1843.] 
THE GARDENERS 
CHRONICLE. « . — 
205 
} ORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. 
obtained by the personal or written orders of Fellows of the So- 
ciety. N.B. The presentation of the visiting card of « Fellow of 
the Society cannot be regarded us an authority to receive tickets. 
‘All Fellows who shall apply on or before Tuesday, the 18th of 
i illings and Sixpence each 
WENTY-FOUR; but no 
a great convenience to the Society, if the Fellows 
would take their tickets personally, and not by written orders ; 
season. After the 18th of April any further number of tickets 
will be delivered to Fellows on their personal application or 
written order, at the price of Five Shillings each ticket. Each 
ticket will be available for the admission of one Visitor, after one 
o’clock, to either of the three Exhibitions, at the option of the 
Visitor. All applications for tickets must be made at the So- 
ciety’s Office, 21, Regent-street. 
he Garveners’ Chronicle. 
SATURDAY, APRIL 1, 1843. 
MEETINGS FOR THE TWO FOLLOWING WEEKS. 
wae + BP. 
Monday, April3 . Entomological 
tees ‘§ Horticultural 
+ ALinnean . 
UPloriculenral 
Wednesday, April 5 « + . Geological 
Friday, April7.. . . « Botanical =. 
Saturday, April. oyal Botanic * { 
> Tuesday, April4 . . 
. a 
+ Bem, 
+ 83 Pat. 
Tuesday, April 11 + Zoological. » + + + © ah Pm. 
We have so continually occupied our pages with 
discussions concerning manures, that some, we fear, 
regard the subject as more than exhausted. The 
question, however, is, in our own opinion, but just 
opened ; most of the experiments that have been re- 
corded are rather to be regarded as incentives to 
further inquiry than as satisfactory solutions of one 
of the most important—if not the most important— 
questions connected with cultivating the soil. Gar- 
deners and farmers are alike interested in it, and alike 
capable of conducting the inquiry ; the only difference 
is, that more expense may be profitably incurred by 
the gardener than by the farmer—or at least that seems 
to be the case. 
Whatever the value may be of the many artificial 
manures—and we are the last to question the effi- 
ciency ofthe phosphates and nitrates and sulphates, 
of guanos, home-made or sea-borne, and all the rem~- 
nants snatched by the chemist from corruption— 
whatever the value of them may be, it must never be 
forgotten that they cost money. ‘The cultivators of 
the land cannot make such substances : for them the 
true laboratory is the farm-yard—their pneumatic 
chemistry is confined to the dunghill. The good 
farmer will use up what he has got before he goes to 
market for more. He will spend his money upon 
labour, and only extend his outlay when all the re- 
sources of labour are exhausted ; then such agents as 
artificial manures become invaluable, and not till then. 
It is most improvident to poison cattle by draining 
away the strength of manure into a horse-pond and 
then to run to market for artificial compounds ; it is 
unreasonable, after wasting money thus, to ery out for 
protecting duties, upon the ground of the peculiar cost 
of English farming. 
Weare led to these remarks in consequence of find- 
ing that the country is at last becoming alive to the 
importance of such considerations, and that gentlemen 
are in many cases strenuously endeavouring to per- 
suade their tenantry to turn their attention to the bet- 
ter preservation and preparation of manure. In Che- 
shire, Sir Philip Egerton is about to offer three pre- 
miums to his tenantry “ For the most economical and 
effective system of collecting, improving, and employing 
the solid and liquid materials within their reach, adapted 
to fertilise and improve the land.” We understand that 
one premium will be for tenants under 20/,, another 
for those under 100/., and a third for tenants above 
1€01. a-year. We doubt not that so excellent an ex- 
ample will be quickly followed, and therefore we shall 
at once proceed to state what we conceive to be the 
Most advisable steps for the competitors to take in 
order to meet the views of such landlords. 
The great principle to start from is, that all the 
best parts of manure will either run away or fly away. 
The first are seen in the fluids that drain from ordi- 
nary dunghills, the second may be discovered by the 
sense of smell : for the offensive exhalations of manure- 
heaps are produced in consequence of valuable fertilis- 
ine substances flying away in an invisible condition. 
Therefore, a well-made dunghill should neither leak 
nor smell. 
A second and not less important point to be re- 
marked is, that everythiny is a manuring substance 
which has ever been alive. The dead remains of ani- 
mals and plants are each in their way equally valu- 
able. People often forget what the origin is of sub- 
stances in yery common use, and do not recognise the 
fragments of plants and animals, though they are every 
day before their eyes. For example, coals are the re- 
mains of plants; soap is composed of certain parts of 
plants and animals, its potash or soda having been ob- 
tained from -one, and its fat from the other. Man- 
chester goods are made of threads taken out of plants, 
just as woollen cloths are prepared from threads pulled 
off animals ; therefore, cinders, soapsuds, cotton and 
woollen rags, are manuring substances just as much as 
chargoal, stable-litter, or bones. 
