714 Workhouse Gardens and Gardeners. 



the Germans in every thing relating to the varieties of the cabbage family, 

 their culture, and especially their cooking. The same as to winter salading. 

 It would be useful to encourage the annual importation of cabbage-seeds from 

 Germany, especially the borecoles. A good deal is to be done in spreading 

 a taste for succory and other winter salading, as suggested in Vols. II. and 

 III. by a correspondent abroad." 



It would be a grand object to ascertain, all over the island, what portion 

 of land would keep a family in culinary vegetables, pork, and eggs; in 

 culinary vegetables, pork, eggs, and milk ; in culinary vegetables, pork, eggs, 

 milk, and bread corn ; and the best modes of culture and management in 

 every case, including therein the number of hours' work of a man every 

 week in the year. To whatever first premium the Newcastle, or any other 

 country society, may offer for the best treatise on each of these three sub- 

 jects, we shall, with their permission, add a copy of our EncyclopcEdia of 

 Plants, and to the second premium a copy of our Hortus Britannicus. 



We also offer a copy of the Encyc. of Plants, and of the Hort. Brit., to 

 the person who may send us the best answer in detail to the whole of these 

 three questions as to cottage gardens, provided the same be received by us 

 before the Jst of Feb. next; and copies of the Hort. Brit, to the papers 

 ranking second, third, and fourth in merit. The papers to be clearly and 

 plainly written, with a number, mark, or motto, and without either real 

 name or address. The awards we shall announce on the cover of the 

 Magazine, and the candidate can then come forward with his name, and 

 claim his prize. 



Art. XIV. Workhouse Gardens and Gardeners. 



One of the greatest evils in the management of the poor of this country 

 is the payment of able-bodied men and women^ or, at least, of men and 

 women who can work, without requiring or obtaining any useful labour 

 from them. In many parishes, the parish poor are set to work at labours 

 of no real use to society ; such as carrying or wheeling stones from one place 

 to another, digging pits and filling them up again, &c. &c. ; which cannot 

 but be felt by the humblest labourer as an utter degradation of his nature. 



In some parishes the labours are of a useful description; but persons who 

 have been accustomed to work at mechanical trades within doors, or who 

 have been servants, perhaps housekeepers, can never do any good at such 

 occupations as breaking stones, mending, watering, or sweeping roads, &c. ; 

 on the contrary, they must be disheartened, and so broken down, both in 

 body and mind, as to produce very little benefit to their employers, and 

 to injure their own health. 



Why should not every parish be obliged to have a parish garden pro- 

 portionate to the size of the parish workhouse ; say one acre for every 

 four persons which the workhouse is calculated to maintain ? The work- 

 houses of large towns might have their gardens in the country, and if it 

 were situated at a great distance, the paupers might be carried thither in 

 the morning and back in the evening in vans. The great advantage of 

 garden v/ork is its agreeableness to almost all men and women whatever, 

 and whether they have been brought up in the town or country. The pro- 

 duce of these gardens would, in great part, be consumed by the poor them- 

 selves, and the remainder might be sold. By growing potatoes, wheat, 

 perhaps Indian corn, peas, and kidneybeans of the kind used in France 

 and America in soups, and by feeding pigs with the refuse, almost the 

 entire subsistence of the poor would be home-made. 



A good large garden, and a good gardener as a manager, would always 

 supply abundance of work, which would be both suitable and agreeable to 

 every description of paupers, male and female, old and young; and when 



