254 Mrs. Ibbetson on the [April, 



thistles, bird weed, &c. would in two months, or three at furthest, 

 make excellent garden mould ; the very first support and food of 

 plants." But should not Varlo have remembered that cabbages, 

 carrots, turnips, potatoes, &c. are perpetually placed in the 

 ground, on purpose to preserve them from the rot, which the air 

 would undoubtedly produce ; and from the cold, which would 

 spoil them ; that they remain there from four to six months, with 

 no other disadvantage than the too hasty growth of the roots ? 

 That all these plants belong to that part of the vegetable which 

 is soonest destroyed, that having little wood, of a very loose kind, 

 it decays far quicker in the earth than ligneous plants ; and that 

 they would certainly be putrified within this time, if the soil did 

 not possess a power of arresting all fermentation, for a certain 

 season, and thus preventing the approach to putrefaction ? After 

 seeing how seeds are preserved in the earth, it is astonishing 

 that any agriculturist should suppose that vegetables are easily 

 susceptible of decomposition. That very eminent chemist, Sir 

 H. Davy, has said, that the juices of one plant are of no use in 

 making manure for others, till the plants have passed through 

 the various processes of fermentation, putrefaction, and decom- 

 position. ]No assertion can be more just ; and before all this 

 process can be much more than commenced, death, the most 

 obstinate of all, must be perfected. To kill some vegetables, 

 and prevent their resuscitation in the earth, is no easy matter, 

 especially weeds that are sure to be natural to the soil in which 

 they grow. There is also in every plant a certain part more liable 

 than the rest to throw out radicles, when stimulated by the contact 

 of earth ; and if any one of the hearts of the seeds* is retained there 

 (which is often the case), and that the want of air and moisture 

 suspends the fermentation for a long space, so that the plant 

 has time to accumulate around the hearts of its seeds that juice 

 which will stimulate it to throw out its radicles, the vegetable, 

 instead of fermentation and death, will live and send up suckers. 

 Now weeds are almost all natural to the soil in which they 

 spring ; they are most of them herbaceous or annual plants, of 

 that loose and green kind of wood that is easily destroyed, and 

 as quickly restored ; and they have besides little wood, which is 

 also in their favour: they are for all these reasons very liable 

 to spring up anew. In grass the same causes act ; but in woody 

 plants life is more easily exterminated, and with greater difficulty 

 renewed. 1 took up, however, the decayed part of the root of 

 an apple tree ; yet was a long and tender shoot almost as thick 

 as my little finger, and half as long, produced from it ; it was 

 just formed, though the root to which it was attached was so 

 decayed, as to have lost all its bark, and the greatest part of the 

 wood was perfectly dead, except about an inch or two of the line 



* I have shown that that small ball which is the heart of the seed, is that which 

 comes from the root, and has within it that branch which forms the next year's 

 dioot; it is most diminutive, but perceptible in the solar microscope. 