The third point to attend to is, that all manuring 
substances must decay, before they can act as food for 
plants. If aman, in his zeal for gardening, were to 
put his leg into a Vine border, and to sit with it there 
all his life, his Grapes would make him no return for 
so uncomfortable a position. But let the surgeon cut 
it off and bury it there, the effect would be presently 
seen in the deeper green and stronger wood of his 
Vines. Now the obvious reason of this is, that, in the 
first case, the leg remained alive and could not decay, 
while in the second it had lost its life and ‘immedi- 
ately began to rot. So it is exactly with all other 
things; they must decay before they can become 
manures. Fresh straw is not a manure, rotten straw 
is excellent ; fresh sawdust is useless, when decayed 
it is of considerable value. 
These three principles seem to be those on which 
the whole art of preparing and economising manure 
depends. Matter which once had life, whether the car- 
case of a horse or a basket-full of grubs, an ermine 
robe or a bundle of rags, will equally become manure; 
but they must be made to decay, and that being 
effected, nothing must be allowed to run away in the 
form of fluid, or to fly away in the disguise of a smell. 
We conceive that the following plan will effect these 
objects in the most economical manner. 
Mark out the piece of ground on which the dunghill 
is to be made, on a good slope if possible, and close 
bya pond. Cut a gutter all round, 6 inches wide and 
4 inches deep, and puddle it with clay, so as to make 
it water-tight. Then, at the lowest part, outside the 
place where the dunghill is to lie, dig a good-sized 
sink-hole, about 18 or 20 inches deep ; let this also be 
well puddled, and connected with the gutter already 
spoken of. Things being thus prepared, throw down 
a layer of such manuring substances as you may have, 
about a foot deep, and tread them well down ; then sift 
or scatter over it some fixer (what that is will be ex- 
plained presently) ; and finally, water it well. Then 
add another layer of manuring substances, tread down, 
sift on the fixer, and water well as before. In this 
manner go on with layer after layer, till the heap is 
of the desired height—always treading and watering 
as directed. When the work is completed, a firm 
mound of manure will be formed, surrounded by a 
gutter communicating with a sink-hole. 
Probably during the operation of making the ma- 
nure-heap, some water will have drained away; in 
that case, it will have run into the gutter and collected 
in the sink-hole. If so, let a labourer scuppet the 
water out as the work proceeds, and throw it back 
upon the dunghill. Every morning the sink-hole 
should be examined, and the drainage that has col- 
lected in it be scuppetted back over the heap. If the 
hole is not large enough to hold all the water that 
drains off, another can be made near it ; none of the 
drainage must on any account be lost. If the heap is 
properly made. it will heat gently, not strongly ; but 
if it becomes very hot, plenty of water must be thrown 
over it, caught up in the sink-hole, and scuppetted 
back, again, and again and again ; and, whether it heats 
or not, it should have, at least once a week, for a month 
or 6 weeks, a good quantity of fluid of some kind 
thrown upon it, so as to keep it thoroughly wet, it being 
at the same time well drained. Pot-boilings, seap-suds, 
or such refuse, are much better than common water ; 
but urine is infinitely preferable to either. If it were 
possible to collect this fluid and use it instead of water, 
from the beginning to the end, so much the better. 
By these contrivances nothing is allowed to leak 
away or drain off, but the dunghill is enabled to be- 
come a soft pasty mass, holding fast all that belongs 
to it, except what might fly away. To catch the latter 
is the purpose of the fixer, which is as indispensable 
to the‘operation as the gutter, and sink-hole, and scup- 
peting, already insisted on. Now there are many 
kinds of fixers : oil of vitriol, green vitriol, blue vitriol, 
salt and lime (not however either salt or lime by 
themselves on any account), gypsum, and other sub- 
stances, may be used when they can be had cheap ; 
but some of them at all times, and in some cases all of 
them, have the fault of costing money. A substitute 
for them, which costs nothing except labour, is there- 
fore to be sought for. Such substitutes exist in cin- 
der-siftings, charcoal-dust, good black earth, peat or 
bog-mould, rotten sawdust, leaf-mould, the black mud 
from the bottoms of ditches and ponds, the small frag- 
ments of wood from the bottom of woodstacks, soot, 
the brick-dust of brick-fields, or the powder of 
burnt clay. Some or all of these materials may be 
had in most places. 
