130 THE MANSE GARDEN. 



they are so easily destroyed, and all bad and deeply 

 established roots are sent to a lower region, there to 

 rot at their leisure. Worms, snails, grubs, and the 

 like, share the same fate ; and for a length of time 

 show no families on the earth, which to them has 

 suffered a ruinous convulsion. In this, your new 

 empire, every thing favourable to production comes 

 into your service, and every thing hostile is expelled. 

 Animal bodies, formerly destructive, now minister to 

 fertility by their decomposition : the earth, heaving 

 and porous, like a fermenting substance, seems to 

 borrow warmth from the very rains which chill and 

 check the vegetation of the neighbouring grounds, 

 and the intense heat which elsewhere burns upon a 

 sickly growth seems here to cool, by drawing up a 

 copious vapour, nourishing the roots and spreading a 

 broad dark leaf as a cover from the sun. 



As nature's best bounty is depth of soil, so trench- 

 ing, which imitates that gift, is beyond all doubt the 

 very greatest of all the improvements which man can 

 make on the surface of "the ground. Whether for 

 garden or field, there is herein a secret virtue, which 

 even at this late period is but little disclosed. Com- 

 pare the millions of acres on which men have for 

 centuries only scraped a few inches with the plough, 

 and see how little of the land yielding bread has yet 

 submitted to a more substantial cultivation. The 

 same seeds are ever committed to the same particles 

 of mould; some of them now scarcely vegetate, and 

 crops of other sorts, but recently introduced, are not 

 what they were. Man cannot create a new plant 

 to diversify the labours of the earth in her produc- 

 tions, but man can bring up new earth to the task 



