MANURES. 89 



cording to the gracious law of Providence, the strength 

 which was borrowed from it ; but not so great as that old 

 lady hoped, who, bringing home a mistaken impression, 

 after listening to a conversation between two gardeners 

 on the beneficial influence of leaf- mould on Tea-Roses, 

 collected for weeks the morning and evening remains of 

 the teapot, and applied them to her Rose-trees " to trans- 

 form them," as she told her acquaintance (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, in which — barren, rainless, and, as they 

 seemed to man, useless — 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 through- 

 out the civilised world, and still remains in immense abund- 

 ance for us and generations after us. Guano, nevertheless, 

 is not tJie manure for Roses. Its influence is quickly and 

 prominently acknowledged by additional size and brightness 

 of foliage,* but the efflorescence, so far as my experiments 



* The Rev. W. F. Radclyffe strongly recommends saltpetre and nitrophos- 

 phate (blood) manure, as imparting a deeper, richer green to foliage. 



