24 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



years ago the steam threshing-machine was at work on a farm 

 at which I was resting. I asked the man in charge if he could 

 run as much grain through in a day as he could twenty years 

 ago. " Nothing like, sir," was his reply. " How do you account 

 for it? "was the next question. " By the farmers not hoeing 

 their corn," was the prompt reply ; and he went on to say that, 

 to save expense, they ceased hoeing, but they were finding their 

 mistake out. One of them had a fourteen-acre field of wheat, 

 quite level and uniform in appearance in the spring. Half of 

 this was hoed twice at a cost of 7s. 0>d. an acre, the other half 

 left untouched. The crop from the two portions was kept separate, 

 and when half was threshed the machine was cleaned for the 

 other. The results astounded everybody, for the yield from the 

 twice-hoed half was just under five quarters an acre ; that from 

 the let-alone half just over three quarters. The food from the 

 air admitted in the hoeing contributed to the greater yield, and 

 the weeds where the hoe was not used accounted for the lesser 

 by abstracting nearly half the food-producing material from the 

 land. The 7s. Gd. spent in labour more than earned the whole 

 rent of the land, and the corn has been systematically hoed in 

 the district ever since. 



Now we come back to gardens. Those which yield the most 

 • and the best of vegetables, and for which occupiers pay the 

 highest rents, are the best supplied with labour. "And with 

 manure," someone may ejaculate. Yes, with manure ; but with- 

 out the labour much of the manure would either be wasted on 

 weeds or remain unused — washed away, because of the non- 

 insertion of seeds and plants at the right time for appropriating 

 and turning it into money, in the form of profitable crops. 



But what in manure, or the ingredients which crops abstract, 

 and which, as Liebig says, are " lost for ever " if not replaced by 

 man ? What are known as natural or animal manures em- 

 ployed in cultivation are obtained from vegetables, which, as 

 Johnston says, contain " ready-formed — that is, formed during 

 their growth from the food on which they live — phosphate to 

 form the bone, gluten to form the muscle, oil to produce fat." 

 Now if the food referred to is defective in the requisite con- 

 stituents, so must the animals be, and so must be the resulting 

 manure. Such is the fact, and it is impossible to get nourishing 

 food out of vegetables that do not contain it, as they cannot if 



