263 
OPERATIONS FOR DECEMBER. 
November having opened with more than its accustomed dampness, and much 
rain having fallen during the first fortnight, the saturated earth will have furnished 
an excellent index of the extent of draining which will be requisite this season, and 
which may at once be eifected. For all spots in which tender plants, or any sorts 
of exotics that are of dubious hardihood, are cultivated throughout the whole 
year, no precautionary measure is of greater moment than an ejBficient provision for 
the conveyance to a proper distance of the water that might accumulate in the 
soil. 
It is rather a curious subject for investigation, and does not redound to the 
credit of the floriculturist for industry and zeal, that numerous expedients resorted 
to by the cultivator of fruit trees for the realization of his wishes are sadly under- 
valued or neglected when flowering plants are the objects of attention. An instance 
in point presents itself from the preceding paragraph. No experienced gardener 
attempts to cultivate peach trees, or other choice fruits that require the protection 
of a wall, without seeing that the border containing them is adequately drained, either 
by Nature or by some artificial contrivance. How seldom the same care is bestowed 
on the ground prepared for blooming shrubs, it would be needless to mention. We 
wish, however, to see these more beautiful productions regarded as tenderly as the 
fruits that conduce to the luxuries of the table ; and unless draining be more 
attended to in the pleasure-grounds and flower-plots where valuable exotics are 
planted, it is perfectly plain that the success in acclimatation must be extremely 
partial. And now that the earth has been drenched to a degree that will render 
those species unsafe from which the excessive moisture is not immediately carried 
away, a good opportunity is afforded for extending the process to every portion of 
ground that may stand in need of such assistance. 
This being the period at which gardeners are wont to rake the fallen and 
decaying leaves out of their shrubberies and shrubbery borders, prior to digging the 
whole or a portion of them, we cannot avoid expressing our decided reprehension 
of the practice. In the natural woods and forests of our country, or even those 
which have been created by art, the defoliation of the trees, and the decomposition 
of their leaves, are the means by which they manure themselves, and ameliorate, 
or, in peculiar cases, actually form the soil from which their roots afterwards derive 
nourishment. Why flowering shrubs and trees, and the more lofty ornaments of 
our pleasure-gardens, should be deprived of this beneficial source of sustenance, 
particularly when they are desired to assume a more ornate and healthy appearance 
than the rougher components of forest scenery, and very often grow in an earth 
which really requires some such application both to enrich and pulverize it, we are 
quite unable to imagine. Our advice, therefore, to all would be to bury those 
