain growth in ordinary seasons; bal-
sams, of many varieties; tricolor-chrysanthemum;
Indian corn; some of the huge gourd family; the
tobacco plant; stockgillyflower, for an early blow;
to which may be added many others according to
fancy or convenience.

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF SUCH FLOWERS AS REQUIRE A
PARTICULAR NOTICE, WHETHER WITH REGARD TO
THEIR PROPERTIES OR PECULIAR MODES OF CULTIVA-
TION.

Anemone— Broad and narrow-leaved. As soon
as the downy seeds begin to fall off they may be
gathered and sown in drills four or five inches apart,
and slightly covered. Next year the bed will be
pretty for a length of time with many and very
bright colours; but there will not be one double of

Q

242 ANEMONE.

a thousand flowers. It happens, however, in the
course of cultivation, and in the multitude of
chances, increased by all varieties of soil and cli-
mate, that double flowers do occur; and as the roots
of these send out tubers which also give double
flowers, they may be increased to any amount, and
are to be had of sufficient fineness and variety at
no great expence. The principal colours are red,
pink, crimson, rosy, white, and blue, with various
shades and mixture of colours. It is a good pro-
perty of these flowers to have the plain colours
brilliant, and the mixed colours distinct ; and in
planting a bed it is of great consequence to have the
colours duly blended, to have some breadth for
effect, and to have such juxtaposition of the roots
as may cause the leaves to meet, clothing the ground
with soft green, whilst the flowers, as it were, catch-
ing fire at each other's light, dazzle and burn in va-
ried brightness. The width of planting is deter-
mined by the meeting of the leaves, which will vary
according to climate and richness of soil — say four,
five, or six inches between the drills, and one inch
less between each plant in the row. The best man-
ure is turf from old pasture mixed with half its
bulk of cow's dung, kept and frequently turned till
the mass be well rotted and pulverized.1 The bed

1 The author feels reluctant to introduce amongst pretty flowers
the coarse word for manure in the absolute; and, being aware that
a work on matters of taste should be itself also tasteful, was willing
throughout to have avoided the above name — which, as he under-
stands is not pleasant to readers of the town. But being obliged
to write of such a thing, and finding it impossible to do without

, AURICULA. 243

must be manured and dug before winter, and, when
finely reduced by frost, as early in February as
the soil has sufficient dryness, the roots should be
planted an inch below the surface, taking care to
place the buds uppermost. Free watering is requi-
site in dry weather; and when the blow is full, a
few mats, supported by hoops, may be used to screen
the sun and prolong the period of beauty. When
the leaves have decayed and the soil is very dry,
the roots may be taken up, and either rubbed free
of earth or washed and dried in the shade. They
may be kept in a box or drawer in any apartment,
avoiding the roasting heat of a garret or the rot-
ting damp of a cellar. »

Auricula. — Nature has given such a finish to
the finer specimens of this plant that art may well
be required to furnish them with the shelter of a

the offending term, he takes refuge in the conviction, that where-
ever the garden reader becomes also the garden cultivator, (and
that is the author's aim,) the antipathy will wear off, by that law
of our nature which makes things, unseemly in themselves, look
well when viewed in their seemly effects. As an instance of this
kind, at least similar in some respects: — No eye ever loved the
angular and uncouth hieroglyphics of a dead tongue, but the sight
is endured till they get incorporated with the soil of moral culti-
vation : and then the deformity altogether disappears, and the
virtue springs up on the rich field that glows with the flowers of
Grecian poetry, and the fruits of Hebrew piety: So amidst laden
trees and flowery walks that which at first offends loses all power
of offence when seen in its beautifying effects, and familiarly known
as the source of all that is fair and fruitful in the scene. And of
all the manipulations detailed in this treatise, there is none the
author values more than the art of augmenting and economically
using the pabulum vitce of the garden — the very heart of its living
frame.

244 AURICULA.

roof. Some of the family are hardy and beautiful
as spring flowers on the open borders ; but the
more delicate cannot endure the pelting of the rain
which falls in April, the season of their beauty.

A glass frame is therefore essential to the saving
of the fine meal with which the flowers and some-
times the leaves are dusted, and which seems de-
signed to moderate the heat of the sun, but which
has in itself no defence against the washing of the
rain ; and hence those plants which are brought to
great fineness by cultivation soon perish or grow
poor when neglected. The best specimens at first
raised from seed are quickly propagated by offsets
from the roots: and as cultivators have great ten-
derness for such offspring, though more numerous
than they can rear, you have only to open an
asylum and it will soon be filled.

It were vain to attempt particular descriptions
of five hundred varieties. As to the general pro-
perties of a good plant, the stem should be of such
length as to carry its head of flowers erect and
raised above the foliage. About seven or eight
pips, or single blossoms, make a rich and close
umbel of flowers. The circumference of the border
of each blossom should be round, the anthers large,
the eye smooth, white, and circular; the ground
colour should be equal on all sides, defined next to
the eye, and only broken where it blends with the
edging. The favourite ground colours are black,
purple, dark brown, rich blue, bright pink, crimson,
or glowing scarlet. A green edging is fine; but

, AURICULA, 245

that combined with a crimson ground colour, being
very rare, is probably on that account prized the
most.

Florists have given recipes for composts with the
trifling exactness of invalids who pore upon diete-
tics and weigh their food. Sound earth, vegetable
earth, peat earth, decayed willow- wood, and wood
ashes, are recommended in proportions from a half
down to twelfth and twenty-fourth parts. No
doubt such a commixture may be very good, but
some other will do just as well. Let the compost
be rich and light, consisting of one half of old rot-
ted cow's dung, either from a spent hotbed or ga-
thered from the fields, and the other half black
mould from the garden, adding more or less of peat-
moss and sand according as the soil is light or heavy
— the whole mass to be so blended as to assume a
uniform consistence. With this fill the flowerpots
within an inch of the top, taking care to cover the
hole in the bottom with a piece of slate to prevent
the intrusion of worms. The pots should be six
or seven inches wide and about the same measure
in depth. Smaller ones may be used for bringing
forward young plants, whether seedlings or offsets.
The proper time for planting or repotting is in
August. Strip every plant of its decayed leaves
and of all stumps of roots beneath the young fibres,
and, having firmed the earth with the hand, give
a plentiful watering. The pots may then be closely
set together in the frame, which should be half
filled with sawdust, in which the pots are to be im-

246 AURICULA.

mersed to the lip. The glass cover may be put on
at the first to encourage striking, and then kept on
or off according to the weather, using the help of
a bass matting in every hard frost. Before winter,
fill up the vacant inch left on the surface of the
pots with old dung gathered from the fields, which
replace with fine mould about the time of flowering.
To destroy green-fly, with which the plants are apt
to be infested, a slight cloud of tobacco fumes,
closed for a few minutes under the glass cover, is
all that is necessary.

Should any reader be surprised at the trouble,
whether of writing or observing the above direc-
tions, it may certainly be inferred that he has
never once seen a choice and well managed collec-

O

tion of auriculas. Other flowers in congregated
array may be more dazzling, but the auricula, so
exhibited has no rival in soft, rich, and diversified
beauty. It has more of dignity than gayety; it
has not the tinsel of a theatre, but the jewellery
and grandeur of an assembly of nobles and high
dames, in broad ruff, powder, crimson, purple, and
ermine. The sight justifies the art. Art cannot
make the purple of the auricula; and without art
the auricula has not the purple; and the finest
forms, left to the common fare of earth and skies,
soon becomes the spectres of what they were — the
gorgeous velvet dwindling to the meanness of hawk-
weed, and the crownbroad disk to the dimensions
of a daisy.

