FLOWER-BEDS 



mould. This gave me a bed with over eighteen 

 inches of as good soil as any plant could reason- 

 ably demand. Every year since, each bed has 

 received a coating of well-rotted manure, about 

 four quarts of bone-dust and the same of wood- 

 ashes and phosphate, the whole being lightened 

 up with a half-wheelbarrow load of leaf-mould. 



On the southern side of the island the land 

 descends rapidly from a height of fifty-five feet to 

 the water. This slope was thickly covered with 

 trees of various kinds, and studded with innu- 

 merable bowlders and loose rocks. The trees were 

 cut, the stumps removed, and the tree-tops burned 

 up, over a space one hundred and fifty feet wide 

 at the top and thence down to the water's edge. 

 First of all it was necessary for us to get rid of 

 the rocks, and as it would not do to simply tumble 

 them into the waters of the lake, and to carry them 

 up the hill would have been an expensive under- 

 taking, it was obviously desirable that we should 

 utilize them in some way in the locality where 

 they then were. To begin with, we built a wall 

 along the water's edge to protect the bank, and 

 this somewhat lessened the over-supply of rocks. 

 We next built another wall across the slope, 

 and about one-third of the way up, making the 



I2S 



