•88 THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



manuring; and while sucli branches of practice are thoroughly 

 described, they are not treated in a manner so as to produce the 

 backache in reading about them. The book is not by any means 

 dull and dry, but is such as an amateur gardener might rest over — 

 that is, read with pleasure even when fatigued after a hard day's 

 labour. In this respect it differs advantageously from the usual 

 style of kitchen-gardening books which are rather profusely issued 

 from the press ; yet while the style is free and pleasant, the practice 

 detailed is sound. 



" Besides treating briefly on the principles of kitchen gardening, 

 such as site, form, character of soil, etc., there are chapters on pits 

 and frames, protecting, soils, manures, and the cultivation suited to 

 crops of vegetables, herbs, and fruits usually found in moderate- 

 sized gardens. These chapters are concise, and the instructions 

 given are explicit. The selections of varieties are judicious, and far 

 superior to those given in a bulky volume recently issued, which was 

 once a standard work. The author of the ' Amateur's Kitchen 

 Garden ' has not fallen into the common error of recommending the 

 Mazagan Bean as the best early variety, but correctly describes it as 

 a ' poor thing, but early.' We agree that it is little better than a 

 horse bean, but have never found it so early as the Early Longpod. 

 The author's practice on Broccoli culture having been gained in the 

 south he has not experienced the difficulty of preserving that im- 

 portant crop through the winter, which is so hard to accomplish in 

 northern districts. He has never found it necessary to lay the 

 plants down, but he has found the value of sprinkling the ground 

 between the plants with salt at the rate of ten or twelve bushels to 

 the acre. Others who adopt this practice will find the value of it 

 too, for, as the author observes, ' it is certainly not a waste of labour 

 or of salt, for the result is a wholesale destruction of vermin, and a 

 consequent protection of the plants from their ravages during those 

 mild winter and early spring days, when slugs and other such come 

 forth in iroops and eat out the hearts of the best vegetables in the 

 garden. It is worth remembering, too, that the salt is worth its cost 

 as manure, and its presence in the soil will benefit the next crop.' 

 When the author found in his trials that Snow's Winter White 

 Broccoli was in use from April 2nd to April 16th, we think he 

 had not the true variety, or the trials were conducted during an 

 exceptional season. We usually cut heads of this variety in 

 January. 



"The practical nature of the volume will be best exemplified by 

 a few further extracts. Alluding to such necessities as walls and 

 fences, low walls for fruit trees, which have recently been advocated 

 in a sensational pamphlet, are rightly denounced — negatively, it is 

 true, but none the less emphatically by the following sentence : — 

 ' The minimum height for a wall to be of any use in fruit-growing is 

 eight feet.' Such a wall the author goes on to say ' should be nine 

 inches thick, and have a coping projecting forwards. If from eight 

 to fourteen feet the thickness should be thirteen and a half inches, 

 and the coping six to eight inches. If from fourteen to twenty feet 

 the thickness must be eighteen inches, and the coping should project 



