THE MANSE GARDEN. 255 



dant deposit, of which the attempt to pull all out is 

 like the spinning of a rope an operation that is 

 without end; or if hoeing be the work to which the 

 youth is applied, the soil, it will be found, is rather 

 scraped than stirred; and the weeds, replanted with the 

 foot, only look sick till they are visited with a shower. 

 Let the lessons be one at a time and amazingly 

 simple. As to cleaning a piece of ground previous 

 to digging, teach so much of the botany of three or 

 four of the worst weeds as that each may be known 

 in a crowd or at any distance. Let it be a rule 

 that these are to be taken up as carefully as a crop 

 of beet and laid aside, that it may be seen how little 

 injury they have suffered in the act of up-rooting. 

 The ground being thus cleared, let it be understood 

 that digging means lifting earth to the depth of 

 fifteen inches and laying it upside down the com- 

 mon substitute for which is a mere disordering of the 

 same surface that was uppermost before; hence the 

 wetness and coldness of soil, the late sowing and 

 little reaping, together with the waste of manure, 

 which occur in the gardens of the peasantry a loss 

 sustained through life for the want of a single lesson. 

 To secure good digging, see that a furrow or trench 

 of the specified depth be opened on the one side of 

 the plot to be dug, and the stuff wheeled to the 

 other. Let this furrow be two feet wide and cut 

 straight down, and let the boy understand that when 

 it is filled in the process of digging he must leave 

 another as wide and as deep, and maintain such open- 

 ness of trench all the way through the plot. Point 

 out the different colours of the soil that comes up, 

 and show that his work, if rightly done, will all the 



