THE NEW AGRICULTURE. 25 



admirably as a microscope, and securing a focus best calculated to 

 bring out the hidden enemy, it did not take long for us to become 

 satisfied that the seed of fungus was nearly everywhere present, the 

 .great begetter of disease. Of this seed of fungus we had read much in 

 books, found in the library of a physician, in whose family we spent 

 much time in early life. 



Suffice it to say that we were thirty years old before we became 

 convinced of the baleful influence of this arch enemy of plant 

 growth. We found it amid damps and moulds, and equally amid 

 soils in which was a lack of moisture. Wherever the roots of 

 plants came in contact with sticks covered with mould, or with 

 stones hidden in the soil, more especially with the inevitable flat 

 stone completely destructive of plant thrift, we found fungus, bring- 

 ing decay and death. Nor was this all, for hovering about the roots 

 of plants diseased from infection by fungus, were found parasites in 

 form of the wire-worm, earth-worm and more especially the minute 

 white grub or maggot, the latter fatally destructive, eating away 

 the roots of plants, and bringing not merely disease, but certain 

 death. 



In a few instances, so deep down did we dip to find the offender, 

 as to reach the subsoil, evenly and smoothly descending to the 

 stream flowing alongside our little delta, so rich in surface as 

 to enable us to grow more on our single half acre than was gather- 

 ed from two to three times the area devoted to gardening by neigh- 

 boring fanners. 



During our first year's experience, there came sudden showers of 

 such force and volume, as to bring from off the mountain side above, 

 an amount of soil and debris from the recesses of the forest as to 

 convince us that a ditch, sunk at the base of the hill and connect- 

 ing with the stream traversing the valley, would be just the thing 

 to provide against accidents. Plowing oxir garden late in autumn, 



