20 GARDENING FOB PLEASURE. 



the widespread adulteration with "salt cake," "plaster," 

 and other articles utterly worthless but to make weight. 

 Next in meanness to the quack who extracts money from 

 a poor consumptive for his vile nostrums, is the man who 

 compels the poor farmer or gardener, maybe a thousand 

 miles away struggling for an existence, to pay freight on 

 the sand mixed with his guano, or the plaster in his bone 

 dust. In this relation I am reminded of a retribution 

 that fell on the "Sands of Life" man, who figured so 

 conspicuously a few years ago in New York. The adver- 

 tisement of this philanthropic gentleman, it will be re- 

 membered, was that "A retired clergyman, whose Sands 

 of Life had nearly run out," would, for a consideration, 

 tell how the "running out" could be stopped in others. 

 A kind-hearted fellow in Illinois, deeply sympathizing 

 with the old gentleman on account of his loss of "sand," 

 sent him by express but forgot to prepay a thousand 

 pounds of the article ! It is reported that the " retired 

 clergyman," on opening the cask, expressed himself in a 

 manner not only ungrateful, but utterly unclerical. We 

 counsel no vengeance, but if some of these sand-mixing 

 guano men could have the sand sifted out by their vic- 

 tims with compound interest added, and returned to them 

 under the fostering care of an express company, it 

 would be but even-handed justice. 



CHAPTER VI. 

 SPECIAL FERTILIZERS FOR PARTICULAR PLANTS. 



A MAN called at my office a few yenrs ago with some 

 dozen bottles as samples of special manures, indispensa- 

 ble, he said, as fertilizers for certain kinds of plants. 

 He had those with him that he claimed to be specially 

 prepared for cabbage, corn, potatoes, wheat, grass, lawns, 



