WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 55 



Calvin. There the chain stops. When you 

 ascend the scale of being, and come to an 

 animal that is, like ourselves, inedible, you 

 have arrived at a result where you can rest. 

 Let us respect the cat. He completes an 

 edible chain. 



I have little heart to discuss methods of 

 raising peas. It occurs to me that I can 

 have an iron pea-bush, a sort of trellis, 

 through which I could discharge electricity 

 at frequent intervals, and electrify the birds 

 to death when they alight : for they stand 

 upon my beautiful brush in order to pick 

 out the peas. An apparatus of this kind, 

 with an operator, would cost, however, about 

 as much as the peas. A neighbor suggests 

 that I might put up a scarecrow .near the 

 vines, which would keep the birds away. 

 I am. doubtful about it; the birds are too 

 much accustomed to seeing a person in poor 

 clothes in the garden to care much for that. 

 Another neighbor suggests that the birds do 

 not open the pods ; that a sort of blast, apt 

 to come after rain, splits the pods, and the 



