282 APPENDIX. 



diminished proportions on the small field of a 

 strawberry plantation ; and should the rake be 

 applied to reduce the inequalities it will discover 

 the dock and the de-nettle, transplanted, not with 

 ceremony indeed, but so that those roots, like the 

 outcasts of society, though ill used are yet willing 

 to live and to dwell in the land and before they 

 can be extracted the rake brings to light more of a 

 verdant deposit, of which the attempt to pull all 

 out is like the spinning of a rope an operation 

 that is without end ; or if hoeing be the work to 

 which the youth is applied, the soil, it will be 

 found, is rather scraped than stirred; and the 

 weeds, replanted with the foot, only look sick till 

 they are visited with a shower. 



Let the lessons be one at a time and amazingly 

 simple. As to cleaning a piece of ground previous 

 to digging, teach so much of the botany of three or 

 four of the worst weeds as that each may be known 

 in a crowd, or at any distance. Let it be a rule 

 that these are to be taken up as carefully as a crop 

 of beet and laid aside, that it may be seen how 

 little injury they have suffered in the act of up- 

 rooting. The ground being thus cleared, let it be 

 understood that digging means lifting earth to the 

 depth of fifteen inches and laying it upside down 

 the common substitute for which is a mere disord- 

 -eringof the same surface that was uppermost before; 

 hence the wetness and coldness of soil, the late sow- 

 ing and little reaping, together with the waste of 

 manure, which occur in the gardens of the peas- 



