MANURES. * es 2 
the black peat, for heath mot te or sandy peat, which i is what is aa 
erally called earth i in ¢ s, is very useful, even in its natural 
state, for the growth of all hair-rooted plants, such as the Cape 
Heaths; the Rhododendrons, and other American plants; and all 
the eaten shrubs. The reason of this difference is, that the 
mixture of sand with the peat prevents its retention of water; and it 
is only the retention of water around the vegetable fibre which pre- 
vents its decomposition. Thus where natural heath mould cannot 
be procured, mixing the black peat with fine white sand has the 
effect of rendering it suitable for the growth of hair-rooted plants. 
Manures.—The kinds of manure generally used in gardens are 
horse or cow dung, and decayed vegetable matters; the manure in 
both cases being suffered to lie in a heap to rot before it is spread on 
the ground, in order that its component parts may be decomposed 
by fermentation, and thus brought into a fit state to afford food to 
the plants. Old hot-beds or mushroom beds are thus well adapted 
for manuring a garden; and when fresh stable-dung is employed 
~for that purpose, it is generally thrown into a heap, and turned over 
several times till the fermentation has abated, before it is dug into 
the ground. As, however, a great quantity of the manure is dissolved 
and washed away by the rain which falls upon the heap, while it is 
undergoing the process of fermentation, and as it seems a great pity 
that so much of the nutritious properties of the manure should be 
lost, a quantity of earth should always be laid round the dung-hill to 
imbibe the liquid that runs from it, and this earth will be found very 
nearly as valuable for manuring the beds of a garden, as the manure 
itself. 
The properties of horse and cow dung, considered as manures, vary 
exceedingly; the former abounding in nitrogen, in which the latter 
is nearly deficient. All manures abounding in nitrogen are. 
by gardeners hot; because the gases they evolve, if too strong, 
blacken the rah as though they had been exposed to the action of 
fire; and on the contrary, all the manures which do not evolve 
gases producing this effect, are termed by gardeners cold. 
The modes of applying manure differ according to the difference of 
the soils. For sandy loams, thoroughly rotten dung, either from an 
old hot-bed, or from a dung-hill sufficiently decayed to be cut easily 
with the spade, should be laid on the surface of the soil, and dug in. 
in very poor sandy soils, rotten maps or earth saturated with 
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