SOILS 79 



producing anything but ^ docks ' — * Richard, your 

 forefathers have helped to reclaim the greater part 

 of Sherwood Forest, while their neighbours were 

 draining the Lincoln fens ; and I should almost 

 have hoped, taking into account the discoveries of 

 modern science, that you might, in a favourable 

 season, have educed a few potatoes even from the 

 depraved material before us/ But he didn't seem 

 to see it. 



Wherefore I would ask to narrate, in antithesis, 

 and to take away, as it were, a nauseous flavour — 

 like the fig which followed the castor -oil of our 

 youth — another small incident. The * navvy' is not 

 commonly a man of floral proclivities, but I met 

 with a grand exception a few years ago in the leader 

 of a gang then working upon one of our midland 

 lines. When the work was done, and the band 

 dispersed, he applied for and obtained a gatehouse 

 on the rail, and to that tenement was attached the 

 meanest apology for a garden which I ever saw in 

 my life. Knowing his love of flowers, I condoled 

 with him at the beginning of his tenancy ; but he 

 only responded with a significant grunt, and a look 

 at the garden, as though it were a football and he 

 was going to kick it over the railway. It seemed 

 to me a gravel - bed, and nothing more. Twelve 

 months after I came near the place again — was it 



