SUBTEKRANEAN lEEIGATION. 579 



Swedes, to which a second application of liquid was given just hefore 

 thinning, promises from twenty to twenty-five tons the acre." 



There is a mode of applying liquid manure, not by super- 

 ficial channels, but by underground pipes, filled from a head, 

 which would force the manure upwards into the soil by virtue 

 of its own pressure. There is no doubt that this plan, which 

 was, I believe, first proposed by the Eight Hon. T. F. 

 Kennedy, lately one of H.M.'s Commissioners of Woods, &c., 

 is theoretically the best. The sole objection to it is the cost 

 of its application. The Dutch do nearly the same thing by a 

 method mentioned below, and it may be conceived that a 

 combination of the two methods would be preferable to either. 



Mr. Prideaux remarks that "the Dutch, who are admirable gardeners, 

 had in. the Great Exhibition an instrument called ' Earth-borer,' for 

 manuring fruit-trees without digging the ground. A circle of holes is 

 bored round the tree, at two feet distance from the tree, and a foot from 

 each other. Taking the tree at a foot diameter at the surface of the 

 soil, the circle will be five feet diameter and fifteen feet circumference ; 

 and if the holes are three inches diameter and a foot apart = fifteen 

 inches, there will be about twelve holes ; more or less according to the 

 diameter of the tree. They are eighteen inches deep (where there is 

 enough depth of soil), and slanting towards the centre ; are filled with 

 liquid manure, diluted more or less in dry weather, and stronger as the 

 weather is wetter." 



