22 GARDENING FOR PLEASURE. 



or when $100 per acre has been expended for bone-dust 

 or Peruvian guano, and these all used on a dozen dif- 

 ferent crops without any discrimination. Agricultural 

 chemistry may be all very well in some respects, but if 

 it gets down to such hair-splitting niceties as to analyze 

 scores of special plants, and tell us that we must feed 

 each with only just such food as the analysis show it to be 

 composed of, then our common sense, born of practical 

 experience, must scout and ridicule such nonsense. 



Plants, like animals, are not so much kept in good 

 health by the special kind of food given as by the proper 

 quantity and conditions surrounding the individual when 

 the food is received, and what proper temperature and 

 pulverization of soil may be to the plant, air and exercise 

 and also proper temperature are the corresponding con- 

 ditions necessary for healthy animal life. Who will say 

 that the beef -fed English laborer is in any way the phys- 

 ical superior of the Irishman or Scotchman whose daily 

 food has been only potatoes and oat-meal ? You get 

 usually fine and nearly equal development in each case, 

 but it is a condition due to a natural use of the muscles 

 in the open air in a congenial climate rather than to 

 anything special in the food. It would be quite as rea- 

 sonable to tell us that a special food, chemically consid- 

 ered, is necessary for each class of our domestic animals 

 as for our domestic plants, and none but the veriest 

 charlatan or ignoramus will do either. 



CHAPTER VIIL 



THE LAWN. 



Since the introduction of the lawn-mowers, the keep- 

 ing of the lawn has been so simplified that no suburban 

 residence is complete without one, and there is now no 



