He sees, within that heap, not vile garbage and of- 

 fensive waste, but sweet and animating ammonia, 

 pure lime, potash, soda, phosphoric acid, the rare 

 and useful elements of vegetable life and vegetable 

 fibre. 



He looks beyond the immediate decay into the 

 very heart of Nature, and sees the genial gases, 

 and the indestructible mineral agents now, by the 

 act of decomposition, being set free from the or- 

 ganic forms which they have assisted to create, and 

 standing marshalled, as it were, on the verge of a 

 new creation, which it is his noble office to inaugu- 

 rate. In the presence of the compo'st heap the ol- 

 factory nerves of the scientific gardener may be ex- 

 posed as much as other men's, but " their sense is 

 shut." The influence of habit, in this respect, is 

 wonderful. I have read of a band of distinguished 

 Esquimaux who, upon being shown all the 

 delights and splendors of Paris, its gay streets and 

 gardens, and brilliant saloons, begged to be permit- 

 ted to retire, for a time, into a -darkened room, in 

 order to enjoy, in their peculiar way, a good feed of 

 train oil and tallow. The scientific gardener does 

 not belong to this low order of mankind ; but still 

 he is not disturbed by disagreeable emotions, as 

 many other persons are, by the sight of decaying 

 organic matter. 



An eminent writer on the Philosophy of Pleasure 



"Some of the most delicious perfumes and 

 flavors, as those of the Pine Apple, can be 

 made from the most noisome substances, with 

 the slightest chemical changes. A few years ago 

 there were sweetmeats held in great regard by the 

 palates of the young. They were called Fruit 

 Drops. Among them was a ball of sugar, shaped 

 like a pear, and it had the perfect flavor of the old 

 French Jargonelle. Suddenly these fruit drops went 

 out of repute ; nobody would buy them ; hardly 

 would one venture to speak of them ; the confection- 

 ers, who had invested in these wonderful sweetmeats, 

 found that their stock was useless. In a single 

 night they had been blighted. A chemist had been 

 heard to say, in a popular lecture, that he could go 

 into any stable, and take from its drains a product 

 which, by a very small amount of alteration in one 

 of its elements, to be expressed by the veriest frac- 

 tion, he could convert into these delicious fruit 

 juices. Intelligence of this fact speedily spread far 

 and wide, and all the little boys in the land resolved 

 thai, henceforth, for them, there should be i.o more 

 pear drops." 



Now the delicious juices of fruits, the brilliant 

 colors of flowers and the delightful aroma of grapes, 



all find their elements in the compost heap. Re- 

 sulting from decay, they are purified by chemical 

 change, and often are converted into brilKant crys- 

 tals before they enter the substance of plants, which 

 possess a wonderful power of selecting what is suited 

 to their nature, and rejecting what is injurious and 

 offensive. So that the p ant, or flower, or fruit, 

 which is produced by these agencies, is as pure as 

 sunlight itself. 



But the compost heap need not be an off'ensive 

 object. Put into it all the waste substances, such 

 as I have enumerated, that you can find — recollect- 

 ing that the heap does not abs»jlutely create, and, 

 therefore, cannot make much out of little, — and do 

 not forget constantly to add fresh lime, or lime and 

 salt, — and upon each layer of six inches or one foot 

 of waste material, place two or three inches of old 

 sod or good clay loam, and you will have no ofl"en- 

 sive odors arising from the chemical changes. Good 

 strong loam or, better still, pure brick clay, will be 

 found the most powerful and valuable deodorizers 

 that can be employed ; and even the most fastidious 

 in such matters will then cease to complain of your 

 compost heap. 



ANOTHER NEW PLAN. 



BY MR. R. BUIST, SR. , PHILA. 



I have always considered it questionable ground 

 to touch upon the ideas and plans of other men, and 

 have very frequently allowed old things to pass for 

 new, rather than to infringe upon what may be, to 

 your correspondents, their happy ideas. Mr. P. 

 Henderson's article, in your March number,is rather 

 too stale to be allowed to pass for new ; and his im- 

 proved greenhouse erections are only new to him,, or 

 those who are not familiar with such. If he would 

 divest himself of the idea of calling those green- 

 houses, and give them their proper name, p^Vs, every 

 man who has experience in those ere^ tions could 

 readily understand their construction. They are, to 

 all intents and purposes, pits, — being sunk one, two 

 or nearly three feet under ground, nine feet wide, 

 and about one hundred feet long, with a very nar- 

 row path of two feet along the centre of each, cover- 

 ed on both sides with six feet sash, ar.d no more ; 

 nothing so simple, and everywhere in use. One 

 tahle in a Philadelphia greenhouse holds as much as 

 one house of Mr. Henderson's. 



I am credibly informed that the public have never 

 been favored with Mr. H.'s plan: for the one he 

 has adopted is that of Mr. Bisset of this city. — 

 When he was struck with Mr. B.'s original idea of 

 having his ^ork sheds on this North end of his 

 houses, covering in the ends of all his erections for 