Carnations. — Of which the technical names are

, CARNATIONS. 247

1. Flakes, having one colour on a white ground,
and which appears on both sides of the petal ; 2.
Bizarres, having two colours on a white ground;
3. Piquettees, ground white or yellow spotted with
other colours, and the edges of the petals fringelike
or serrated; and 4. Painted-ladies, the colour being-
only on the upper surface of the petals, — the sar-
castic name, it is hoped, may soon be banished.
The carnation, according to critics, should have a
strong three-feet stem, like a cane arrow; the flower
three inches in diameter, and opening equally on
all sides: the burstlike appearance, owing to defect
of constitution, which it often assumes, is ruinous
of all character; and hence the vile trick amongst
competitors of tying the neck with a thread up to
the very day of exhibition. Any thing like fringe
on the edge of a petal is not to be looked at. If
polling might pass for natural roundness, the scis-
sors would as certainly be applied to the fringe as
to the feathers of a game cock before fighting. The
petals should be as thick as to give the richness of
a double flower, but without the crowding that
causes weakness, and should regularly decrease in
breadth as they approach the centre, forming an
elegant crownlike figure, rolled in at the circum-
ference, and almost level on the top. The colours
should be bright and distinct, the stripes narrow-
ing with the petals towards the base, and leaving
one half to the ground colour without spot or mark.
The best soil for carnations is good loam enriched
with well rooted stable dung and quickened with a

248 CARNATIONS.

little sand. The quantity of manure can only be
determined by the previous strength of the ground:
if made too rich the flowers will lose their fine
colours, if left too poor they will want vigour. No
recent manure should ever come near any fine plant.
Let the ground be prepared before winter with dung,
and a rough furrow laid up to the frost. In A pril
give a fresh digging and plant in rows three feet
by two. This width is to make room for layers,
without which a fine blow of carnations cannot be
maintained above one year. As the plants shoot
up, they must be tied to neat green rods ; and in
order to have a fine blow, superflous flowerbuds
must be pinched off, leaving only three or four to
each stem.

The young shoots near the ground which do not
run to flower are denominated grass; and from these
the layers are selected. The operation is some-
what nice, but when rightly done is always suc-
cessful, and good flowers are thus preserved and
multiplied from year to year. Towards the end
of July stir up the ground about the plants, and
mix with the soil a little old well wrought compost.
Have at hand a sharp penknife, a trowel, and a
number of small pegs with an angle at the head:
pieces of fern will do, or wood of no more strength
than to bear pushing into the ground. Scoop out
the earth in the form of a basin around each plant;
select the strongest grassy shoots for layers, and
remove such as are in the way; crop the top leaves
an inch from the heart, and pinch off all the rest,

-CARNATIONS. 249

taking care not to peel the stem. Begin an in-
cision on the under side of the shoot a little below
the second joint from the top, and cut upwards till
the joint is slit in the middle. Set the pointed
extremity made by the slit into the bottom of the
excavation, and there fix it with the peg; place the
head of the shoot erect, fill in the earth, make it
firm, and finish the work with a good watering.
The young plants will be ready for removal by the
end of autumn, when they may be set in flowerpots
if the soil is too damp and apt to cause rotting in
winter ; but if sufficiently dry the layers may re-
main to spring, and it will be of use before winter
to earth them up, sloping and beating the mould
about them so as to throw off the rain.

Although the propagation of this plant by pip-
ings (as the grass shoots taken off and stuck in the
ground are called) is by no means so sure as the
above method, yet of a number some will take root,
and as pipings are more easily procured than plants,
the experiment may be made. If carried to some
distance, steep the slips in water till they swell to
their proper size; trim them as above directed and
set them firm into old elastic compost; water plen-
tifully, and set over them a handglass, first throw-
ing water on the glass and then earth to darken it,
and let it not be stirred for some days, it being found
that a deficiency both of light and air promotes the
striking of slips — probably on this principle that
the sick, having no appetite, must avoid the exer-
tion which requires food as well as that which food
requires.

350 DAHLIA.

Dahlia. — This is really avast acquisition to our
gardens : and having come amongst us from the
sunnier skies of South America, and suffered much
to accommodate itself to our climate, it seems to have
gained the affection which Highland hearts bore to
Prince Charles. For a length of time it blossomed
only in October or November — a most unlucky
period for the flowering of a plant whose very leaves
cannot endure a breath of frost. At first many arts
were tried to bring its fine flourish to an earlier per-
fection: it was set in pots, and forced for a time; or
it was planted in gravel to lessen its luxuriance; or
the stronger shoots were amputated. But by suc-
cessive sowings from seed raised in this country, it
has learned to anticipate its disasters by flowering
in August ; and there are few garden ornaments
that present so much beauty for so long a period.
The root is as bulky as the largest crab with all its
claws, the stalks and blossoms occupy a yard square.
This is enough to suggest the rules of planting ;
but the plant is not the worse of being a little con-
fined— say three feet by two in the rows. Select
specimens should be so arranged in the bed as to
give diversity and contrast of colour. Single plants
at intervals amongst shrubs have a fine effect, A
few having only single flowers are worthy of being
preserved; but the double may be found in almost
infinite variety, and possessed of the utmost beauty
of colour and form. Seed yields new varieties, and
the plant is also propagated by parting the roots,
taking care that each section have a portion of last
year's stem ; for it is around the foot of the stem

I

CHOICE DAHLIAS. 251

that the next bud appears. Plants may also be
reared from slips. In May the young shoots are
set in flowerpots filled with sand and well rotted
manure. The pots must be placed in a covered
frame or under a handglass, and must be well
shaded and watered, admitting air on the first symp-
toms of new life. The following is a list of the

O

most celebrated varieties now cultivated:

Acme— white, edged with crimson.
Adelaide — white, edged with pink.
Agrippina — white, tinted with rose.
Amanda — rosy lilac.
Appollo — scarlet, with cupped petals.
Ariel — white and lilac.
Augusta — shaded purple.
Black Prince — crimson, with black stripes.
Bronze — fine form.
Beauty of Camberwell — rosy lilac.
Countess of Liverpool — fine scarlet.
Criterion — white, spotted with lilac — fine.
Cedo-nulli — yellow, edged with red.
Clio — primrose, tipped with purple.
Desdemona — white, edged with pink.
Donna Maria — rosy crimson.
Erecta — shaded crimson.
Enchantress — cream edged with cherry.
Emperor-of-yellows.
Glory — fine scai'Iet.
Granta — dark crimson.

Honourable Mrs. Harris — carmine and white— very fine.
Invincible — dark crimson, with black stripes.
Iris — dark purple, shaded.
King-of-dahlias — white, with crimson edge.
King-of-whites.

Lady Fitzharris — large — crimson .
Lady Grenville — rosy lilac.
• Lilac-perfection.

252 DAHLIA — PRESERVATION OF ROOTS.

Lord Althorp — dark puce.
Lord Liverpool — superb purple.
Magnificent — pink and white.
Metropolitan-blush — delicate rose .
Metropolitan-perfection — very dark puce.
Miss Pelhara — fine rose.
Newick-rival — rose — finely formed.
Othello — dark puce.
Peerless-white.
Perfection — beautiful rose.
Picta-formosisima — orange, with red stripes.
Polyphemus — sulphur and lilac.
Q,ueen-of-dahlias — white, with purple edge.
Rising-sun — long — scarlet.
Springfield-rival — purple — finely formed.
Yellow perfection — very fine.
Village maid — white and pink shaded.

