and its Transformation. 473 



akin to my present macerated mass of vegetable tissue, and helps me out in 

 the idea that such wasted culm is capable of being recompounded into perfect 

 plants, available to the sustenance of men and animals. But a volume might 

 be written on this subject, showing how the mash-pool would reduce the 

 oak itself to vegetable mould by maceration and drying a few times re- 

 peated, and how peat, such as is used for fuel, might be enlivened from its inert 

 state, and assimilated with some recent vegetable matter, as mown grass, thus 

 becoming a valuable vegetable body, neither too vapourish, like the grass, 

 nor too sullen, like the saturated mossy sod. 



The grand point is the communication established by means of water, 

 wherein the superabundance of one article, or property, of any ingredient 

 becomes equalised and common to all the other bodies that may be mashed 

 up with it. I need scarcely tell any one that the mash-pool is an isolated and 

 very small pool, or rather tank, and that the materials in it are merely em- 

 bedded in water, that is to say, enough to keep them nearly under water. 

 Let no one imagine that to throw dirt into a large pool is the way to make 

 good manure of it. I put water to it : I do not cast it on the waters. 



Let us suppose, then, that a quantity of this manure, or indeed of any other, 

 is got, we come to the beneficial employment of the same under ground. 

 Now, it will scarcely be credited that such plants as the common onion will 

 send their feeders six feet deep into the earth ; yet such is the fact, as any one 

 may satisfy himself of by giving them a trial ; and, though I give this as a 

 plain example, it is the case with innumerable other crops. Now, when the 

 feeders find food (whether that food be gas, as I imagine, or any other grosser 

 substance, no matter), there they extend and fatten the body of which they 

 are the mouths. A field for these, therefore, is now our object : this field 

 must be sunny in the highest degree, that is, the greatest amount of surface 

 must be exposed to the sun, and that surface as much as possible at right 

 angles to the stronger rays. I have often touched the surface of an oaken 

 door with an eastward aspect and could scarcely bear my hand on it, even 

 before breakfast on a sunny morning. Now this same sunshine was acting 

 equally strong on the banks or ridges I am about to mention, whose lines, 

 running north and south, left the beveled sides of their eastward slopes at 

 right angles to the morning rays ; consequently those ridges had the steam up, 

 and the spongioles of the plants in them going a-head, and tissue forming in 

 this hotbed before breakfast, and before the same rays could awaken the 

 feeders of the plants growing on a flat surface, on account of the obliquity of 

 the face of the soil to the sunbeams. I have no doubt but that it is to "this 

 source that the excellence of ridge and furrow drilled crops of turnips and pota- 

 toes is to be referred, and I have good reason to think that loosening the earth 

 about many crops is of no service to them, but highly injurious ; for I find 

 from experience that hacking a thing half out of the earth and breaking and 

 bruising its feeders, under pretence of loosening the soil about it, is not the 

 way to forward its perfect developement. As the details necessary to esta- 

 blish this point would take me more time and pains than I can spare now, I will 

 bear the odium of this hint, and be called " in error," if you please, till I can 

 give the reasons for this waj' of thinking. 



I now proceed to show the form in which garden soil should lie when bedded 

 out for crops ; and considering cottage as well as castle gardening, I shall 

 take the potato crop for an example to illustrate the "Banking System" of 

 culture. 



Those who have made asparagus beds, such as you generally see about 

 London, will have the idea at once ; but to prevent error, I will give it in feet 

 and inches. Divide the land into sections, or beds, of 4 ft. wide, with 2 ft. of 

 an alley. Dig this bed, and, if necessary, dig in a good layer of dung ; and, 

 when this is dug nicely and deeply, lay the manure for the potatoes on the 

 top of the bed, and plant one line of egg-sized whole potatoes down the centre, 

 and one on each side, a foot from the centre : thus making three rows in a 

 space (counting the bed and alley) of 6 ft. ; which, in flat planting, would be 



