JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 367 
probability would amount to a certainty v ere the ashes of leaves 
and shoots returned. However, men who cannot afford to ex¬ 
periment, but who know that Vines want potash and that em¬ 
ployers want Grapes, are justified in securing a plentiful supply 
and turning a probability into a certainty. This is our stand¬ 
point, and the question with us is hardly whether an ounce or a 
pound is wanted for a Vine border, but how that pound can be 
most economically supplied. Details are at present hardly so 
much wanted as broad facts. Ask the first gardener what his 
Vines want out of a border ; ask what Cabbages particularly want. 
He is not an ordinary one if he has even a vague n tion. But 
when he gets to know that potash is wanted, and that the guano 
and bones he supplies so liberally contain potash in very much 
less proportion than Vines want it, he will probably next ask how 
Fig. 75 .—Crinum pedunculatum pacificum. (See page 36G.) 
he can best and most cheaply supply that want. Then, if you get 
him to understand that the use of the urine that he has seen 
wasted unmoved, or sprinklings of wood ashes, or manure pre¬ 
pared with sulphate of potash, would enable him to do with 
less guano, or even without it altogether for a time, and yet be 
perfectly certain that he yet supplies every want, you have made 
him a better gardener. I hardly aimed at more than this when 
I sought to impress upon your readers the advantage of using 
potash ; and, as was said before, there is a difference between 
garden crops and their wants, and farm crops and their wants. 
As I pointed out in my last communication, some agricultural 
soils must have potash applied to secure fertility. This is ad¬ 
mitted. Our best soils, however, probably contain available (and 
what cultivation and atmospheric influences continue to make 