The preservation of the roots during winter is
attended with some trouble, which, perhaps some
cultivators will not bestow till by a fatal negligence
the whole live stock have perished, and either the
price of replacing, or the sad privation left next
summer, rouse the mind to the safe but necessary
precautions. The first thing is to secure the ripen-
ing of the roots. A slight frost blights the foliage
and flowers, but it does not follow that the roots
afflicted in the vigour of growth are so instantane-
ously ripened. The potato is allowed to stand after
the leaves are gone ; and so ought the dahlia for a
time, leaving the pith of the stalk, as a sponge,
to absorb and exhale the superflous moisture —
whilst the sun helps that process by getting at the
ground through defect of the foliage. Wherefore,
though the beauty of the flower is gone, nature
ought not to be hindered in her work of ripening,

DAHLIA SLIPS. 253

that there may be beauty for another year. After
the stems are well decayed, they may be cleared
away; but the roots are not to be taken up. Having
removed the stalks by cutting two or three inches
above the ground, let the earth be gathered from
both sides over the roots, into the form of a potato
drill, and beaten smooth, so as to turn the rain and
save from frost. Towards the end of November the
roots may be taken up plump and ripe from their
dry bed, and shaken clear of mould, like potatoes
gathered with lean skins — a good sign of safe
keeping. The roots are too succulent to keep well
by lying on the floor, as any bruise thus sustained
is the commencement of decay; but those that are
large and strong agree with suspension from the
cieling of a room inaccessible to frost. But stored
in boxes, with alternate layers of dry sand, barley
chaff, sawdust, or the shellings of oats from the
mill, they will be as fresh on returning to the soil
in spring as when taken up in winter. The last
named substance, being kiln-dried, has in a high
degree the aptitude of being absorbent and antisep-
tic, not liable, on drawing moisture from the tubers,
to take on and propagate decay. The boxes, with
their valuable deposit, if the cook be not stormy,
cannot be better placed than in the kitchen. The
garret will do, but not the stable loft — for the hay
is suffocating — not the damp floor of barn or cellar.
As some of the finest varieties are not prolific of
young tubers, to secure their propagation slender
shoots from the stems may be taken off early in the

254 FEATHERGRASS — HOLLYHOCK.

season, when three inches long, and planted in pots
as above directed. Well tended in summer, they
will produce small tubers capable of yielding the
finest flowers next year. This tender offspring may
be preserved during winter, either in the pots where
they grow — not to be watered however dry, nor
exposed to frost — or they may be cleared of mould,
and store like the stronger roots, with a little more
delicacy in favour of their youth — as in a drawer
of the study, where they may be occasionally seen.
. Feathergrass — On account of its curious appear-
ance and extreme resemblance to plumage, is worthy
of a particular notice. Being of slow growth from
its hard and spiky seeds, it is often lost or destroyed
before coming to maturity. This is the sole reason
of introducing here a plant which afterwards needs
so little care. Sow the seed in a flowerpot, and
when the grass has got strong and turfy in the
root it may be safely committed to the border.
By the third year it will yield a profusion of feathers.
Hollyhock — Is properly a biennial plant, but may
be continued a number of years. In deep soil with
shelter it may reach the height of fourteen feet, but
half that measure is enough for beauty. The long
duration of blossom, the length of stalk in flower at
the same time, the richness of the double sorts, and
the great variety of colours, render this plant a chief
ornament of the garden in the months of autumn.
Save the seeds of the best plants and sow in April
or May. Thin the young plants, removing the more
forward to other ground, in order to get strong

HYACINTH — IRIS. J5o

short stems, and in the beginning of October plant
them out where they are intended to flower. The
chief beauty of this family is one that is double and
almost black, and this being also the most rare the
method of preserving it is worthy of attention.
About midsummer cut over by the ground some of
the flowering stems, which will cause buds to spring
up beneath for next year's flourish. When this
will do no longer, perhaps in the fourth or fifth year,
take off some buds in autumn, the nearest to the
ground that can be got, and extract part of the
bark along with the bud. Treat these in the man-
ner of carnation pipings ; some of them will take
root, and your fine plant will be renovated. The
writer has now a specimen reared in this way from
seed, and in its eighth year, growing six feet high.
and clothed with dark purple.

Hyacinths — Grow best in light sandy earth with
manure placed a foot beneath the bulbs. They are
planted in September, and a covering of leaves or
tanner's bark well decayed must be applied in winter
to protect them from frost. After the flower is
decayed, the roots and steins are first partially
raised, and then extended on the surface in order to
dry gradually. The bulbs in such numbers as to
have any effect are expensive, and, with whatever
care, they degenerate every year from the period of
their importation.

Iris — Of which there may be fifty varieties, are
all beautiful, and some remarkable for the sweetness
of their odour. If placed in a bed it is necssary

256 LYCHNIS — LOBELIA.

to arrange their colours, and to choose bulbs which
have the same period of flowering. The iris does
not love much sun, and the heat of a south wall is
to be avoided. If the soil be inclined to clay, mix
it with peat earth, but the best thing for a fresh
and good blow is decomposed turf from old pasture.
No care is necessary in keeping the roots — they
may remain in the ground, but for the sake of the
soil they should all be taken up, and like tulips
they do not suffer by frost though placed in an open
box in the garret.

Lychnis — Of which there are many varieties.
The scarlet double is one of the finest flowers, and
should not be lost sight of. It will keep in good
order for many years with no other trouble than that
of parting the roots and replanting after the flower-
ing is over, but the surest method is to renew the
plant by slips. In July take a number of cuttings,
six or seven inches long, of such stems as are not
carrying flowers, and insert them, leaving two joints
above in well pulverised earth, and give at first a
copious watering. A handglass darkened, as noticed
in the treatment of carnations, will promote the
striking of the slips: but they will do if in any way
sheltered and shaded.

Lobelia, or Cardinal-flower. — That variety called
fugens is of the brightest scarlet, and perhaps the
brightest colour of the vegetable world. This fine
plant is perfectly manageable at moderate eleva-
tions. Slips will do as above, but in general plenty
of rooted offsets may be procured. Place them in

LILY. ' 257

fine earth manured with old compost, and in a spot
completely sheltered but open to the sun. Before
winter cover up the roots with light short decayed
dung, which rake off in spring, when the young
buds will be found appearing beneath.

Lily — Of which there are many varieties, but a
few of the best are the large common white, grow-
ing four or five feet high; (the small white flower
not unfrequently called lily, is a Narcissus;) the
orange lily, which takes its name from its colour;
the fiery lily, which may be known by the bulbs it
bears on the stalks; the martgon or TurkVcap
lily, of which there are many sorts, and which are
named from the turning in of the petals, presenting
the figure of a turban; the tiger, and the crown-
imperial. The bulbs are scaly and do not agree
with the treatment of hard bulbs. If kept long
out of the ground they must be placed in sand to
prevent drying. The proper season for planting is
September: planted in spring they are apt not to
flower that year. But the best rule with all the
tribe is to observe when the leaves begin to decay
after the season is flowering, and then to take them
up, whether to give more room or fresh soil. They
are too monstrous for beds, and do best either in
single plants, or in patches or intervals. The crown-
imperial, though not the most showy of lilies, is a
grand and elegant flower, and remarkable for its
rapid growth at an early period of the spring. At
that season of all food it is the most enticing to
snails. Being horribly blefiant and juicy, it is pro-

u

258 MARIGOLD— NARCISSUS — PINK.

bably to their palate what garlic is to a Spaniard.
But unfortunately for the plant, being fistular, the
snail perforations, resembling those of a flute, admit
the air direct to the heart, and death is the conse-
quence. Early in spring scoop out the earth around
the stems, and with it the slimy people sleeping be-
side their banquet. Put a roll of stiff paper round
each stem, not tight, and fasten it with a pin; then
draw in the earth, leaving the paper two inches
higher. The snails do not find their way over.

