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GARDENING AS A SCIENCE. 
No. III.— EARTHS AND SOILS. 
Notwithstanding the labours of the cultivator, and the analysis of the 
scientific chemist and naturalist, the practical gardener and amateur remain in 
profound ignorance of the materials they employ. Mention is made, in works of 
Horticulture, of all the soils employed — loams, peats, sand, and the various species 
of decomposable manures which are supposed to nourish or stimulate the organs 
and vital action of plants : but we ask, what does the cultivator really know of 
any one of these substances ? 
An amateur goes to a nurseryman, purchases a beautiful Heath, Epacris, 
Camellia, or Azalea ; it flourishes during a week or two, then becomes sickly, and 
never recovers, notwithstanding every usual appliance :— why is this? Again, 
a Pelargonium of the choicest sort wants re-potting : the soil in which it grew is 
carefully investigated ; its colour, texture, general appearance, closely imitated, and 
the compost estimated by some successful cultivator, who mentions the usual 
proportions of decayed turfy loam, sand, and leaves, reduced to black mould. The 
plant is transferred to a pot a size or two larger, which admits of a layer of the 
new soil half an inch wide, around, and at bottom of the old ball ; the plant 
languishes and remains sickly, till, in despair, it is perhaps planted out in the open 
garden, of which no thought of the quality of the staple earth has existed ; and 
there, after the first shower, the foliage acquires firmness and depth of tint, and 
the plant flourishes luxuriantly till the chills of autumn check its course. These 
are no exaggerations ; examples are of daily occurrence ; yet still the mere facts 
afford us little instruction other than that the equable state of moisture, which 
the open ground maintains except during periods of unwonted drought, supplies 
and keeps in vigour the fibrils of the young roots, without permitting them to 
be gorged and diseased by superfluous, impure water, retained, as it frequently 
is, in pots. 
But the opprobrium of gardening is to be found in our actual ignorance of 
soils, and our utter inability to imitate minutely the quality, either as respects 
texture or chemical constituency, of those wherein we perceive a plant to thrive. 
In elucidation of this dictum, it may be stated, that, during seven years, with 
every opportunity to investigate the processes, methods, machinery, and soils of 
the best pine-stoves, every attempt to cultivate the pine-apple failed, either in pit 
or stove, the quality of the loam procurable in the district being such as to defeat 
all attempts at amelioration. 
Loams vary in almost every locality ; the mere term is indefinite beyond 
belief. The great German chemist, Liebig, has adduced authority, by which 
vol. x. — NO. CXI. I 
