SOILS. 73 



are told, in Mortimer's Husbandry , makes an ex- 

 traordinary manure for land that is sandy, but this 

 gritty rubbish demoralizes whatever comes. You 

 may expel nature with a muck-fork on Monday, 

 but on Tuesday morning she will be back, and 

 grinning. 



This exception, however, only proves the rule, 

 that difficulties must yield to cultivation, and to 

 free-trade in soil. This is, no doubt, a matter of 

 Radical Reform {Radix, genitive radicis, a root), 

 but the Conservatories have taken a decided lead 

 in it. The growers of stove and greenhouse 

 plants collect their material from all quarters : 

 from India, the fibres of the cocoa-nut ; their sand 

 from Relgate; their peat from Seven-Oaks; their 

 leaf- mould, their Sphagnum, and other mosses, 

 from forest and bog ; their top-spits from the rich 

 old pasture ; their manures, natural and artificial, 

 from Peru to the farm-yard. They stand in their 

 potting-sheds surrounded by these varied articles 

 of home and foreign produce, even as the men of 

 Gunter among the rich ingredients of the matri- 

 monial cake. Regard, too, the perfect drainage 

 provided for these plants ; no chronic saturation, 

 dangerous to life, as all dropsies are ; no perpetual 

 conflict between air and water, but each exercising 

 its function in peace. And yet many a man who 



