lOi 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



they always bored, and found it of course. Tliey will go 

 three times that depth, as hns been often proved. Still, 

 let no one imagine that onions will grow in such as an 

 osier-bed ; but the filth of towns will be rich food for 

 such a foul-feeding genus as Allium, and instead of our 

 supplies of these plants being drawn from high dry or 

 shallow ground with heavy manurings, they should get 

 their natural habitat, and eat up for our life and health 

 what would otherwise produce disease and death. 

 Celery is another denizen of tlie dirt ; it is an aquatic 

 plant, and poisonous, growing naturally in muddy shal- 

 low water. I need not say more of celery, as it is a 

 very unmanageable crop ; still, the mud is its natural 

 place, and I could not pass it unnoticed, as it is evi- 

 dently only in its infancy yet, as regards quantity : being 

 a great luxury, it will always sell if it could be grown 

 cheap enough. But the great scavenger of all is the 

 rhubarb.* This plant comes into the world with its 

 helmet on, ready for the season. Should a few inches 

 deep of thick filth settle over its crown, no matter ; and 

 should a couple of fathoms of flood-water cover that, 

 still the rhubarb is dormant and dry, biding its time; 

 but when the waters subside, and sunshine warms the 

 soil, the rhubarb raises its nightcap ; and when you see 

 that it had no seam, there is no question as to its mission 

 being to keep the crown dry and free of rot during the 

 winter, under water. Now let us see what abilities this 

 plant is endowed with, to grapple with the filth in which 

 he dwells. Rapidity of growth beyond all precedent — 

 spread of foliage, as if half-a-dozen umbrellas were at- 

 tached to each crown to elaborate the effluvia into food. 

 The acidifying agency of the atmosphere upon all the 

 heterogeneous swill is here met by a plant requiring 

 such an amount of acid as would puzzle all the chemists 

 and agriculturists to find the supply; hence in less fa- 

 voured spots the rhubarb is small in size, and woody in 

 texture, just because it had not its building materials 

 at hand, being what Sir Joseph Banks would have 

 termed (a weed), "a plant out of its place." If a 

 thousand acres more or less were laid down in rhubarb, 

 in such localities for example as the down and dell land 

 under Leicester and Carlisle (I mention these because 

 they are before the public on their trial trips), the 

 quantity of human food so produced, from the human 

 filth already there, would be such a change as would 



amply repay the cultivator as to the raising of any 

 amount of dirty water to a higher level for the pur- 

 poses of cultivation ; that is a subject already settled, 

 and one has only to look at our mines, and the water 

 raised to feed our canals, to see what can be done in 

 this way. I need not say that the deposit will very 

 soon raise the land to enable quite a new character of 

 plants to inhabit it : for only a few inches higher, and we 

 have the region of sour apples, the Isleworth market- 

 garden style of first-class fruit trees ; but T do not in- 

 tend to touch upon ulterior subjects : I would simply 

 grapple with the mud, and set the natural scavengers to 

 store it in their botanical sacs, just as we see swarms of 

 filthy grubs devouring the hundreds of tons of sea- 

 weed cast upon the beach after a storm : they eat it, and 

 take wings and fly away, if they are lucky enough to 

 get out of the reach of fish and fowl. God hath so 

 arranged order and cleanliness, that the place for filth is 

 a little way under ground, and there in darkness the 

 plant preys on it, and the beautiful green mantle which 

 gladdens our hearts in the sunshine is the produce of 

 this lower charnel-house reanimated for our support, 

 and wearing a cheerful and inviting aspect as becometh 

 the Giver. 



The alder, for its rods and for its wood used in the 

 turnery business, may be mentioned in passing, as it is 

 really at home only in the mad bank ; but the willows, 

 sallows, and their nearly allied species, the poplars, are 

 as a group the wholesale carriers-ofF of converted river 

 mud. An osier bed is not worth owning,unless it gets warped 

 or flooded annually, so as to let the deposit of its own 

 fallen foliage and other vegetable matter get to it as 

 manure. To see the great value of willow-rods occa- 

 sionally obtained from some worthless swamp — worth- 

 less as regards the cultivation of ordinary farm crops, 

 but still a money producing and highly remunerative 

 crop to those who have suited the crop to the locality ; 

 and this is] precisely what I am aiming at, to set the 

 mill to work that can convert the natural or the arti- 

 ficial swamp, the land within reach of irrigation by the 

 swill of towns, into a remunerative plantation of plants 

 adapted by nature for that end. 



Alex. Forsyth. 



13, Islhu/ton Square, Salford. 



THE BEST MEANS FOR IMPROVING THE DWELLINGS OF 

 THE LABOURING CLASSES. 



Another agricultural truism is fast coming to be ad- 

 mitted. If it " pays better " to keep stock in warmth 

 and comfort than to suffer them to be ill-boused and 

 starved, the same system is found to be equally ap- 

 plicable to the man who looks after them. John 



* The name "rhubarb" [Rheum rJiaponticum) is derived 

 from Rheum Rha, the Volga, a river in Russia, oveiflowering 

 its banks often, and depositiag the swill of some hundreds of 

 miles gathering from the towns situated on its banks, and 

 those of its tributaries. Tbe rhubarb is a nntive cf this loralitv 



Leech's companion sketches will long outlive the 

 mere number of Punch, and suggest many a home 

 question to the landlord with a "proper pride " in his 

 stables and his homestead. As we heard one say, as he 

 stood in just such a box as that in the print, " How 



where its immense fleshy underground stems, highly charged 

 with yellow colouring matter and high medicinal qualities, 

 luxuriates in the deep alluvial deposits disintegrated from all 

 the elements of town and country life. 



