22 THE MANSE GARDEN. 



firm with the foot; and lastly, stake and tie every 

 plant. Make this last a rule without any excep- 

 tion. You are apt to say when it is calm that the 

 wind will do no harm ; but wait the equinox,, and 

 you will see an exactly conical perforation, smoothly 

 plastered around the neck of every unfastened plant. 

 For the sake of variety, other sorts of your large and 

 well nursed evergreens may be removed to the same 

 place, and after the same manner. Having thus fur- 

 nished your boundary strip, as a sheltering outline, 

 you may plant anterior to it your finer evergreens, 

 which from time to time may be multiplied and di- 

 versified from your stock of layers. This inner range 

 of shrubs, mingled with flowers, and made accessible 

 by a walk, remains to be further noticed in Part III, 

 the flower department. 



The incurable hedge we suppose to have been 



are in reality not dry. Mushrooms of large dimensions, or plants 

 of another species, will be found growing inside, and seeking their 

 way to the light. Such tribes do not live without water : roast 

 them, and the falling drops will prove the fact: neither are those 

 deals so clothed with vegetable life that are always near the fire. 

 It would seem, therefore, that the above misnomer should be 

 amended by substituting the word wet for dry; and it maybe 

 observed, too, that the wetness which causes, is just in the most 

 favourable circumstances for aiding the disease in its hidden and 

 appalling devastations. The moisture is closed in, and excluded 

 from the air. Were the circulation free, a dryer atmosphere 

 would sometimes, at least, check the decomposition of the tim- 

 ber ; and the progeny of its corruption being, though mischievous, 

 naturally delicate, might suffer by the changes of temperature. 

 Wherefore if dryness of site and freeness of circulation cannot be 

 provided for in the case of a house so infected, let not the inmate 

 breathe his wrath upon the mushroom itself not the cause but 

 the effect of the dangerous damp of which it gives a friendly ad- 

 monition ; and let him seek no oil or mineral poison to prevent 

 in future the wood which he repairs from giving the like indica- 

 tions of harm; but let him rather flee for his life, lest staying 

 unwarned he may be found to have slain the witness, not the foe, 

 and made himself a prey. 



