APPENDIX. 



707 



ture, by Mr. James Barnes, and with a degree of success which, if equalled, has 

 never been surpassed. Mr. Barnes has been in tlie habit of using rough, rooty, 

 unsifted soil for upwards of twenty years, and of introducing a portion of charcoal 

 among such soil for more than twelve years. He was led to use charcoal from 

 observing, in a wood where cliarcoal had been burned, the great luxuriance of the 

 weeds around the margins of the places where the charcoal heaps had been, and 

 where a thin sprinkling of charcoal dust had got amongst the weeds. He got a 

 basketful of this dust, and tried it first among cucumber soil. He found it 

 improved the plants in strength and colour, and then began trying it with other 

 soft-growing plants ; and he has continued trying it ever since with thousands of 

 plants under pot culture, and with most kitchen-garden crops. Mr. Barnes finds 

 the following a good plan to make a rough sort of charcoal for use in the kitchea- 

 garden : — When made, it must be kept dry ; and when seed is sown in the open 

 garden, the charcoal must be put into the drills along with it, at the rate of three 

 or four pints of powdered charcoal to a drill of 100 feet in length. Collect a 

 quantity of rubbish together, such as trimmings of bushes, cabbage and broccoli 

 stalks, old pine-apple stems, and such other parts of plants as will not readily rot ; 

 put these together, laying some straw beneath them, and set the straw on fire. 

 The straw must be so laid, as that the fire can run into the middle of the heap. 

 When the heap is completed, cover it over with short, close, moist rubbish, such 

 as short grass, weeds, and earth, from the rubbish-heap, in order to keep the flame 

 from flaring through at any one place for any length of time. As soon as the fire 

 breaks through in a blaze, throw on more short rubbish, so as to check the flames. 

 It is necessary to thrust a stake or broom -handle into the heap in diffej;ent places, 

 in order to encourage the fire to burn regularly through it ; but as soon as the 

 flames burst through these holes, stop them up, and make others where you think 

 the heap is not burning. When it is all burned, collect the whole of the charred 

 rubbish, ashes, &c., sift it through difi"erent-sized sieves, and put the sizes separately 

 into old casks or boxes, keeping these boxes constantly in a di-y place. In Mr. 

 Barnes's potting-shed, we observed four different sizes of charcoal (considering 

 charcoal dust as one size) sods of heath-soil ; different kinds of loam ; leaf-mould ; 

 pots filled with four different sizes of pebbles, from the size of a grain of wheat to 

 that of the palm of the hand ; four different sizes of broken freestone ; four differ- 

 ent sorts of sand ; two sizes of bone — one of half-inch pieces, and the other of bone- 

 dust ; four different sizes of broken pots for draining ; different sizes of shards for 

 putting over the holes of pots, previously to laying on the drainage ; a basket of 

 live moss, a box of soot, and one of rotten cow-dung. — See Mr. Barnes in Gard. 

 Mag. for November, 1842. 



832, in p. 388 Much of the benefit of stirring ground depends on its being 



stirred in proper weather. Dry weather, when the soil is between the wet and 

 dry, and this weather likely to continue a day or two, is the best time ; and the 

 mechanical texture of the soil should be such as to allow it to break pretty freely 

 into small pieces, and retain that form when dried, so as not to fall down too easily 

 into a powdery mass. 



833, in p. 389. — Liquid manures and top-dressings should be applied in showery 

 weather. It is a loss to have them on the surface, but they do most good, espe- 

 cially the volatile kinds, to growing crops ; when they are applied before the crop 

 is put in, they should be pointed in with the spade or rake, or harrowed in to the 

 soil in the fields. 



859, in p. 402. — The eggs of insects which are deposited on seeds may be 



