On the Advantages of irrigating Garden Grounds, fye. 311 



name; but they have complained that the birds have eaten the 

 whole crop. This will almost always occur where means are not 

 taken to prevent it : but there are only two species of bird which 

 ever break open the pods of green peas, the large black-headed, and 

 the blue titmouse (the Parus major and Parus caeruleus of Linnaeus) 

 and both these are very easily caught. The coal titmouse, the nut- 

 hatch, the chaffinch, and the robin, will eat the peas when the pods 

 are opened ; but neither of these ever break them. For the pur- 

 pose of taking such birds, I employ a little trap, which I invented 

 when a school-boy, and which secures without injuring them, and 

 enables me to release the unoffending; and I do not find the smallest 

 difficulty in preserving my crops of peas in any season. 



When water is delivered in the usual quantity from the watering 

 pan, its effects, for a short time, are almost always beneficial, by 

 wetting the surface of the ground. But if water thus given be not 

 continued regularly, injurious effects frequently follow; for the roots 

 of plants (as I have shewn in the Philosophical Transactions, in a 

 paper upon the causes which direct the roots) extend themselves 

 most rapidly wherever they find proper moisture and food ; and if 

 the surface alone be wetted, the roots extend themselves superfici- 

 ally only, and the plants consequently become more subject to in- 

 jury from drought, than they would have been if no water had been 

 given to them ; a circumstance which can scarcely have escaped the 

 notice of any observant gardener. When, on the contrary, the soil 

 is irrigated in the manner above recommended, it is wetted to a 

 great depth ; and a single watering, once in eight or ten days, is, m 

 almost all cases, fully sufficient. 



I have found the advantage of being able to command, by the 

 means abovementioned, abundant water at all seasons, and at very 

 small expence, so great, that I feel confident that a market gardener 

 could, in many cases, afford to give as much rent for one acre as 

 he could under ordinary circumstances give for two acres; for he 



