THE AURICULA. 
195 
should be all successful, which however the 
writer avers. He however admits, that unless 
these composts are turned over frequently, 
they will poison instead of nourish the plants, 
a fact which we can easily believe ; in short, 
it appears to us, that a good deal of the 
quackery here recommended, has the mischief 
taken out of it by the exposure and constant 
turning for two years, in the same way that 
sea sand, which is fatal to many plants if used 
with all the salt in it, becomes perfectly innox- 
ious if continually turned over and submitted 
to the rains, frosts, sun, and air, until the salt 
is washed out. Fmmerton, however, contends 
that the blood is a most valuable addition to 
the compost, as " it will be the means of 
throwing brilliant colours into the pips or 
petals, and of giving life and vigour to the 
plants, as much as tine old Port or rich Madeira 
wine does to the human constitution." That 
large quantities of the wine will give colour 
to a man's nose, we admit is a possible case, 
but that blood will give colour to an Auricula 
pip lias not been so well demonstrated. TVe 
have frequently seen the mischief of relying 
on book learning, and it has been too often 
the means of misleading the aspirant to scien- 
tific experiments. The difficulty of recon- 
ciling ourselves to the fact, that writers would 
wilfully communicate either nonsense or mis- 
chief, has been great ; but seeing that we can 
lay our hands upon books, which seriously tell 
us how to make gold ; how to transmute lead 
into silver, and various other impossible feats, 
we can no longer wonder at the sad stuff 
which we find in old books on Floriculture. 
"We know it is possible to take the entire 
virtue of a soil clean away by constantly sub- 
mitting it to the operation of exposure to air, 
frost, sun, and rain. In fact, all volatile salts 
may be evaporated or washed away, or got rid 
of by both operations ; and even night-soil, or 
guano, the strongest and most mischievous of 
manures, may be rendered perfectly harmless 
by constant exposure of all their particles to 
the weather. It seems, however, a much more 
rational mode of using these things, to lessen 
the quantities while fresh, or comparatively 
fresh, instead of reducing the strength by the 
operation of time. Time is only necessary 
when we require a thing to be rotted, and 
which is not in a usable state until it be rotted ; 
for instance, leaves would be of no earthly use 
in compost for present use, but rotted into 
mould they become of the greatest conse- 
quence. Kenny, another writer on the Auri- 
cula, says, he used loam, sheep's-dung, and 
hay litter. MaddoX recommends willow mould 
as an ingredient, that is to say, decayed willow 
wood ; cow-dung is also one of his favourite 
ingredients ; ashes of burned vegetables, peaty 
or moory earth, earth of rotten leaves, and 
sea or river sand ; and Maddox, being a more 
recent writer, has been received as a better 
authority. But confusion worse confounded 
seems to be the leading characteristic of too 
many writings on this favourite flower, and 
those who have read much should be cautioned 
to banish from their minds all that they have 
read upon the subject, that they should begin 
free from prejudice, and untainted with bad 
instructions ; for strange as it may seem, all 
who have attempted to write on this and many 
other flowers, have been indebted to their pre- 
decessors, and whatever they have added that 
was new, has been as speculative and theore- 
tical (though a little more rational perhaps) as 
any that has been written before. For in- 
stance, Curtis, in a later edition of Maddox's 
work, recommends in a note the use of com- 
post without loam, his ingredients being two- 
thirds rotten dung, and the other third, equal 
parts of peat, or bog, and coarse sand. Hen- 
derson recommends two parts rotten dung, 
one part vegetable mould, one part river sand 
— all of which must have been recommended 
without any knowledge of its effect, and 
without much consideration. Justice is the 
most rational of all the writers on Auriculas ; 
he says he has produced the finest bloom that 
ever was seen in the whole kingdom ; nay, in 
all Europe, in the following compost : — Half 
free fresh loam, from under an old pasture, 
and the other half compounded as fol.ows : 
three parts three years old cow-dung, and 
one part sea or river sand, and these not to be 
mixed together until a short time before they 
are wanted. We say this is the most rational 
of all, because the quality of the loam, which 
is the most important of all the ingredients, 
is the only thing in doubt, and we have a right 
to suppose that when he describes that as free 
fresh loam from under an old pasture, he 
means the best. He however, casually men- 
tions fuller's earth, as if it had been in com- 
mon use with others, and even he was inclined 
to tolerate it. He says, " If you use fuller's 
earth to them, it must be done in the propor- 
tion only of an eighth part, and at no time 
but in the spring dressing ; for," he adds, " if 
used in autumn it is prejudicial, and ev< n 
when it is used in spring it must be well 
dissolved in warm water before being used, 
and then use no sand." Here we have a sort 
of admission, that fuller's earth may be used 
as a substitute for the sand ; yet, one can 
hardly think of a binding substance being in 
the least adapted to act as a make-shift for 
sand, which is of a decidedly opposite cha- 
racter, and the use of which is, in all eases, for 
the purpose of opening the pores of the com- 
post, in which it is to be introduced, so that it 
would seem almost an impossibility to find any 
of the old writers consistent, either with com- 
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