THE SECOND YEAR. 177 



Fresh application was made to the books, but the 

 information there contained was not quite so full 

 and satisfactory as had been expected. Much was 

 said about cold frames, and housing young plants for 

 the winter, but very little that seemed to meet the 

 case in point. My plants did not want any housing 

 over winter ; they were to be eaten at once, if they 

 would only come to the edible point. The sole diffi 

 culty was that they presented to the eye nothing that 

 in the least resembled what one finds in market un 

 der the name of cauliflower a delicious concentra 

 tion of vegetable cream. There were leaves and 

 stalks, but no flower, and what precisely the former 

 were good for except to feed the cow, neither Pat 

 rick nor myself could exactly tell. He had a very 

 vague idea of the cause of the difficulty, and all that 

 the books seemed to suggest was a return to that 

 most useful nourishment, the liquid fertilizer. 



Our kitchen sink having been exhausted on the 

 strawberries, this had to be manufactured from the 

 refuse of the chicken coop. It was not a refined 

 idea to pour such a filthy compound over so absorb 

 ent a substance in fact, over any substance that 

 was to be eaten and the necessity of success alone 

 forced me to it. But the plants were themselves 

 evidently disgusted with such treatment, and only 

 II 2 



