^02 Retrospective Criticism. 



endeavour to keep my living as long as I live. I shall give a hint to 

 the " Friend to Horticulture," and all such of the nobility, gentry, and 

 clergy as do not allow their gardeners sufficient wages to purchase your 

 Magazine for themselves, but who occasionally lend the Magazine to their 

 gardeners for the purpose of letting them know how ignorant they are,just 

 to take a pair of scissors and clip out the poisonous pages ; or rather clip 

 out such pages only as suit them, and lend them to their gardeners. This 

 will have a great tendency to make their gardeners contevted ; and, truly, 

 contentment is the greatest blessing a gardener can enjoy. There are very 

 few who do enjoy such blessings : for my own part, I never was contented 

 till I could grow fruits and flowers as good and as cheap as other gardeners. 

 The " Frieml to Horticulture" has made me very proud of myself : he says 

 it is not one gardener in a hundred who ever raises himself to become an 

 overseer. On his word, then, I most contentedly and triumphantly sign 

 myself — A Gardener in a Hundred. Dec. 18. 1830. 



Weeds as Manure, and various Remarks. — Sir, From reading the review of 

 Cruickshank's Practical Planter in your Vol. VI. p. 448., I am led to make 

 a few straggling observations. The system I advocate is equally applicable 

 to horticulture as to agriculture. 



Cruickshank says, as quoted by the reviewer (p. 453.), " It may seem 

 a very paradoxical fact, but it is nevertheless true, that wood, instead of 

 impoverishing the ground on which it is produced, nourishes it." (To be 

 sure it does.) " There is very little of our waste land that, if trenched or 

 ploughed, will carry even a moderate crop of grain, unless it receive a con- 

 siderable quantity of manure. After bearing timber, however, the contrary 

 is found to be true." So the old, vague, unphilosophical, unmeaning, 

 foolish theory of rest is demolished at last, or rather explained. His 

 subsequent reasoning is bad. 



Farther on (p. 454.) he says, " That the soil should be enriched by the 

 production of wood, when the experience of ages has proved that it is 

 always exhausted by other crops, will seem to them a paradox of the most 

 extravagant kind." By this statement it does. But other crops are carried 

 off annually by man or beast, root and branch. This I shall explain. 



Cruickshank's theory is not confined to wood; it includes all vegetation. 

 This is a truth as palpable to every one, when pointed out, as the rotundity 

 of this globe, or the simple act of Columbus making the egg stand on end ; 

 yet it is no less lamentable than true, that, notwithstanding all the splendid 

 talent which has been exhibited from TuU to the present day, this very 

 obvious fact should not have been long ago adopted as a fixed and leading 

 principle in all agricultural and horticultural operations. It stares us in 

 the face in the forests and prairies of this country, the pampas of Buenos 

 Ayres, the dirty summer fallows of England, and every where and in every 

 thing. The principle of a clean naked fallow (fortunately a rare occur- 

 rence) is utter annihilation. Had farmers and gardeners been able to 

 eradicate weeds, as they are called, the soil would have been a caput mortmim 

 long ago. But weeds, like the principles of liberty, destroy, hack, hew, and 

 persecute as we may, rise again in due time, not to injure, but to fer- 

 tilise and benefit. We must follow Nature ; all other guides are fatal ignes 

 fatui. " He that made the earth gave it laws that 'tis not good to break." 

 After much steady observation, thought, and practice, for some years past, 

 I am perfectly convinced that all applications, no matter how large, of 

 animal manures, animal substances, and minerals, are compai-atively nuga- 

 tory, without profuse supplies of vegetables and theii- roots; and I am not 

 sure that an occasional liberal dressing of wheat flower,Indian cornmeal,&c., 

 would not be the most profitable manure of all. Lions and tigers prey on 

 flesh, and the vegetable monarchs of our forests attain their highest majesty 

 on vegetable food, and in due tune return again to the soil, to produce 

 increased fertility. This is very obvious on the banks of the Ohio and 



