COMMONPLACE NOTES. 



253 



grass side downwards. The remainder of the depth of the border should 

 be of good fibrous loam — the top spit of an old pasture for preference — 

 mixed with old mortar or other lime refuse. Bones are not now 

 considered necessary. The soil should be made firm as the making of 

 the border progresses. This will give a border consisting of 2 feet of 

 good soil, with 6 inches of drainage below. 



Keclaiming Clay Land. 



The land is pasture land on sticky yellow clay, and has been practi- 

 cally starved for a good time past. To have to deal with such land is 

 lieart- breaking work, and it is also a medium for throwing away a good 

 deal of money to no purpose unless one proceeds very carefully. Probably 

 one-half the trouble arises from the hard, impermeable condition of the 

 •soil, which in years of drought is calculated to make the trouble still 

 greater ; whilst in years of heavy rain, probably through imperfect 

 drainage, the water will not get away, but lies and soddens in the ground. 

 It is all very well to say "Drain the land," but such land will never pay 

 for such expensive treatment nowadays. If one had an inexhaustible 

 ■supply of farmyard manure, that would be the best thing to put on, but 

 it is highly improbable there will be enough of this to spare. If there 

 is, well and good, use it. It tends to lighten the character of the soil and 

 makes it more open. Artificial manures would be of very doubtful use 

 and should never be embarked upon without trial first on a small scale. 

 Bones, for example, useful as they are on some lands, might here be 

 merely money thrown away. A top dressing of nitrate of soda, 1 cwt. to 

 the acre, used in spring, would ensure a crop of hay, but it would not 

 benefit the land as a whole. The very best thing to try is basic slag, 

 "8 cwt. to the acre. It may be put on any time from the end of November 

 io the middle of January. It should be bought with a guarantee of 

 •containing 38 to 45 per cent, of phosphates, and of being of 80 to 90 per 

 cent, of "fineness." It is not expensive, costing only about £2 a ton in 

 London. 



The Mangosteen. 



In his very interesting and suggestive paper recommending the estab- 

 lishment of "Imperial Gardens " in all parts of the British Empire for 

 the purpose of distributing different kinds and varieties of fruit trees, &c., 

 Dr. Bonavia, at page 311, Vol. xxv., asks why the Mangosteen has not 

 "been introduced into Ceylon and cultivated for commerce. A corre- 

 spondent writes that it has been so introduced and grown in Ceylon : 

 " Amongst others who cultivated it was Sir Harry Dias, who grew it, not 

 unprofitably, in his garden near Kandy. ... It is in my opinion a very 

 much overrated fruit, and I got very tired of it when resident for some 

 years in the Malay Peninsula, as did also many others. . . . Believe me 

 there is not a fruit peculiar to our Imperial possessions — the Mango^ not 

 excepted — that comes near any of our best English fruits (European 

 perhaps I should say), and I have had over twenty-three years' experience 

 •of the tropics." This exactly confirms our own idea of tropical fruits. 

 They please our fancy for the moment now because we get them seldom, 

 but the vast majority of them are really flat and mawkish, and wholly 



