4 THE GARDENER. [Jan. 



is their reviving power, which gives back to the ground, according to 

 the gracious law of Providence, tlie strength which was borrowed from 

 it, but not so great as that old lady hoped, who, bringing home a mis- 

 taken impression, after listening to a conversation between two garden- 

 ers on the beneficial influence of leaf-mould on Tea-Roses, collected for 

 weeks the morning and evening remains of the Tea-pot, and applied 

 them to her Rose-trees " to transform them," as she told her acquaint- 

 ance (and I am assured of the fact by one of them), " into Tea-scented 

 Chinas next summer." 



Nor, crossing the seas, among those bird-islands of Peru, Bolivia, 

 Patagonia, where, rainless, barren, deserted, as they seemed to man, the 

 fish-fed fowls of the ocean were accumulating for centuries a treasure-heap 

 more precious than gold — millions upon millions of tons of rich manure, 

 which has multiplied the food of nations throughout the civilised 

 world, and still remains in immense abundance for us and generations 

 after us. Guano, nevertheless, is not the manure for Roses. Its in- 

 fluence is quickly and prominently acknowledged by additional size 

 and brightness of foliage, but the efflorescence, so far as my experi- 

 ments have shown, derives no advantage as to vigour or beauty; and 

 even on the leaf the effect is transitory. 



Nor in the guano of animal implume — not in the soil called night. 

 The Romans reverenced Cloacina, the goddess of the sewers, and the 

 statue which they found of her in the great drains of Tarquinius, was 

 beautiful as Venus's self ; but they honoured her, doubtless, only as a 

 wise sanatory commissioner, who removed their impurities, and, so 

 doing, brought health to their heroes and loveliness to their maidens. 

 They only knew half her merits ; but in Olympus, we may readily be- 

 lieve, there was fuller justice done. Although weaker goddesses may 

 have been unkind — may have averted their divine noses when Cloacina 

 passed, and made ostentatious use of scent-bottle and pocket-handker- 

 chief — Flora, and Pomona, and Ceres would ever admire her virtues, 

 and beseech her benign influence upon the garden, the orchard, and 

 the farm. But the terrestrials never thought that foix urhis might be 

 lux orbis, and they polluted their rivers, as we ours, with that which 

 should have fertilised their lands. And we blame the Romans very 

 much indeed ; and we blame everybody else very much indeed ; and 

 we do hope the time will soon be here when such a sinful waste will 

 no longer disgrace an enlightened age ; but, beyond the contribution 

 of this occasional homily, it is, of course, no affair of ours. Each man 

 assures his neighbour that the process of desiccation is quite easy, and 

 the art of deodorising almost nice; but nobody "goes in." The 

 reader, I have no doubt, has with me had large experience of this per- 

 versity in neighbours, and ofttimes has been perplexed and pained 



