HOT-BEDS CHAP. 



(letter d in the plan of the garden), and there put it into 

 a conical heap. If you have not enough of dung from 

 the stable-door, some from cow-stalls, sheep-yards, and 

 even long stuff from pig-beds or pig-styes, half-stained 

 litter j or any thing of a grassey kind, and not entirely 

 dry, will lend you assistance j but, let it be understood, 

 that the best of all possible materials for the making of 

 hot- beds is dung from the stable of corn-fed horses 5 and 

 the next best comes from a sheep-yard, or from stalls 

 where ewes and sucking lambs have been kept. Wheat- 

 straw is by far the best straw to have been used as litter, 

 when the dung is wanted for hot-beds. Bearing in mind 

 that this is the best sort of materials, you must take 

 what you have ; and, if it be of an inferior quality, there 

 must, at any rate, be a greater quantity of it. Having 

 collected your materials together in the hot-bed ground, 

 you next shake them up well together into a heap, in a 

 flattish conical form. It is not sufficient merely to put 

 the dung up together in this form : it must be taken a 

 prongful at a time, and shaken entirely straw from straw, 

 and mixed, long with short, duly and truly through every 

 part of the heap, from the bottom to the top. When 

 thus shaken up, the short stuff on the ground where the 

 dung was tossed down out of the wheel-barrow, ought 

 to be shovelled up very clean, and flung over the heap. 

 If the dung be good, you will see it begin to smoke the 

 next day. It should lie only two days and a half, or 

 three days, before it be moved again. It should now be 

 turned over very truly, well shaken to pieces again, and 

 another conical heap formed of it, care being taken to 

 put the outsides of the first heap towards the inside of the 

 second heap. In two or three days more, it will have 