Marigold — Only to be noticed for this, that the
exquisite sorts, African and French, are very fre-
quently sown in vain. See conclusion to the list
of annuals.

Narcissus, or Daffodil — Of which there are up-
wards of thirty varieties, the sweet scented major,
minor poeticas of various sorts, polyanthus or many-
flowered ; various sorts of yellow, of which the jon-
quil, one of the rush-leaved sort, is the sweetest.
The fading of the stalks^ indicates the season for
gathering the bulbs — which being not scaly, but
hard, may be dried in the shade and kept till Sep-
tember or October. The rushed-leaved sorts seem to
like moisture, but that of loam, not clay. In order
to have fine flowers the roots must be taken up
every two years. Without this care of the finer
varieties, the leaves fall down like rank grass, the
flowers are few, and the stem weak and sickly.

Pinks — Are much more easily propagated than
carnations. It is needless to sow seed except to
have plenty of trash. Cuttings or pipings taken

POLYANTHUS. 259

from good plants, when they come into flower, grow
freely, on being treated in the manner of those
taken from carnations. Pinks are divided by flo-
rists into classes; namely, damask, cobs, and
pheasant's- eye. The first are white, and flower
early; the cobs are red, and flower late. The fol-
lowing are the characteristics of a good pink; to
be very double, and to open freely without bursting,
to have the petals round like a rose leaf, not ragged
in the edge: to have the body of the flower a clear
white, and the lacing, as the colours displayed on
the white ground are called, a rich black, shaded
towards the centre with red; a scarlet or purple
lacing, being more rare, is also more admired.

Polyanthus.— Prom long cultivation and the
mixture of pollen the varieties of this fine spec-
cies are without number. There is really some-
thing in the rules of critics with regard to flowers.
For though the inexperienced would judge differ-
ently, yet cultivators come generally to esteem the
same properties — a fact which vindicates the rules
of criticism in other departments. In the polyanthus
the tube of the corolla above the calyx should be short
and well filled with anthers; the circular of a clear
yellow and distinct from the ground colour; the
ground colour shaded with a light and dark crimson,
resembling velvet, with one stripe in the centre of
each division of th*e border distinct from the edging,
and terminating in a fine point at the eye: the petals
large flat and round: the edging, resembling a bright
gold lace,shouldbe distinct, not joined to the colours

260 RANUNCULUS.

that mark the petals, but the nearer to the hue of
the eye and stripes the better. In raising seeds
choose, according to the above properties the finest
flowers and keep them apart from others. Sow in
February and transplant in September, in fine beds
rather moist and shady. The main thing in subse-
quent cultivation is to part the roots every year,
and transfer the plants to new and well dug ground.
Snails must be watched in spring : and if the leaves
prematurely wither in summer, it will be found that
red-spider or some other insect is at work. Infected
plants, in order to save the rest, should be instantly
removed — a rule as needful in this case as in plague
or cholera; the diseased plants may however be
cured by steeping for an hour in weak decoction
of tobacco leaves.

Ranunculus. — This is one of those flowers of
which a great number must grow together to give
effect to their beauty, as well as to have the advan-
tage of a cultivation which would be troublesome
in detached portions. The varieties amount to
some hundreds; the colours are brilliant, and when
well mingled they dazzle the eye. Each double
flower has innumerable petals ranged in a form ex-
actly hemispherical ; and when duly cultivated the
ranunculus bed will show its nodding golden heads
as large as a watch of the ancient form. With less
art, the appearance is as poor as possible, present-
ing many blanks, and here and there a few bache-
lor's buttons. Grudge not to trench and sift a

O

sheltered bed to the depth of three or four feet,

ROCKET — ROSE. 201

putting a good layer of old manure at the bottom;
for the tubers send their fine fibres to no less depth
when they are so encouraged; and it is by getting
deep root, and finding nourishment, that they are
beyond the reach of drought and able to expand so
large a blossom. It is indispensable to this plant,
its fibres being like silk threads, to have a soil not
only free but finely pulverized with frost; and to
be set as early as the ground can be got dry —
namely, in February or March, in order to have
its roots well down before the heat of April and
May. Plant in small drills, four inches by three,
and giving not more than one inch of covering to
the tubers. Weeding must be done with the hand.
When the foliage withers, the roots may be taken
up in dry weather, and kept in a box to prevent
shrivelling.

Rocket — Of which there are two fine varieties,
the double white, and double purple. They require
cultivation, of which they are well worthy, being
remarkable in their mingled colours both for showy
appearance and sweetness of perfume. If allowed
to remain permanently in the ground without trans-
planting they will certainly die; and by timeous
transplanting and parting the roots they will last
long without a renovation from cuttings. The
mode of rearing from slips may be exactly taken
from that given in the article Lychnis.

Rose — Of which there may be three hundred, or,
with future care, any number of varieties. For
beauty, odour, and long succession, there is nothin^

262 HOSE.

in the garden equal to a moderate collection of roses.
Every one ought to have a few varieties of the prin-
cipal species, such as the red rose, exquisite for the
simplicity of its beauty ; the hundred-leaved ; the
damask; the provance; the moss, very common as
a double flower — the single is no where to be seen ;
the white moss, also double, and which is becoming
now general ; the white ; the single yellow, serv-
ing the best of all flowers, to indicate an early or
late season, as its opening is not gradual, but at
once and decisive; the double yellow, which may
be tried on an east wall at a medium elevation: it
is remarkable for blowing seldom, and for not blow-
ing well above once in a lifetime ; hence its excel-
lence both as creating expectation and constituting
an era ; the Austrian, remarkable for having petals
red on one side and orange on the other; it is as
yet only found single — a double variety would be
splendid ; the Scots rose, of many variations ; the
sweet brier, having double and various coloured
flowers; the musk, so named from its odour;
the China, and the Indian rose, formerly con-
fined to flowerpots and to the house, now the
hardiest and longest flowering ; the Ayrshire, re-
markable for its rambling growth. As there is
no finer object than a rose-tree, some of the more
woody species, as the white, the single yellow, the
Austrian, or the wild brier, grafted with one of
richer flowers, should be allowed to get up and ex-
pand its branches. But in general the finest flowers
are obtained by cutting down the young wood every

, ROSE. 283

year and keeping the blossom low. A fine effect is
produced by laying the branches beneath the ground,
and erecting only a few inches of the top, thus
covering the parterre with a carpet of rose bloom.
What are called rosebaskets are no beauty; but
along the side of the walk, a piece of lath rail of in-
visible green planted thick with China roses, which
blossom all the year, and having along the top a
branch of the Ayrshire rose grafted at intervals, and
dropping down all the varieties of rose tint has an
effect not to be described. Young sucket, should
be removed in October, and set apart, to become
good plants. Several sorts, as the China, Indian,
and Ayrshire, grow from slips; but the sure way
of propagation for all the tribe is to make layers,
which, especially of any rare sort, ought not to be
neglected, as some are not prolific in offsets, and
all old roots cease to yield good flowers. Dig the
ground about the roots early in spring or in autumn,
if not troubled with wet, in winter; and with hooked
pegs, fix the branches of one year's growth three
inches below the surface, paring off a little of the
bark, or giving the branch a sharp twist at the
place where the peg is inserted ; then raise the head
of the layer, and firm the soil about it. Of such as
make roots but slowly, it is proper to continue the
layer in its place for two seasons, having it detached
from the parent stem one year before removal. By
such care no good plant will be lost ; and a succes-
sion of good flower-bearing trees may be kept for
any length of time. To have late flowers, trans-
plant a few bushes in April.

