176 A Valuahle Winding Sheet [April, 



top of the barrel being well covered, and the whole situated in a shady 

 place, not the least unpleasant smell was ever perceived, and better, our 

 kitchen door had no unsightly slop spot beside it to draw the flies. A 

 half-barrel of washings was tims accumulated every day, and as the sun 

 went down, I dipped it out with an old pail, and distributed it among my 

 vegetables. Potatoes, peas, beans, etc., were all alike supplied, the whole 

 of the little plat being gone over in the course of every nine days the 

 season through. Besides this, I continued to save the ashes and urine, 

 which I put around the several articles of produce just as a rain seemed 

 to be approaching, that the substance of the compost might thereby be 

 washed into the earth, and none lost by evaporation. The whole ground 

 was well cultivated with the hoe. 



The result of this management was most gratifying to me, and quite 

 surprising to my neighbors. Every article planted in my garden grew 

 fast and stout, and bore earlier and more abundantly than any in the 

 neighborhood. One gentleman, who had a most beautiful, soft, and rich 

 piece of ground, upon which he had put all desirable quantities of well- 

 rotted horse manure, and who was looked upon as the most skillful 

 gardener in the town, confessed himself greatly surprised at the success 

 of ray " experiment," and acknowledged that for once he was beaten. 



Whether in potatoes, tomatoes, turnips, or cabbage, the kitchen slops 

 and chamber ley treatment proved the superiority of their fertilizing and 

 stimulating qualities. On a patch eighteen feet square I had five bushels 

 of noble ruta bagas ; from twelve tomato vines I gathered fourteen bush- 

 els of fruit, and my potatoes yielded a bushel to every six hills. And 

 this return in a very dry season and from a " condemned " garden plat. 

 Verily, thought I, this is good for an early experimenter, and " book 

 learning" and agricultural papers deserve patronage, for from these I 

 learned what little I knew of gardening." 



< ♦ • • »■ 



A VALUABLE ^V I N D I N G SHEET. 



In making excavations for a railroad in Peru, the workmen recently 

 discovered an Indian rolled up in a shroud of gold. Before the engineer 

 was informed of it, the workmen had cut up the sheet, and divided it 

 among themselves. He judged that the weight of the entire shroud 

 must have been eight or nine pounds. 



