20 



GARDENING FOR PLEASURE. 



we advise each one who has been rising a fertilizer that 

 has proved satisfactory, to experiment but lightly with 

 another until the new article has proved its merits. The 

 competition in the manufacture of articles so much in 

 use as fertilizers, has in many instances forced down 

 prices below tne point ac which they can be produced in 

 a pure state, hence the widespread adulteration with 

 " salt cake," "plaster," and other articles utterly worth- 

 less but to make weight. Next in meanness to the quack 

 that extracts money from a poor consumptive for his vile 

 nostrums, is the man who compels the poor farmer or 

 gardener, may be a thousand miles away struggling for 

 an existence, to pay freight on the sand mixed with his 

 guano, or the plaster in his bone dust. In this relation 

 I am reminded of a retribution that fell on the " Sands 

 of Life man," who figured so conspicuously a few years 

 ago in New York. The advertisement of this philan- 

 thropic gentleman, it will be remembered, was that "A 

 retired clergyman whose Sands of Life had nearly run 

 out," would for a consideration tell how the "running 

 out " could be stopped in others. A kind hearted fellow 

 in Illinois, deeply sympathizing with the old gentleman 

 on account of his loss of " sand," sent him by express- 

 but forgot to prepay — a thousand pounds of the Article ! 

 It is reported that the " retired clergyman " on opening 

 the cask, expressed himself in a manner not only ungrate- 

 ful, but utterly unclerical. We counsel no vengeance, 

 but if some of these sand-mixing guano men could have 

 the sand sifted out by their victims with compound in- 

 terest added, and returned to them under the fostering 

 care of an express company, it would be but even handed 

 justice, 