264 STOCKGILLYFLOWER.

Stockgilly flower, or Ten-weeks' -stock. — Though
set down in the list of annuals, this is a much finer
flower when treated as a biennial. If seed pro-
cured from nurseries has been raised in warmer cli-
mates, the plants uniformly run to flower too early,
and the biennial treatment becomes impracticable.
Home-grown seed should be saved in higher situa-
tions; in lower, the Brompton stock is more favour-
able for keeping over winter. In sowing the seed,
attention should be paid to the scarlet sort, which
is by far the finest; but the care to have the seed
stock in the neighbourhood of a double flower is a
mere fancy, as the double yields no pollen. The
virtue of being double is accidental, or perhaps the
effect of cultivation in a soil more rich than suits
the nature of the plant. Sow the seed towards the
end of July, or so late, according to the climate, as
to avoid shooting for that season. Transfer part
of the plants to any spare room in the cauliflower
frame, where they will certainly be saved, and afford
a most beautiful blow next summer. Part of the
plants also may be committed to the open air, some
under a north wall and some in the heat and shel-
ter of a south; for in some seasons the one will
prove safest, and in some the other. In this way,
manage to have a hundred good plants, which set
in spring about twice as thick as common greens,
and on ground lightly manured and prepared by
digging before winter. When flowering begins,
observe such as threaten to be single, or of inferior
colours, and draw them out, making room for the

SUNFLOWER — SWEET WILLIAM — TULIP. 265

better sorts which will thus make a splendid ap-
pearance, and yield the sweetest perfume fora very
long period. By sowing very early in a warm place,
a fine blow may be had in autumn. But in the
common way of giving this plant the same treatment
as other annuals, it is as commonly lost; the flower-
ing comes to nothing the first season, and before
seeing another the plant, having begun to shoot, is
sure to perish in the frost.

Sunflowers. — Sow the seed in a warm dry border,
much earlier than the general sowing of annuals;
and when the plants are two inches high, lift with
a trowel and set them out, at wide intervals, along
the shrubbery or flower border. In rich earth, the
giant sunflower will cover a square yard, and bear
twenty or thirty heads of flower; and thus early
sown, such as have the best exposure to the sun
will perfectly ripen their seeds.

Sweet William, or Bearded Pink. — Sow a good
breadth, and there will be a great variety of colours;
some remarkably beautiful, — the double purple and
rose-coloured varieties are valuable. When a good
sort occurs remove it from the rest and save its
seed. Though there be no rule as to seeds, yet
the better sorts give a better chance. A fine double
plant need not be lost for a long period, as it may
be propagated either by slips, layers, or offsets from
the roots.

Tulips. — Of which there may be a thousand va-
rieties. The early sorts are little cultivated. One
of these, a distinct species, is sweet-scented and

266 TULIP.

known by the name of van-thol. It flowers in
April. Bulbs of the late kind are to be had at
all prices, from five shillings per hundred to five
guineas per bulb. Prices have been infinitely
higher in these days, not of finer flowers, but tulip
mania. The properties of a fine tulip are, a strong
stem two feet high, the flower large, with six petals
opening at the base almost horizontally, and form-
ing a cup only a little wider at the brim than at
the bottom ; the three outer petals broader at the
base than the three inner ones ; all the petals entire
at the edges, broad at the top and well rounded;
the ground colour at the bottom of the cup, clear
white or yellow, and free of stain or tinge; and the
various rich stripes, which constitnte the chief or-
nament, should be regular, bold, and distinct on the
margin, terminating in broken points elegantly
feathered or pencilled. It is remarkable, that in
Turkey and Persia, of which countries the tulip is
a native, the flower is principally of a red colour,
whilst each petal has a black spot at the bottom,
and that this is nearly the description of the worst
appearance which, according to florists, a tulip can
present; from which it may be judged what culti-
vation can do; for there can be no doubt, that
without ever having seen any of the technical rules,
the most inexperienced eye would prefer the finer
tulips now reared to those blackhearted natives of
the East. If the soil be moderately rich, no manure
should be added; if too poor, only old compost should
be applied; for any sort of rank and recent dung

. WALLFLOWER. 267

has the effect of deforming the figure, confounding
the colours, and destroying the fine feathering of
the stripes in which the chief beauty consists. In
planting, which is best done in October, rake off the
earth from the bed both ways to the depth of three
inches; set the bulbs apart nine inches by six, tak-
ing care to place on the middle of the bed the larger,
which can bear a deeper covering of earth; replace
that soil which has been raked off, and add from a
furrow on each side as much to give a little eleva-

o

tion to the middle of the bed, for the sake of dry-
ness and to cover all the bulbs from four to six
inches deep. Tulips require no watering. As soon
as the flowers have decayed, remove the seed pods;
and when the foliage withers take up the roots.

Wallflower. — Having sown pretty largely, and
obtained some fine specimens of very dark flowers,
with broad petals, get all others out of the garden,
and plenty of good seedling plants, self-sown, will
be annually obtained. But to insure a succession
of the best breed, (and the method applies to the
double flowering, which yield no seed, and cannot
otherwise be preserved,) about the beginning of
July, pinch off a hundred slips or young shoots of
five or six inches in length, taken only from the
finest stocks ; crop the leaves and strip the rest of
the stem bare; dibble the slips, so prepared, into a
bed newly dug, and shaded by trees or a north wall.
Sprinkle them with water and shade any part to
which the sun has access. Not one will go back:
and in this way a bountiful profusion of one of the

268

WALLFLOWER.

sweetest flowers, and the best of its kind, may be
had from year to year.

For the critical description of certain flowers,
and some other items not familiar to his experience
the author has made use of the excellent article,
Horticulture, of the Edinburgh Encyclopedia.

APPENDIX,

AABDEN-BOOKS commonly terminate in a
\f description of garden tools; and something
indeed, as to the best means of accomplishing the
end their authors have in view, may very naturally
be expected. But as the dealers in tools, as well
as others in trade, are usually quicksighted enough
to discover what sorts have the readiest sale, and as
that sale soon comes to progress in the ratio of
merit, the writer of the previous treatise is quite
satisfied with the market as it is, together with the
law which, without checking the multiplicity of
inventions, circulates only the best. Instead there-
fore of describing the shape, size, or otherwise
improved construction of spades, rakes, mattocks,
and mousetraps, he proceeds to consider only one
implement of the manse garden, and which truly
needs no little attention to its proper use and amend-
ment— namely, the minister's boy.

In former years the minister's man was func-
tionary of some note in the parish; but whether of
late servants have risen in rank, or ministers fallen,

270 APPENDIX.

certain it is that the minister's man has now very
generally dwindled to a boy. It may be however that
a better economy, without supposing either a rise
or fall in the rank of either, may account for the
change. Descending from feudal times, when ser-
vants did nothing but kill and steal as they were
bid, we find their wicked and in the long run un-
gainful employments substituted by a system of
field labour, which for a long period had indeed its
busy seasons — those of sowing and reaping, of col-
lecting hay and fuel — with comparative idleness all
the rest of the year. But now the dead of winter
has less of leisure that the stirring summer had
then; and the farm more like a factory, finds work
for all hands at all times. The fields, it is true, dif-
fer from the factory as to the matter of a roof for
shelter; but the genius of the farmer compensates
the deficiency by suiting the work to the weather;
and the gleeful toil goes on as steady as in a house
full of spindles and cards. Such an arrangement,
if it do not cheapen provisions, must raise the rent
of land as well as the labourer's hire; and hence,
as an idle day is now rare upon the farm, so an
idle man, whether about the farm or the manse,
becomes a nuisance to be no longer tolerated.

