GARDENING FOR PLEASURE. 



Plants, like animals, are not so much kept in good 

 health by the special kind of food given as by the proper 

 quantity and conditions surrounding the individual when 

 the food is received ; and what proper temperature and 

 pulverization of soil are to the plant, air and exercise, 

 and also proper temperature, are the corresponding con- 

 ditions necessary for healthy animal life. Who will say 

 that the beef-fed English laborer is in any way the phys- 

 ical superior of the Irishman or Scotchman whose daily 

 food has only been potatoes and oat-meal ? You get 

 usually fine -and nearly equal development in each case, 

 but it'is a condition due to a natural use of the muscles 

 in the open air in a congenial climate rather than to 

 anything special in the food. It would be quite as rea- 

 sonable t:> tell us that a special food, chemically consid- 

 ered, is necessary for each class of our domestic animals 

 as for our domestic plants, and none but the veriest 

 charlatan or ignoramus will do either. 



CHAPTER VII. 

 THE LAWN. 



SINCE the introduction of the lawn mower, the keep- 

 ing of the lawn has been so simplified that no suburban 

 residence is complete without one, and there is now no 

 more excuse for tall grass " going to hay " in the door 

 yard than there would be for cobwebs taking possession 

 of the rooms inside the dwelling. We occasionally see 

 some parsimonious individual, even now, who remembers 

 that in his grandfather's days grass was allowed to grow 

 for the food of the "critters," and he leaves it for food for 

 his "critters" still ; though at the same time his furni- 

 ture inside, that nobody but himself ever sees, or has an 



