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CHAPTER II 
MANURING THE SOIL AND MAKING HOT-BEDS. 
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Most persons imagine that manure is all that is wanted to make 
a garden fruitful; and thus, if the fruit-trees do not bear, and the 
flowers and vegetables do not thrive, manure is considered the uni- 
versal panacea. Now, the fact is, that so far from this being the 
- case, most small gardens have been manured a great deal too much; 
and in many, the surface soil, instead of consisting of rich friable 
mould, only presents a soft black shining substance, whi & is the 
humic acid from manure saturated with stagnant water. N92 appear- 
ance is more common in the gardens of street-houses than this, from 
these gardens being originally ill drained, and yet continually wa- 
tered; and from their possessors loading them with manure, in the 
hope of rendering them fertile. 
As it is known to chemists that it is printigpally the humic acid, 
and carbonic acid gas, contained in manure, which make that sub- 
Stance nourishing to plants; and as these acids must be dissolved m 
water before the roots can take them up, it may seem strange that 
any solution of them in water, however strong it may be, should be 
injurious to vegetation. The fact is, however, that it is the great 
quantity of food contained in the water that renders it unwholesome. 
When the roots of a plant and their little sponge-like terminations, 
are examined in a powerful microscope, it will be clearly seen that 
no thick substance can pass through them. Thus water loaded with 
gross coarse matter, as it is when saturated with-humic acid, must 
be more than the poor spongioles can swallow; and yet, as they are 
rk spongelike, their nature prompts them, whenever they find 
mois to attempt to take it up, without having the power of dis- 
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