O

But a man with a pair of horses is equal to the
task of cultivating seventy or eighty acres, whereas
the glebe, consisting only of twelve, may have nine
under the plough; and whilst the expence of such
an equipment cannot be less than seventy or eighty
pounds per armum, the whole proceeds of the glebe

MINISTER'S BOY. 271

crops will probably not do more than cover half
that sum. And if to diminish the cost of man-
agement only one horse is kept, then is the power
inadequate to the plough, and the next resource
is a good neighbour, possessed in like manner of a
little farm and a solitary beast. But the neigh-
bour is not long good in a ticklish time— when the
dust is on the harrow, and the turnip seed has the
promise of a shower. Another expedient is to
keep two horses, and rent fifty acres to be wrought
along with the glebe. But then, alas! no work
is ever right, whether as to time or place or quantity,
without the constant eye of the master; and the
result is one of two — the minister either sinks his
calling, or loses his substance and becomes bank-
rupt. Such disasters, whether from neighbourly
quarrels or ruined affairs, have led to the better
resort of letting the glebe or of hiring a plough;
and hence the man is no longer a necessary appen-
dage to the manse. But the minister is not fit
for the parish without a pony, and the pony can-
not be kept without a boy, who will be half and
consequently wholly idle if he have not other work
to do: — Such is the garden implement now under
consideration.

Whatever may be the outcry as to the useless-
ness of this official, let it be remembered, in the
first instance, that he is indispensable to the pony,
as the pony is to the minister; and further, that
he is, if an idle boy, a substitute for an idle man —
a spectacle less easy to be looked at. And as an

272 APPENDIX.

encouragement to choose the least of two evils, the
author avers, that the boy under proper direction
is fully equal to all the work of the garden, with
the exception of three or four days in the year,
when better hands, whether as to strength or skill,
may be required to lay up a winter furrow of deep
dicing, or to train a fruit tree round the stalk of

OO O *

a chimney — a height too great, it may be, for the
minister's nerve, and perhaps for the decencies of
his calling. This sufficiency of the boy, however,
presupposes on the part of his master the posses-
sion of " My Book," together with such work of
his own hand as, giving health to his frame, shall
be found also a pleasure to his heart. But it is
further to be understood, that the following direc-
tions with regard to the improvement and use of
the boy, are made some matter both of care and
of conscience.

In general boys are plagues. Something above
what is usually denominated an urchin, and beneath
a varlet, they are of the most impracticable age —
an age when wit is the weakest and will is the strong-
est— when independence, as an end, is desired the
most, and character, as means, regarded the least.
They have escaped from school at a time when,
conscious of strength, they begin to despise the
master of a lowly seminary; and the parental
authority to which they are required to submit
is rarely good. The father being himself a ser-
vant, his children, by an instinct that needs to be
amended, fail of respect; and he, most of his

MINISTER'S BOY. 273

waking hours abroad, can do but little with the
authority he has ; whilst the mother, not careful
of training at an early day, and used to the issue
of uncertain commands, has recourse to persuasions
or condescends to entreaty. Boys so reared come
home, as their instalment to office is termed; and
though at first shy and dumb as a sheep, yet no
sooner has a small command by a superior servant
been imposed than it provokes a loud defiance, so
naturally, in their new yoke, do they slide into the
wonted rut of their ill made roads. Trained to
no habits of industry, they like no sort of work.
Their pleasure lies in idle companions ; and their
haunt is not yet the tavern, but the smithy, where
they may spend the long hours in bartering a knife,
in arranging a gallop, or marvelling at a gun-lock,
with longing eye to the possession, but with no
liking to the labour that might purchase the manly
toy.

So constituted, a boy cannot fall into worse hands
than those of the minister, or enter upon work he
is more reluctant to than his. On the farm the
crack of the whip is music to his ear; the assem-
blage of labourers, the jibe and the jest, have the
liveliness of a camp; whilst the yoking and un-
yoking of horses, the plunging of one unbroken to
the yoke, and the upsetting of a cart, are a perfect
Waterloo to his soul; and being there under
authority, he is also surrounded with examples,
which rouse his ambition, or soothe the toils of the

day. But the scene is different at the manse: the

S

274

APPENDIX.

boy works alone, if he work at all; he is depressed
by solitude, and the eye of his master is seldom
upon him ; he hates his task, and spends his time
in thinking which of a thousand lies will serve the
best for an excuse. It ought to be a serious con-
sideration with ministers, that boys, bringing to the
manse the seeds of corruption, should find there
the best soil on which to sow them, and the best
leisure for tending their growth. And this they
will do if not narrowly watched, and submitted to
a treatment answerable to their nature ; and freely
it may be asserted, that neither catechising, nor
reading the Bible, nor family prayer, will ever pro-
duce the least salutary effect, if idleness be allowed
and lies go unpunished. Let the reflection be
added, that as six months are the probable period
of an ill-doer's service, it may happen that the
minister, in the course of his life, has sent out to
the world half a hundred youths, who at the manse
have been endured merely as useless, but have gone
somewhere to be endured as blackguards; whilst
it may not be so certain that, of all that number,
one convert has been made in all that time.

The author claims the privilege of one old in
experience; and begs leave to offer to his younger
brethren some hints as to the methods of making
the boy good, and of turning his service to good
account.

Let the chance be favourable. Never hire a
boy at the market, as farmers may, who can do
better with a bad one. Treat with the parents in

MINISTER'S BOY. 275

presence of the boy — that you may know whether
they would encourage him to run home — whether
they abhor lying and swearing — and whether they
have been at pains to bestow some moral training
on their children. The remembrance of such a
conference, to which an appeal may be made, is
never lost in the giving of subsequent admonitions.
Have nothing to do with one that has been at no
sort of work before; for, except the worst of idlers,
all have been doing something, such as herding
cows or hoeing turnips, before they have grown fit
for taking care of a horse. Unless well recom-
mended, rather have one from a country place than
from a town or village, especially the neighbourhood
of an inn-stable. Lose no good chance for a slight
difference of wages; for what are a few shillings in
the year in comparison of killing a horse, or any
sort of annoyance which is repeated every day?

Make great use of the law of kindness: a boy
should not feel on his first outset, that on leaving
home he is without a friend. Fail not to instruct
him in the fear of God. Appear thus in the cha-
racter of a guardian, not of a taskmaster: he has
no way of avoiding the impression that your ad-
monitions are solely for his good, and when spoken
kindly and earnestly, they fail not to reach his
heart; whereas his ill taught selfish spirit always
suspects a selfish end in the issue of every precept
that concerns only the quality or the amount of
his working. Angry threats provoke hatred and
tempt to lying; but gentleness, urging the neces-

276 APPENDIX.

sity of truth, will lead to the owning of a fault.
It is a capital rule never to charge your boy with
any crime without making sure of conviction. If
you have begun the charge, spare no pains to make
the conviction complete ; for if you fail in this,
and the accused be really guilty, you have, de-
signing good, done incalculable harm: you have
strengthened, all the time of examination, his
hardihood of denial; you have allowed his lies to
pass off triumphant; and have encreased at once
his sulkiness, self-esteem, and hatred of your per-
son. But the moment that proof comes home and
conviction is wrought, shame and perhaps tears
show the good that has been gained, and give hope
of future amendment.

