THE MANSE GARDEN. 19 



there will be furnished an invaluable mound of earth, 

 as well as a convenient receptacle for the heaps of 

 stones. The earth may be wheeled to the trenched 

 ground, and made into compost with dung, in the 

 proportion of one to three of earth, or with lime at 

 the rate of one to six ; the whole to be turned over 

 once or twice a-year, till the hollies, as previously 

 recommended, have attained the proper size; and 

 the soil to which they are destined, being now reno- 

 vated by trenching, may, in the mean time, be en- 

 riched with manure, and kept clean by alternate 

 crops of potatoes and turnips; whilst the matured 

 compost will be in readiness for application to the 

 roots of the hollies in the final act of transplanting. 

 That so much care and trouble are not needlessly 

 bestowed, may be ascertained by examining the state 

 of the mould from which the poor and profitless 

 tenantry have been ejected : it is dry as dust, and 

 terribly impoverished; it seems, at a small depth 

 from the surface, not to have felt the refreshing of 

 a shower for half a century ; it has seen no sun, and 

 suffered no frost, nor has it breathed the vital air in 

 all that time ; it is mingled with the recent chips of 

 the mattock, and full of turfy fibres, which, though 

 dead, are undecaying as wool or hair. In this state 

 it might do well for oats or barley ; but not for your 

 hollies, the hope of your old age, and of centuries to 

 come : and hence the use of a contrary series of pro- 

 ductions, and of the rich mound to be had, as above 

 described; or failing that, a portion of the rooty 

 earth may be exchanged for the black mould of an 

 old onion bed. 



Proceeding thus, with good assurance of success, 



