PREFACE PAR? II 



Gardening. This I propose to treat of in a small distinct volume, 

 under some appropriate title ; and, in this volume, to give alpha 

 betically, a description of all the plants, cultivated for the use of 

 the table and also of those cultivated as cattle food. To this 

 description I shall add an account of their properties, and in 

 structions for the cultivation of them in the best manner. It 

 is not my intention to go beyond what is aptly enough called the 

 Kitchen Garden : but, as a hot-bed may be of such great use even 

 to the farmer ; and as ample materials for making beds of this 

 sort are always at his command without any expense, I shall 

 endeavour to give plain directions for the making and managing 

 of a hot-bed. A bed of this sort, fifteen feet long, has given me, 

 this year, the better part of an acre of fine cabbages to give to hogs 

 in the parching month otjuly. This is so very simple a matter ; 

 is so very easy to learn ; that there is scarcely a farmer in 

 America, who would not put the thing in practice, at once, with 

 complete success. 



163. Let not my countrymen, who may happen to read this 

 suppose, that these, or any other, pursuits will withdraw my 

 attention from, or slacken my zeal in, that cause, which is common 

 to us all. That cause claims, and has, my first attention and best 

 exertion ; that is the business of my life : these other pursuits 

 are my recreation. KING ALFRED allowed eight hours for 

 recreation, in the twenty-four, eight for sleep, and eight for business. 

 I do not take my allowance of the two former. 



164. Upon looking into the First Part, I see, that I expressed 

 a hope to be able to give, in some part of this work, a sketch of the 

 work of Mr. TULL. I have looked at TULL, and I cannot bring 

 my mind up to the commission of so horrid an act as that of 

 garbling such a work. It was, perhaps, a feeling, such as that 

 which I experience at this moment, which restrained Mr. 

 CURWEN from even naming TULL, when he gave one of TULL S 

 experiments to the world as a discovery of his ozvn. Unable to 

 screw himself up to commit a murder, he contented himself with 

 a robbery ; an instance, he may, indeed, say, of singular modera 

 tion and self-denial ; especially when we consider of w r hat an 

 assembly he has, with little intermission, been an &quot; Honourable 

 Member &quot; for the last thirty years of his life. 



WM. COBBETT. 



North Hempstead, Long Island, 

 i$th November, 1818. 