Make your boy to understand that you want
diligence not hard work; and indeed compassion
ought always to be had for a frame that is but little
matured. It is of great use to know what is rea-
sonable to expect of such an age. A boy at four-
teen is not equal to more than one fourth of a man's
work at any thing heavy; but in lighter tasks;
such as picking up stones and weeds, he may be
equal to a half. Give him all the benefit of the
common rules: — a full hour of rest twice within
the ordinary period of labour; and if you have a
message to any considerable distance, let the re-
quisite time be taken from the working hours.
This adds greatly to willingness, which, if it be
gained, will make all right; for the physical powers
are quite adequate to all that you want ; the diffi-

'MINISTER'S BOY. 277

culty is to enlist the moral powers ; and with re-
gard to these there is as often a mistake on the
part of the master as there is a failure on the part
of the servant. Your boy wants to go home to
see his parents; and his idea is that you cannot
grudge him the Sabbath for that purpose. But
give him rather any other day. He will be sur-
prised that you do not value his work so much as
you do his morals ; he will carry, by his visit, a
lesson to his brothers and sisters — it may be to his
parents also ; and whilst you prevent as much
Sabbath profanation as might spoil a whole week's
instructions, you are effectually making more useful
hands by providing first for a better heart.

The want of something to do in leisure hours is
a perpetual cause of running to idle companions.
The poor boy has learned to read; but it is only in
the best schools, and of late years, that children
have discovered any connection between the words
of a book and the ideas which they are meant to
convey; and the probability is that your boy has
never read a page either for his instruction or
amusement. To what a flood of light might his
mind be at once opened by giving him a little book,
and requiring him to tell what he had read of.
He has learned to write and do accounts by rote,
but has no notion of the use of either. The gift
of a few sheets of paper and a slate, with as much
intelligence as might be communicated in half an
hour, might, by exercising his mental faculties,
attach him to his abode, save him from bad com-

278 APPENDIX.

pany, and prevent the annoyance (of ridiculous
frequency in all like cases) of not knowing where to
find your boy when a friend arrives on horseback.

Of petty faults stealing fruit is likely to be one,
as the opportunities are many. In the heat of the
sun make your boy lay down his hoe, and refresh
himself at the fountain of gooseberries. I have
never seen any other effect of this than greater
modesty and better work. Give liberty as to this
fruit, the best of all, and which it is easy to have
as plentiful as an ocean. Tell your little man that
you will give him other fruits when ripe, but that
he must not take with his own hand, as all theft
is bad to the value of a pin ; and your word of
kindness, together with the word of God's law, will
do far more than spring-guns or man-traps.

A further rule of moral discipline, and one most
essential, is to provide for working hours a con-
stancy of work, and so arranged that the boy may
know at all times what he has to do. This alters
the natural current of his ideas, and cuts off at
once a perpetual fountain of falsehoods. The great
object of the youngster is to get done and away ;
but he sees by this plan, that it is of no use to do
a thing ill in order to have it soon over; and he is
afraid to run off to idlers, for the ready excuse of
not knowing what to do will in no case serve. The
most unmanageable part of his duty is that of go-
ing messages. Two or three that might occupy as
many half hours are sufficient to consume the day;
new attractions are formed, whilst old ones, as with

MINISTER'S BOY. 279

a retouch of the magnet, are refreshed; and there
is no willing return to work after a conversation.
To mitigate an evil which cannot be prevented, let
the missions of the unfittest person about the house
be few — not on the spur of the moment, and at the
bidding of every body — otherwise the solid day,
broken in pieces, is thrown away like the fragments
of a jar not fit to be mended, but for such loved
excursions allot such hours as are followed by a
better inducement to return than that which the
spade presents. All house work will be found bad
for the boy; though trifling -as to time, such jobs
are great as to pretence, and all out-of-door work is
by them rendered nugatory. Get up early some
morning, and see the stable duties sufficiently well
done; mark the time that may be requisite; make
a liberal allowance for less activity in your absence,
and point out the allowance; then fix the hour at
which the garden work must commence, and see
that the hour is exactly observed, though the work
of the broom should be left unfinished. This ne-
glect may be noticed at the breakfast hour of rest.
There is no harshness in this, but merely what is
felt to be just; and such strictness is essential to
moral discipline; for what is neglect or idleness but
a species of theft? The reasonableness of this even
a stubborn youth cannot resist, and he will be
brought by a little patience to see that regularity
is a saving to himself, and a little perseverance on
your part will add to the value of his discovery the
force of a habit.

280 APPENDIX.

But if you would have reason and conscience to
rule, avoid every thing that is not reasonable.
Show no passion; for that always makes the youth
think that, whilst you profess to aim at mending
his conscience, your zeal is to make the most of his
labours. Avoid bad names, lest you appear in his
eyes to forget what he has read about "Raca" and
"Thou fool;" and never threaten dismissal without
a true purpose to effect it, should the offence for
which it is threatened be again repeated. If dis-
missal be spoken of lightly, it is of none effect; and
if not put in force after a serious declaration, good
cause is given for casting off the respect that is due
to your word. It may be, too, that the boy, not
daring to run home of his own accord, desires
nothing so much as to be sent away, in which case
a threat to that effect is the best sound he can hear,
and a strong inducement to do worse; resting as
he does in this, that he can contrive what to say
for himself when he gets to the ear of his mother.
But as compassion is due to one of so little dis-
cretion that in the eye of the law he is not held fit
to conduct his own affairs, and whose bread yet
depends on the character he attains, it is the most
humane as it will prove the most successful method
of dealing with him, to explain before one or more
of his fellow-servants the loss which, in his early
career, he must suffer by a dismissal from his place;
and to assure him that you will not inflict so much
grief on his parents, without first sending for them,
in order to make known his faults, and to try the

MINISTER'S BOY. 281

effect of their admonitions on his subsequent be-
haviour.

The above observations, the author is persuaded,
will not be judged unworthy either of a place or of
persual, when the frequency of their use and the
importance of their objects are duly considered ;
and though they are merely superficial and of the
readiest occurence to all, yet the fact is, that no
one cares for adverting to them, till the circum-
stances which call them forth prove that they
ought to have been known before, and till the mis-
chiefs which such observations might have preven-
ted stand in the room of those advantages which
the earlier application of them might have secured.

Next to the means of improving the boy, a few
things might be said to the effect of rendering his
work sufficient so far as it goes. It is a fact, that
being well disposed, he will, by a few lessons rightly
given, be perfectly fit for all plain garden work
without further superintendence ; whilst at nicer
jobs, under your own eye, his nimble and willing
hands will afford sufficient help, and add pleasure
to your occupation. But then it is as true that
the simplest things, without suitable directions,
will be entirely bungled. Thus, if weeding be
ordered, the result will be more of the nature of
grazing than of extirpation; or if a piece of digging
be required, the spade will be set at such an angle
as suits the work of a shovel, and the surface will
present a series of undulations, which on a large
scale are beautiful in the lawn, but not in their

282 APPENDIX.

diminished proportions on the small field of a
strawberry plantation ; and should the rake be
applied to reduce the inequalities it will discover
the dock and the de-nettle, transplanted, not with
ceremony indeed, but so that those roots, like the
outcasts of society, though ill used are yet willing
to live and to dwell in the land — and before they
can be extracted the rake brings to light more of a
verdant deposit, of which the attempt to pull all
out is like the spinning of a rope — an operation
that is without end ; or if hoeing be the work to
which the youth is applied, the soil, it will be
found, is rather scraped than stirred; and the
weeds, replanted with the foot, only look sick till
they are visited with a shower.

