170 FIVE ACKES TOO MUCH. 



My trip was principally undertaken apart from 

 some business claims which importunate clients in 

 sisted on pressing upon me to study the European 

 mode of agriculture. With that view I spent most 

 of my time in Paris, and went steadily to the Jardin 

 des Plantes, Jardin ^d Acclimitation, Jardin Mobille, 

 Chateau de Vincennes, Chateau des Fleurs, the Lilac 

 Festival, Bois des Boulogne, Pare Monceau, and all 

 such places where there was a chance to learn any 

 thing I did not know before. The information I ac 

 quired was very valuable, and if the reader perceives 

 its effect in the future pages he need not be surprised. 

 This threw the garden pretty much upon Patrick s 

 shoulders, and he bought me a new lot of forty chick 

 ens, two watch-dogs, and four cats as the rats had 

 almost taken possession of my house and barn, think 

 ing, apparently, that it was built for their conven 

 ience and put into the ground the most enormous 

 quantity of manure. He seemed to have imbibed 

 the scientific agriculturist s admiration for fertilizers, 

 or else felt an interest in the welfare of his numer 

 ous friends and compatriots in the neighborhood who 

 kept pigs and cattle, and raised what the books po 

 litely term compost. He spread seven hundred loads 

 of it on my five acres, and when he was through there 

 was not a load of compost to be had in Flushing for 



