H GARDEN MAXAGEMEXT. 



the soil in the best possible li3'grometrical condition for the develojmient of 

 vegetable life. Drainage has also a powerful influence in altering the texture 

 of soils. It enriches their plant feeding capabilities; elevates their tempera- 

 ture, and improves the general climate of a whole district, by increasing ^ts 

 temperature, and removing unhealthy exhalations and foetid miasmas, — the 

 fruitful hotbeds of fevers and agues, which desolate all damp districts. It 

 laj'S land dvy, by removing superfluous water ; it keeps it moist, by increasing 

 its power of resisting the force of evaporation ; it alters the texture, b}' the 

 conduction of water, and by filling the interstices j^reviously occni^ied by 

 that fluid with atmospheric air ; it enriches the soil, by separating carbonic 

 acid gas and ammonia from the atmosphere, and by facilitating the decom- 

 position, absorption, and amalgamation of liquid and solid manures. It 

 heightens the temperature of the earth, by husbanding its heat, and sur- 

 rounding it with an envelope of comparatively diy air, and by substituting 

 the air for water withdrawn througli the interstices of the soil ; for while the 

 tendency of excessive moisture in the soil is to bind the whole mass into an 

 almost solid substance ; so the tendency of air is to separate its jmrticles into 

 separate atoms, and render it porous : aiid the more porous a soil is, the 

 greater is its power of resisting evaporation. For this reason, porous soils 

 are more moist in hot weather than those of a more tenacious character. 



115. " Drainage enriches soils in another way. All rain-water is more or 

 less charged with carbonic acid gas and ammonia. Now, the larger the quantity 

 of rain-water that passes through the soil, the greater will be the amount 

 of these gases brought in contact with the roots of plants. Nor is this all : 

 solid manures of the richest quality are compai'atively useless on wet heavy 

 soils ; for while a certain amount of moisture is essential to the decomposition 

 of manures, an excess arrests the XDi'ocess, and all the most soluble portions 

 are washed out long before it is sufficiently decomposed to enter into the 

 composition of plants. Judicious drainage, therefore, places the soil in a 

 proper hygrometrical condition for performing its important function." 



116. Next to drainage, fire is the great ameliorator of soils ; and in laying- 

 out garden-grounds, where clay forms the soil or subsoil, calcination will be 

 found a most effective fertilizer. The land being thoroughly drained, and the 

 imths marked out according to the working plan, it will be necessary to fill up 

 all inequalities of the surface ; for a garden or lawn should present no 

 inequality beyond a gentle slope. This inequality is to be removed by 

 levelling the high parts and filling up all hollows with the earth i-emoved 

 from them, and by grubbing up all trees and shrubs which are^not intended 

 to stand : as a general rule, none such should be left. When the surface-soil 

 is of a loamy, friable description, the first spit, for eight or nine inches, should 

 be carefully preserved in a heap with its herbage : it is the most valuable 

 compost the gardener possesses. Even where it is a stiff clay, a mLxture of 

 sandy soil and lime will impart all the best fertilizing cliaracters to it. When 

 the subsoil is a stiff unmanageable clay, calcination will render it a valuable 



