v MANURES 79 
in humus, no hoeing on the surface can prevent the 
plants from suffering in a hot dry summer, and some- 
thing in the nature of a top-dressing or a mulch is 
necessary. But that will not make it a Rose soil, 
where H.P.s can be grown satisfactorily. 
Avery good authority recommends that,in planting, 
the manure be applied in the fashion of a sandwich ; 
that is, I take it, manure below, then soil, then the 
roots, then more soil, some manure over that, and the 
soil again at the surface. The danger here, I think, 
would be of either making the top layer of manure so 
thin as to be nearly useless, or getting the roots too 
deep. 
Top-dressings of brewers’ grains, or other com- 
pounds, are recommended by Dean Hole and other 
writers, but I think that on a proper Rose soil some of 
the above disadvantages would be found connected 
with any one of them. 
Of solid manure not made up of straw, night-soil is 
perhaps the most important. And asa strong believer 
in the earth system I am tempted here to enlarge upon 
the well-worn theme of the folly of civilised mankind 
in wasting immense quantities of manure, which they 
spend large sums in replacing, by discharging in into 
the rivers where it does untold harm, instead of re- 
turning it to the earth, as God commanded Moses, to 
the great advantage of their health, their pockets and 
their gardens and fields. 
Science continues to show more and more, on the 
one hand by the light it throws on the dissemination 
by water of typhoid fever and cholera, and on the 
other by the discovery of the purifying mission of 
the bacteria in the surface soil, that earth is the 
best receptacle for night-soil and water the worst. 