Such we believe to be practically the best way of 
preparing a dunghill, s0 as to saye everything that is 
saveable. It is essentially the same as the method 
followed in Alsace, of which an account has been given 
in our Volume for 1842, p. 191.—It must _be obvious 
that no harm at least can arise from following our 
recommendations, which are to be carried out by a 
saving of both material and money. Supposing the 
plan does not answer, it will have put the person who 
tries it to no other charge than a little labour ; and to 
so little; even of that, as to be of no moment in either 
garden or farm. The manure-heap must be made, at 
all events, and a boy will form the gutters and sink- 
hole, and keep the heap well moistened while the 
substance is in preparation. 
Wuat we have hitherto said about the “ one-shift 
system ” of potting has been in its favour ; and there 
can be no doubt that, under good management, if the 
object is to make a plant as vigorous as possible, it is 
better to avoid all the endless, troublesome details of 
shifting it from one sized pot into another. No better 
evidence of this is needed than what we see in nature. 
A plant in the open ground, or in the border of a well- 
managed conservatory, grows fast, acquires a rich deep 
green healthy colour, and produces its flowers and 
fruit as soon as it has arrived at the proper age: on 
the other hand, the same kind of plant, under the 
same circumstances, managed by the same gardener, 
but kept in a pot and tormented by shifting, although 
it may be healthy at first, soon ceases growing, 
becomes yellow and lean and starved, and when it 
flowers brings forth nothing but apologies for blossoms. 
Nevertheless the shifting system has its advantages. 
“Tt is not the wish of every cultivator to have his 
Pelargoniums as large as Gooseberry-bushes, especially 
when a varied collection is kept up ; nor does every 
one desire to grow plants for Horticultural exhibitions. 
Beautiful as large well-grown specimens may be, it is 
not in every garden that they can be properly accommo- 
dated ; and where that is the case, it is worse than 
useless to attempt it, for small well-grown specimens 
are quite as interesting. For anything that [ have 
seen to the contrary, a plant may be grown quite as 
quickly by the common method as by the “ one-shift 
system,” with a much better chance of its being 
established in its pot, and of its blooming in the while.” 
Now here lies a real objection to the system of 
putting small plants at once into large pots; they 
grow too fast for the space of persons having but little 
room, and it is scarcely to be expected that the 
possessor of a greenhouse will sacrifice the interior to 
a small number of large specimens. He would soon 
weary of their sameness. ‘The lover of flowers wants 
variety: the diversified forms of nature are what he 
delights to feed his eye upon ; and that he cannot do 
in a small greenhouse, unless he cramps his plants by 
frequent shifting from one little pot into another. 
While, however, we freely concede this, and admit 
that it may be more convenient in general to treat 
lants liké a Chinese lady’s toes, it does not at all 
follow that they will be so healthy under such circum- 
stances: the contrary, we are persuaded, is the case. 
The force of circumstances may compel a gardener to 
stunt his plants by frequent transfers from one place of 
confinement to another ; and he may, as he often does, 
by skill and care, preserve them by such means in 
good health, but he does it at the expense of much 
labour, and at the sacrifice of all that vigour of consti- 
tution which we see in plants whese roots have un- 
obstructed freedom. 
We, in concluding this matter, print the remainder 
of « Observator’s ” letter, in order that he may not 
have to complain of his arguments having been mis- 
represented ; but in doing so we have been obliged to 
enter our protest against some of the statements he 
makes, even in this part of his communication. 
« Allowing,” he says, “that by the‘ one-shift system 
a plant will fill its pot with roots, yet before that can 
take place, a great portion of the nutritious substances, 
by the frequent waterings which the plant must 
receive, will be washed away.” ‘This is far less likely 
to occur in large pots than in small ones ; and is of 
no consequence, because nothing 1s more easy than to 
restore to the soil such matters as are washed away, 
me 
inc) 
any. 
ee T his objection,” he continues, “may be removed by 
liquid manures ; but plants that have been long used 
to liquid manures are like irreclaimable drunkards— 
they have become so accustomed to stimulants, that 
upon their discontinuance they soon begin to exhibit 
signs of decay.” What is here described is very bad 
gardening: why cannot a plant have a moderate, a8 
well as an immoderate, quantity of food given it ina 
liquid state ? 
“Should the drainage in the ‘ one-shift system ” be- 
come obstructed, the soil, by the stagnation of the 
water, will be soured ; and unless the plant be removed 
into other soil its health will be greatly injured.” 
The same thing happens when the drainage is ob- 
structed upon the common system, and does not affect 
the argument one way or the other. 
“T can say,” concludes Observator, “that the practice 
of inverting a small thumb-pot over the drainage-hole 
