454 



NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 



to which the juice naturally tends, and without which great loss of a 

 valuable substance is always suffered, especially in rainy weather. This 

 pit should be carefully lined with dry stone, and secured underneath 

 and at the sides with a good wall of well made clay-puddle, a foot thick. 

 It should have erected in it a pump of cast iron, (for wood, in such a 

 situation, is of no durability,) of which the working barrel is about four 

 inches and a half in diameter. 



The method of making this manure is extremely simple. Once in 

 ten days in winter time, and about three weeks in summer, the liquor 

 collected is pumped up into a large barrel, mounted with a three-inch 

 brass cock. The barrel used for watering your trees in the park will 

 answer the purpose admirably. Having prepared a heap of peat-moss, 

 as dry and as far advanced towards decomposition as possible, and having 

 conveyed the water-cart to the spot, the liquid is to be drawn off in 

 stable pails, and poured leisurely over the heap. As soon as it has, in 

 this way, got two complete waterings, it is to be turned and thoroughly 

 mixed ; and provided the liquid be pretty strongly impregnated with the 

 fertilising juices, after a second course of both — that is, in all four water- 

 ings — the whole will be found converted into valuable manure, fitted for 

 every purpose of husbandry, arboriculture, or horticulture. 



One thing only in the department last mentioned may be noticed, 

 and that is, that the application of this manure, or indeed of any other, 

 of which peaty matter forms a part, should be confined by the gardener 

 to crops cultivated with the spade or the hoe. For those raised from 

 small seeds, and which require hand-weeding, it is not so suitable, from 

 the quantity of chickweed that decomposed peat is apt to engender, 

 especially in the first season. . 