Let the lessons be one at a time and amazingly
simple. As to cleaning a piece of ground previous
to digging, teach so much of the botany of three or
four of the worst weeds as that each may be known
in a crowd, or at any distance. Let it be a rule
that these are to be taken up as carefully as a crop
of beet and laid aside, that it may be seen how
little injury they have suffered in the act of up-
rooting. The ground being thus cleared, let it be
understood that digging means lifting earth to the
depth of fifteen inches and laying it upside down —
the common substitute for which is a mere disord-
-eringof the same surface that was uppermost before;
hence the wetness and coldness of soil, the late sow-
ing and little reaping, together with the waste of
manure, which occur in the gardens of the peas-

MINISTER'S BOY. 283

antry — a loss sustained through life for the want
of a single lesson. To secure good digging, see
that a furrow or trench of the specified depth be
opened on the one side of the plot to be dug, and
the stuff wheeled to the other. Let this furrow be
two feet wide and cut straight down, and let the
boy understand that when it is filled in the process
of digging he must leave another as wide and as
deep, and maintain such oponness of trench all the
way through the plot. Point out the different
colours of the soil that comes up, and show that his
work, if rightly done, will all the way present the
same appearance. If such a colour is exhibited,
the depth is good, the annual weeds fall, of course,
to occupy the lowest place, and neither the rake
nor the genial sun will bring them to light any
more. The manure is by this means also duly de-
posited, and not wasted by frost and evaporation.
In all cases where not much may be trusted to
discretion, the only thing is a rule which has no
relative terms, such as " well or ill done," but
which, being exactly understood, may be as exactly
fulfilled. Such may be applied to hoeing and clean-
ing as well as to digging the ground. Let the hoe
be inserted the full breadth and pass in regular fur-
rows beneath the roots of weeds; let one basket be
used for gathering stones and another for weeds;
let the rake follow, and prove the exactness of the
rule by leaving nothing but red earth, and the crop
if there be one. The youngster cannot avoid tak-
ing pleasure in work that is so executed — a secret

284 APPENDIX.

of his nature that he would never have found out if
left to himself; because he would never aim at
the perfection on the sight of which the pleasure
depends, but would work slovenly, hating the labour
as well as the look of what he leaves behind.

The wire riddle makes a rule for itself, and is
admirable for giving exactness of idea to the worker,
as well as of finish to his work. You want a piece
of ground made fit for small seeds, and you give
orders to have it well cleared of stones. But your
words do not convey your idea — the boy takes his
notions from a clover field. Show him the riddle
and say that the soil to a given depth must pass
through its wires. They have no latitudinarian
notions, and your boy so furnished is as perfect a
workman as the first in a palace garden. The work
is a masterpiece, and never did hand of thrifty wife
print with more pleasure her store of new-made meal
than you will a mould of such aptitude, whether for
receiving the fine fibres of a flower or the fairybeads
of the amaranth. At such a work your boy is a
treasure; you have him at any rate, and the work,
though slow, is sweet to the eye when done; but it
might lose some of its sweetness on settling ac-
counts with other hands at the rate of two shillings
per day.

I shall notice little more than one other sort of
work, to exemplify the methods of turning your
boy's hands to good account. I allude to one which
he can do perfectly — which will never fail in sup-
plying fair-weather employment, and by the perse-

MINISTER'S sor. 285

verance of which, the manse garden will show the
best crops in the parish. Let no prejudice as to
inadequacy of strength prove a hinderance. No-
thing but ignorance of the spade and of muscular
exertion can make the name of trenching sound
harsh as work for a boy. The work is in fact as
easy as any other: severity lies in quantity, not in
kind. A man to make two shillings must trench
twenty-four square yards; and if your boy do one
fourth of that number, neither is he overwrought,
nor do you keep him for nothing; and even at this
lowly rate it is surprising, so little do we notice
the progress of time, how great the amount will
appear after a long period ! Supposing you have
a trench opened, and the work proceeds, the pro-
gress, though marked by small additions, is still an
object in dreary winter. But a snowfall has shut
all up, and yet the sky is delightfully serene. For
•want of management in such a season, your boy,
having nothing to do, would certainly be off, spend-
ing his pence on gunpowder, and joining a group of
rascals about the hedges, idly shooting at birds,
swearing either at a hit or miss, and contracting
an intolerable itch for a life of poaching, and hence
of drams, to be had by the easy- won price of a
pheasant, or, failing that, by other acts of theft.
Keep your boy from such associates, as you have
to answer for his soul. Let the snow be no hinder-
ance to his work. Desire him to cut for you a road
to the trench, as you may wish to walk that way ;
and it will serve to keep his own feet dry and make

286 APPENDIX.

his work look comfortable. The removal of the
feathery load from road and trench is not the labour
of an hour ; and when you look at the red earth
rising above the snow, and visited by the robin —
at the clear sky, and highways unfit for riding or
walking — at the dry and broken subsoil thirsting
for the riddle — it is scarcely possible, in the bracing
air, to resist the temptation of pick or shovel, one
of which is sure to be at leisure; and surely worse
might be done than to spend in such a way one or
more such hours.

There is a peculiarity of the boy's age which
ought not to be overlooked. He approaches man-
hood, and is ambitious of the various working im-
plements that are proper to a man — the hedgebill,
the scythe, the saw, or the joiner's plain; and as he
thus has the willingness, certain it is, if you have
the tools and can show their use, he will on a few
trials do tolerably well with them all ; with the
scythe, not fora hay crop, but a handful of grass;
or in hard weather, if restricted to the upward cut,
he may prune a hedge; or, besides preparing fire-
wood, he will dress with a plane the pieces of an
upright paling, which take long time, but need no
fineness of polish.

Should your boy grow an adept, a little rise of
wages, well bestowed, may keep him for another
year ; but the probability is that shortly after you
have made him useful, he is off to farm service or
some trade. But the better he is you are the surer
of another as good. His fame is in your favour;

MINISTER'S BOY. 287

and your patience with a novice, as well as your art
of instruction, remain. Character, whether of
master or of servant, is like volatile salt; and term-
days are but the stir that makes the odour diffusive.
There is no narrower view of life than to suppose
that any thing good or bad, however trifling, is
unnoticed. Every thing that every man does or
says is known, is talked of, is commented upon, far
and wide; and characters made up of grains of sand,
some larger pieces stand out in the landscape of the
district, as distinctly seen and rated, to a degree,
as all manner of buildings, from a hovel to a tower.
Mothers have more boys to dispose of, and have seen
how others fared with you — their stations as well
as their morals improved, and their service sought
— they come with a younger brother of your former
boy, or with one somehow connected, and to whom
every thing about your place is as well known as to
your own family. Such a one is predisposed to do
well, and comes to his service with a mind suited
to the circumstances of his calling; ambitious to
thrive, and fearing to come short of those who have
done well before. Thus, on the true principle, that
if comfort, not necessity, be considered, masters
are no more independent than servants, you insure
the receiving by the conferring of benefits; and it
will certainly be found that none of your pains and
patience with a former boy are lost by his depar-
ture; for the good that he has gained holds out a
reward; your instructions, through him, are con-
veyed to others; and your house becomes a place

288

APPENDIX.

which the worthless will shun, and the well doing
will covet. And thus, whilst your art of training
improves, you have in fact less to do with it; your
temper, tried by fewer mischiefs, will be soothed by
the sight of good order and willing service; and
conscience, instead of being galled by the thought
of sending half yearly from the manse a pest to
society, will be gratified by the hope of making a
succession of youths more fit for the world, and more
likely to see the kingdom of heaven.

Printed by William Collins and Co., Ill North Montrose Street, Glasgow.

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