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ADVICE TO YOUNG GARDENERS. 
do? The answer is. They never arrive at that degree of perfection as 
those under glass, to render them liable to that instantaneous check of 
the system which affects it when the juices are changed from an acid to 
a saccharine quality. 
A FEW WORDS OF ADVICE TO YOUNG GARDENERS. 
The art of gardening is conducted on what may be called a code of 
principles, rather than on a system of rules ; for how exactly soever the 
experience of our forefathers and seniors may have been detailed in 
manuals and calendars, setting forth the various operations belonging 
to every season or month of the year, such is the uncertainty of our 
climate, and such the diversity of soils, situations, and seasons, that 
even the most general rules of practice can be but seldom exactly 
attended to. It should, therefore, be the aim of every young gardener 
to acquire, as soon as possible, an insight not only of the practice, but 
also of the principles, on which all the best practices are founded. 
The business of a gardener being so much on the surface of the 
earth, it is necessary he should know something of geology; that is, he 
should have a good idea of how the different strata of earth composing 
the crust of our globe are placed with respect to each other; he should 
be acquainted with their properties, and be able at sight to call them 
by their proper names. Those that compose the surface strata are 
best known, as on their qualities and texture very much of the success 
of gardening depends. Clays, loams, sands, and gravels are the most 
common descriptions of surface soils, and their effects on the growth 
of plants are pretty well known : but, without doubt, much more 
depends on the nature of the substratum, in the successful culture of 
plants, than on the surface soil itself, however good. For this reason, 
the gardener will do well to get thoroughly acquainted with the sub¬ 
strata of his ground; it will assist him in trenching, in forming fruit- 
borders, and particularly in draining, when necessary. 
Many of the earths are impregnated with metallic oxides, which are 
more or less deleterious to vegetation, and these the cultivator should be 
able to detect by some chemical test. To enable him to do this, it is 
requisite he should also know somewhat of chemistry—a science which, 
of all others, may be of the greatest use to gardeners ; not so much for 
guiding or directing their practice, as for enabling them to account for 
many effects and phenomena occurring in their business, which must 
ever be to them inexplicable, without a knowledge of the powers of 
those immaterial bodies of which chemistry so largely treats. On this 
