APPENDIX. 713 



crops. The broadcast is the most prevalent practice here, though some who have 

 drilled them in light land approve most of that way. Nitrate of soda has been very 

 beneficial to the onions here this dry season, partly, perhaps, from its deliquescent 

 nature. We have often seen soot produce a powerful elfect on onion crops. 



1463, m p. 660.— Mr. Barnes (see note to par. 749) thins and hoes all his seed- 

 ling crops with short-handed goose-necked hoes, with square-edged blades of 

 different sizes, but chiefly of two inches in width. He uses two hoes at a time, 

 one in each hand. He never has weeds pulled up among seedling crops, but 

 always attacks them in the seed-leaf state with these hoes. 



1470, in p. 662. — The maggot has been more than usually destructive among 

 onions this season. Perhaps the drought, producing a sickly state of the roots, 

 attracts the fly to lay its eggs, as other maggots do on substances commencing to 

 putrify. Their instinct is strong, and may lead them to detect this state of the 

 root before perceptible above ground. Some carrots we observed this year, at 

 the time they commenced to droop, we found that in those much hui't in the roots 

 the maggots abounded ; in those less hurt, fewer maggots ; some of them sticking 

 to the outside, and commencing to enter ; while in the roots, on which a few brown 

 spots here and there were all the symptoms of disease, we find many destitute of 

 maggots altogether, and in whole sound roots found none. The thinning of carrots 

 very often induces maggots, if done in dry weather. We observed this season beds 

 dressed with nitrate of soda, and growing healthy, alongside of others not dressed 

 and unhealthy; and the fly, if not guided by instinct, might have spoiled the healthy 

 as well as unhealthy roots, which it did not. That the fibres first fail in the onion, 

 and that the maggot enters from the bottom of the onion at the fibres, and eats 

 upwards, is the opinion of all here ; no trace of entering from the neck of the stem 

 can be perceived, and its course upwards appears visible in the eaten-away decayed 

 appearance of the root there. The maggots are perhaps more the eff'ect than the 

 cause of bad growth. 



1481, in p. 665. — As corroborative of your ideas on asparagus, I have often seen 

 it produced strongest where pieces of the garden were imperfectly drained, and 

 rather marshy. Mr. Cuthill says, " I believe it has been proved that asparagus likes 

 as much moisture as can well be given it. The best asparagus I have ever seen 

 was at Mr. Bird's, a mai'ket-gardener at Ipswich, where the beds were under 

 water nearly all the winter, and he always cut asparagus sooner than his neigh- 

 bours." (G. M. vol. xii. p. 597.) 



1363, in p. 613. — If the theory that ten buds give rise to a hundred, and these last 

 to one thousand, and so on as long as sap towards new formations is undiminished^ 

 be taken in connexion with the sentence before, that the more a young tree grows 

 the more it is capable of growing, it would seem to give the idea that the growth of 

 trees, if properly fed, is unlimited, which, I think, is not intended. If a tree is 

 disleafed and disbudded when young, it will undoubtedly disable and retard growth, 

 and precocity may thus be induced, and perhaps disease also. If the young shoots 

 are allowed to ripen, and are cut back, the tree will push again more strongly next 

 season, the vital force being stimulated by the eff'ort of the tree to re-place ; an 

 activity is communicated to growth, which continues for some time, which if annually 

 renewed and properly fed at the roots is apt to produce immense quantities of young 

 wood without fruit. The pruning of the young roots has a tendency to increase 

 them also. The production of one hundred buds from ten, and of one hundi'ed from 

 one thousand, will only continue, however, so long as the force of sap to neiv forma- 



