FLORICULTURAL (ECONOMICS. 
100 
the inference is tolerably certain that manures constitute an important item in the 
list of articles to which the flower-cultivator owes his success, as much as the 
vegetable-grower and the farmer. And hence, it is of great value to know the 
profuse expenditure of those essential qualities which give efficacy and virtue to 
any sort of manure, may be in great part prevented ; the expenditure we refer to 
being the exhalation of the more valuable gases by exposure to the atmosphere. 
Manures easily class themselves into two divisions— the natural and the arti- 
ficial, though these are frequently blended, and may be so treated with considerable 
advantage. The natural manure, obtained from animals, or from animal or 
vegetable substances, is the old-fashioned application, which has been used from 
the earliest times. Earthy or mineral matters, in their natural state, may likewise 
be ranged beneath this section. The artificial manures are those modern compounds 
which swell the advertising columns of our newspapers, and which are produced 
mainly by a variety of chemical combinations. The union of the natural with the 
artificial is effected by applying a variety of chemical or other preparations to 
natural manures, for the purpose either of retaining or developing their properties. 
Now, as a general observation, we may affirm that the last class of manures is 
decidedly the best. And it is with the view of showing how naturally fertilising 
substances may be rendered far more efficacious, that we have at present broached 
the subject. 
In regard to artificial manures, experience has so strongly shown that their 
effects are comparatively transient, and that they are so exceedingly liable to 
adulteration, even though the most satisfactory analysis of any portion of them 
may be procured, that, while we are writing, we believe there is almost a unanimous 
determination among practical men to revert to their old fertilisers, and only to 
bestow more care and exhibit more science in the preparation of these. Guano, as 
a perfectly natural product, when pure, is of course excepted from such statements, 
and this is probably one of the very finest of our manures. 
Persons of a fastidious taste would, almost without fail, at once decide that the 
artificial section of manures was more fitted for applying to flowering plants, 
because of their more refined (or, if we may use the expression, ethereal) character. 
Grosser substances seem unsuitable to the delicate mechanism which is to develop 
flowers alone. But the slightest reflection, and reference to the most common 
practice, will show the baselessness of such views. Those exquisitely beautiful 
and delicate things which the florist rears to such perfection, are mostly supplied 
with the strongest and grossest of manures. The excrement of birds, animal 
blood, and other like powerful matters, are very generally used by florists for the 
greater portion of their plants. And while facts are thus against such refined 
notions, however pleasurable, no one would contend in their behalf. 
But it is quite possible to render the commonest and most disgusting manures 
as comparatively free from all that is offensive, as those of artificial creation ; and 
thus the most delicate taste might be accommodated. 
