152 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS 



are chosen because their loose and fibrous tissue dissolve 

 more readily into soil. 



In the same manner they lay up a heap of cow-manure, 

 which is left to ferment en masse. Every country has its 

 customs, and the Dutch customs make a real difference in 

 the quality of the materials employed. All over Holland 

 cows are kept in stalls from November to May only, and 

 during this time they do not eat grass. All the summer 

 they remain in the open, night and day, in the fields, so that 

 manure is not kept or taken up in the summer months. In 

 the winter, when the cows are fed on nothing but dry food, 

 the manure is of quite another quality from the summer 

 manure, when cows have grass. This may be useful to note 

 for those who live in countries where manure is kept all 

 the year round. Cows are tethered in stalls in so narrow a 

 compass that one can hardly conceive how they can exist 

 like this. They stand on a kind of platform between 

 two trenches, before and behind them ; in the front trench 

 their food is put, which they can only get at by pushing 

 their heads between boards, which also prevent them from 

 reaching too far and pulling out the food, where it would 

 be trampled under their feet. The second trench, which is 

 deeper, is behind them to receive the manure, which is taken 

 away and heaped up in a dry place, where it can easily 

 drain and where the rain can also run off, for no water or 

 wet is allowed to settle in or near the heap. As no straw 

 whatever enters into the composition of this manure, it is 

 not at all like the kind collected in other countries. I do 

 not know if this is the reason, or why it is that in England, 

 especially round London, hyacinth growers avoid using cow- 

 manure as much as possible, the soil there being so stiff and 

 rich that it suits them better to make it a little poorer, 

 with an admixture of sand, than to heat it even with cow- 

 manure, which is the lightest kind of manure there is. First 



