OLD ENGLISH GARDENS 57 



The constant liability of nutritive liquids to the attacks 

 of predatory microbes renders it a useful precaution to 

 add vinegar whenever we start a fresh brew of vinegar. 

 Vinegar itself is not prone to undergo change, and the 

 domestic microbes cannot harm it. If you treat a bottle 

 of vinegar carelessly, leave the cork out, and keep it in a 

 dusty place, it does not soon spoil. But the sugary solu- 

 tion falls an easy prey. Microbes of many kinds find 

 nourishment in it, each one forming a characteristic and 

 usually an unpleasant product. It is in the first stage of 

 acetous fermentation that the risk is greatest, for the 

 stronger the vinegar, the less the destructive microbes like 

 it. Half a pint of strong vinegar added beforehand to 

 every half-gallon of sugar-solution makes it reasonably 

 sure that no microbes will harm it. 



The invisible domestic servants, two of which I have 

 attempted to describe, enabled our remote forefathers to 

 make bread, beer, wine, and vinegar. A number of other 

 microbes are concerned in the manufacture of cheese, in 

 the separation of vegetable fibres, in the dissipation of 

 dead organic matter, and in the perpetually renewed 

 fertility of the soil. But the utility of the microbes as 

 servants of man has been impaired by the progress of 

 science. It is now possible to make artificially vinegar 

 and alcohol, for which mankind were once entirely de- 

 pendent upon microscopic organisms. Machinery devised 

 by man is rendering the invisible domestic servants, 

 like servants of some other kinds, less indispensable than 

 they once were. 



XIII. OLD ENGLISH GARDENS. 



I have not the antiquarian knowledge necessary to 

 treat of old English gardens fully. What I have done is 

 to turn over some well-known books, 1 and collect a few 



1 Amherst's History of Gardening in England ; Seddon's Garden 

 Craft, &c. 



