OF SOIL AND MANUBE. S41 



other flowers ; and it is, with the exception of bone 

 dust, the form of manure best adapted to all plants 

 in pots.* 



What most concerns the subject of this work is> 

 not the nature of manure, but the proper time and 

 manner of applying it to garden plants. Provided 

 manure is of a permanent character, it does not very 

 much matter at what time it is administered, because, 

 if it does not act at first, it will sooner or later ; but 

 when it is of such a nature as to be easily dissipated, 

 like malt-dust, or soot, or yeast, a knowledge of the pro- 

 per season becomes extremely necessary. Plants will 

 not receive the influence of manure so readily at any 

 season as when they are in the most rapid and steady 

 growth ; because at that time the absorbing force of 

 their roots, and their vital energies, are all greatest. 

 It is for this reason that a top-dressing is almost use- 

 less to a lawn at midsummer, but better in the spring, 

 and best of all in October. If applied at midsummer, 

 the ground is dry, the herbage closely shorn, and the 

 vegetation extremely languid, partly in consequence 

 of the constant operation of the mower, and partly 

 because our summertide is the winter of herbage 

 grasses, which only flourish in the cool and damp 



* The efficacy of liquid manure, applied out of doors, is doubled by- 

 applying it in damp weather or before rain, -when the plants are in 

 a growing state. The same remark applies to guano and other con- 

 centrated manures that require a large amount of water to make 

 them soluble. Hundreds of persons have been entirely disappointed 

 in the use of guano, and animal manures generally, because they 

 applied them so late in the spring that they were never rendered 

 sufficiently soluble to be taken up by the roots of plants. A. J. D 



