SOILS. 79 



spade aforesaid ; and in this soil, trenched and ex- 

 posed to the air for a few weeks afterwards, I 

 planted my Briers. Then followed the manure, of 

 which I have yet to speak, and in due course the 

 Roses. These in their first summer, 1865 (I do 

 not chronicle my success from egotism, but as 

 facts for the encouragement of others), won the 

 two first prizes at Birmingham, and two seconds at 

 the Crystal Palace, with very little assistance from 

 their allies over the water ; and in 1 868, from 

 *' maiden" stocks — /. r., from Briers budded in 

 1867 — I won fourteen first prizes out of sixteen 

 collections shown, including that which was then 

 considered the champion prize of all, the first 

 awarded to amateurs at the Grand National Show 

 of the Royal Horticultural Society. 



In this case, as with the heavy clay, the remedy 

 lay close to the disease ; and in very many similar 

 cases, it will be found that, by intermixing the 

 stronger and more tenacious subsoil with the sur- 

 face, fertility may be secured. If not in actual 

 proximity, the element required for a defective soil 

 — clay, for example, when sand predominates — 

 may be procured generally at no great distance, and 

 may be fetched in a waggon or a wheelbarrow,* 



* -In the summer of 1870 a gardener remarked to a friend of mine, 

 who had won a first prize for Roses at Newark, " I believe, sir, that 



