editor's table. 



docks, thistles, and other nozions weeds, in and round the fields and plantations, wherev 

 he wont ; also the plantains and daisies on the lawn, and such weeds as he could see in the 

 heds or borders ; and, to the last, I could never convince him that he often did more harm 

 than good by so doing. It was his way, and ho could no more help it than I could. A 

 Groundsel, or a Shepherd's Purse, or a Dandelion, and many more such common weeds, 

 take several days after the flowers open before they seed, or do any more harm than is done 

 already ; meantime, some one passes by that way who pulls out the weed, and carries it 

 out of the way at once, or sends some one else to weed that bed or border ; but the " governor" 

 gets there before him, with the everlasting spud and the ruling passion, twists down the 

 Groundsel with one turn of the spud, cuts the neck of the dandelion in two, or makes a 

 hole in the grass, big enough to play marbles into, trying to root out a plantain or a daisy 

 — all of which is doing more harm than good. The Groundsel has sap enough in it to 

 ripen its seeds while it lies unperceived till the mischief is done, till a fresh crop of seed- 

 lings spring up. So the bottom half of the broken neck of the dandelion sends up four 

 heads for the lost one, and there are thus four chances that the mischief will run mucli 

 further than it would were it not for the spud. In short, I would as soon let a Welsh goat 

 into the shrubbery, as let an amateur spudder into any part of my own garden. 



There are other people, and most of them are nice, amiable people, who never do any 

 real harm in a garden, save one kind of mischief, and that they do unknowingly to them- 

 selves. It is their way of " stopping." If they stop a thing, they think it is stopped for 

 good, and there is an end of it ; but the end is no better than from spudding ; they pull 

 up the weed, and, may be, shake the soil from the roots ; but they throw it down in the 

 same place, and if it is of the seedling class, a crop of seeds is sown there before the gar- 

 dener sees that a dead or a dying weed was there at all ; whereas, if this weed had been 

 left standing, he would have seen it the next time he passed that way ; and he would " stop" 

 it according to the rules of his own art ; he would have it up, root and branch, and carried 

 off at once ; and all those who stop weeds on any other j)lan do, or may do, more harm than 

 good. 



There are other masters, and some mistresses, too, who read a great deal about gardening 

 without ever studying one single word on the subject. You would take them to be very 

 clever on gardening from their conversation, but if you saw their " stopping," you would 

 just think as I do, and I think a great deal, at times, about such things. The meaning of 

 a sentence of much import may be lost by putting the comma, the smallest " stop," in the 

 wrong place ; and it is the same if you apply the smallest stopping to plants and trees ; 

 stopping a shoot at the wrong time, or in the wrong place, may spoil the shape of a speci- 

 men, the flowering of the best geranium, the fruiting or the future crop of a vine or a peach, 

 or any one plant you may think of ; and yet these superficial people think there is no art 

 in stopping, beyond the mere process of doing the act, from the weeding of the walks, up 

 to the regulation of the branches of the Mangosteen itself. You have only to put their 

 stopper on, and all is right ; and must be right, for they have read of it, and knew it years 

 ago ! — Cottage Gardener. 



Olden Mode of Heatixg. — That quaint old writer, John Evelyn, in his Gardeners^ Calendar 

 for November, gives the following directions for heating a greenhouse ; the date is 1676, about 

 the period of the settlement of Pennsylvania : " If the season prove exceeding i)iercing 

 (which you may know by the freezing of a dish of water, or moistened cloth, set for that 

 purpose in your greenhouse), kindle some charcoals, and when they have done smoking, i>ut 

 them in a hole sunk a little into the ^oor, about the middle of it. This is the safest stove.'" 

 The cloth for a thermometer ! The " charcoals" would have been a poor protection last 

 winter ! 



