20 GARDENING FOR PLEASURE. 



we advise each one who has been using a fertilizer that 

 has proved satisfactory, to experiment but lightly with 

 anot'^r until the new article has proved its merits. The 

 competition in the manufacture of articles so much in 

 use as fertilizers, has in many instances forced down 

 prices below t_-j point at which they can be produced in 

 a pure state, hence the widespread adulteration with 

 " salt cake," "plaster," and other articles utterly worth- 

 less but to make weight. Next in meanness to the quack 

 that extracts money from a poor consumptive for his vile 

 nostrums, is the man who compels the poor farmer or 

 gardener,, may be a thousand miles away struggling for 

 an existence, to pay freight on the sand mixed with his 

 guano, or the plaster in his bone dust. In this relation 

 I am reminded of a retribution that fell on the " Sands 

 of Life man," who figured so conspicuously a few years 

 ago in New York. The advertisement of this philan- 

 thropic gentleman, it will be remembered, was that " A 

 retired clergyman whose Sands of Life had nearly run 

 out," would for a consideration tell how the " running 

 out " could be stopped in others. A kind hearted fellow 

 in Illinois, deeply sympathizing with the old gentleman 

 on account of his loss of " sand," sent him by express 

 but forgot to prepay a thousand pounds of the article ! 

 It is reported that the ' ' retired clergyman " on opening 

 the cask, expressed himself in a manner not only ungrate- 

 ful, but utterly unclerical. We counsel no vengeance, 

 but if some of these sand-mixing guano men could have 

 the sand sifted out by their victims with compound in- 

 terest added, and returned to them under the fostering 

 care of an express company, it would be but even handed 

 justice, 



