84 MARKET GARDENING. 



farmers allow to propagate on their lands, to their own 

 disgrace and to the manifest injury of their neighbors. 

 A very intelligent French agriculturist, once visiting the 

 writer, after making a tour of the United States, said 

 the American farm was the -most slovenly he had ever 

 looked upon ; and it is quite true, for, as a rule, every 

 farmer in this country has more land than he can prop- 

 erly attend to, and, at the best, but few have had that 

 education in the economy of space which has been so 

 intently studied in Europe. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

 HOTBEDS AND COLD FRAMES. 



The ordinary size of a convenient hotbed, may be 

 ten feet, by six or seven feet wide, or it may be only 

 of the dimensions of a common window sash, three feet 

 by four feet, more or less. The shape has nothing to do 

 with the definition, which may be to the effect that a 

 hotbed is a box covered with glass, the whole placed 

 upon a bed of soil resting on a bed of fermenting stable 

 manure, the heat from which, rising in the form of 

 vapor, warms and moistens the soil within the box, 

 while, at the same time, the sun's rays, passing through 

 the glass, are retained to warm and vivify the surface. 



Seeds sown within such a box will germinate in less 

 time than without such protection. As an illustration 

 of the varying forms which hotbeds may take, the writer 

 may say that he once saw an efficient hotbed full of vig- 

 orous vines of egg plant, made of a large oil or whisky 

 barrel, with the head and. bottom knocked out, and then 

 let down half way into the earth and banked up all 

 around with soil. In the bottom, six inches of stone 

 were placed for drainage, and then eighteen inches of 



