112 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
May 18 . 
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religion liave been more carefully attended to than by 
our enlightened selves. Thus, it can hardly be doubted 
now, that the Mexican civilisation is traceable back to 
Mesopotamia, in some way or other. The soldiers of 
Cortes tell us of the thousand scavengers daily em¬ 
ployed in removing all liltk from the city of Montezuma; 
of the unique floating gardens, and of the water for 
300,000 people brought down from the mountains in 
two earthenware pipes, each wide enough for a man to 
go up, and of which one was always kept in perfect 
repair, in order to be at once available if any accident 
happened to the other pipe. 
In the remote city of Erzeroum, near the birthplace 
of our first parents, we read that the people have their 
water brought down from the mountains in pipes of 
wood. The Arabians are said to have carried water for' 
the Persian army into the desert by means of pipes 
made of the hides of oxen; an expedient not unlike 
our modern adoption of gutta perclia. 
As for iron pipes, though not so objectionable as lead, 
we must say that we neither like iron contained in 
water, nor water contained in iron. 
In Persia, every little streamlet is covered in, and the 
inhabitants of a village will often bring the water a j 
distance of forty miles from its source. They find the 
adhesive clay of their subsoil to admit of being hollowed 
out into sufficiently water-tight conduits. The hydraulic 
works of this very old kingdom, indeed, would afford 
many instructive lessons to our crack engineers. The 
oldest water-works seem mostly to have been formed of 
stone or earthenware. Horace speaks with becoming 
doubt of the value of lead, when applied to this pur- ; 
pose. In the very passage in which ho observes, that 
“ we may drive nature out with a fork, and she will | 
continually come back again,” he enquires which is the 
more pure, that which is ready to burst a leaden pipe 
in the street, or the streamlet which murmurs and 
trembles at first entering on its headlong, downward 
course. 
The famed wells sunk by the old patriarchs; the deep 
Moorish wells made by the descendants of Isbmael, in 
Spain ; the old Roman wells, and the Artesian wells of 
the present day, are worthy of more than a passing 
notice. Anyone who will take the trouble to study a 
diagram or section showing the course of a bed of 
gravel, will see that a gravel-bed is Providence’s own 
model water-works; collecting, storing, and filtering the 
rain that has fallen on high and distant ground, and 
bringing the same to our very feet, for use. It is only 
gross mismanagement which can render this source of : 
supply corrupt; but it may at last become, on the score . 
of cost, unavailable in a populous city, when successive | 
well sinking, or, perhaps, a deep cutting through a bed 
of gravel, shall have removed the immediate source of 
supply. 
M. Soyer has been the great advocate for seeking 
water at a very great depth, even in London. Ho thinks 
it is the softest, and best adapted for culinary purposes, 
and the making of tea. For this he proposes a very 
simple test: the softest water, he says, and that which 
makes the best and cheapest tea and soup, is the soonest 
to boil. He found different waters to take from six to 
eleven minutes in boiling, according to their purity. 
But he also had been anticipated by the ancients. Hip¬ 
pocrates says, the lightest water is the first to boil, and 
the first to cool. This quality was as much admired in 
his time as in ours. We have already referred to 
Herodotus's account of the Greek ambassadors compar¬ 
ing notes with the long-lived Ethiopian Highlanders: 
who attributed the great and almost patriarchal age to 
which they attained to their very light water. Herod¬ 
otus, however, questions whether it be the water alto¬ 
gether. Perhaps something was due to patriarchal 
habits. One way or other it comes to this: the farther 
we are removed in our way of living from the simple 
requirements of nature, and from the personal habits of 
those high-minded “gentlemen” (as Dr. Barrow calls 
them) “ whose lives havo been handed down to us for 
our ensample,—the more precarious becomes our chance 
of ensuring a good, fresh, pure supply of water: which 
(like that equally scarce commodity now-a-days, fresh 
air,) Providence clearly intended to be free to all. But 
man has been happily taught to supply himself with 
this inestimable benefit, either by bringing it down from 
its very source, pure and undefiled, to his own door; or 
he has availed himself of the wonderful provision of 
nature to the same end, by simply digging a deep well 
to bring it up. In default of these means, we have had 
recourse to many strange expedients to disguise the 
mawkish flavour of our daily potations; to bo judged 
of on grounds of expediency for the most part. 
On the great water-drinking question, we are of the 
opinion of Sydenham, that when men have been accus¬ 
tomed to it from their youth up, no drink is to be com¬ 
pared with it. “ It is the natural drink of the greater 
part of mankind : more happy they in their poverty than 
we in our wealth and abundance. The vast host of 
diseases which afflict our bodies are standing witnesses 
to this: gout, stone, apoplexy, palsy, &c. Then, there 
are the bad effects upon the mind. This is warped from 
its right direction by wine drinking.” 
For exceptional reasons, however, and under a sort of 
protest, Sydenham recommends small-beer, and weak 
wiue-and-water. Of this latter compound a classical 
authority has said, that the wine in it should be scon, 
but not taskil. J. -J. 
PEAR-DRESSING. 
In consequence of repeated and pressing applications 
concerning my practice with Pears, &c., I am induced to 
take up the subject again. A gentleman, whose letter 
lies by me, and who uses the initials “ II. T.,” says, “As 
the time is now approaching for his practice to be car¬ 
ried out, I should feel obliged by your calling his atten¬ 
tion to it. I allude to his method of pruning his Pear 
trees, or rather, I should say, his not pruning them.” 
It will be remembered by our friends that Mr. B. 
Saunders did me the honour to assist in the examina¬ 
tion of this question a long time since, and ho has 
recently replied to certain doubts I had ventured to 
express concerning the general introduction of the 
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