THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
January 2i). 
27 a 
such an improvement should lie made—repairs were always 
wanting ; and Watkins managed it all for himself, for Mrs. 
S- knew nothing. She could not be made to see or 
believe that she was robbed right and left—she thought well 
of the two farmers, they had been on the property for years 
—she was used to them—she could not bear to make a 
change and part with either of them. 
George Watkins had two sons. The elder was made a 
gentleman; the younger was treated with marked unkind¬ 
ness, amounting to cruelty. He was made to sit in the 
barn, while his brother lived in comfort; the younger worked 
with the men, and looked like a common labourer, while the 
elder was dressed extravagantly, and followed the hounds. 
He was a wild young man, and was taught expensive tastes 
and habits. Of course his father had to find the money, 
and what with this, and other things, Watkins suffered 
I worldly losses, which were not known uutil he (putted the 
farm. Mrs. S-- died, the estate passed into other hands, 
and Watkins had notice to quit. 
It was a melancholy day when this change took place. 
But the prosperity of the unjust man cannot last, for God 
himself has declared that it shall not. Watkins and his , 
wife removed to a little cottage. His eldest son had married ! 
a woman with money some years before, and was doing 
well; the younger worked on the roads, or wherever he 
could find employment. 'Watkins himself was attacked with 
sickness, his wife was infirm, and they had no daughter to | 
take care of them. I remember, although it is so long ago, 
the impression it made upon me when I called to see them 
under their altered circumstances. I could scarcely believe 
that the dirty-looking, broken-down, ill-dressed man before 
me, was the same that I remembered so stout, and hale, 
and well-to-do, a few years before. I could scarcely suppose 
I was speaking to the tenant of Mrs. S-, with whom she 
used to drink a customary tea once every summer, and who ! 
v r as then thriving in his worldly ways, with his nest well ! 
feathered ; but so it was. He was now aged, poor, neglected, 
unhappy, and suffering from bodily infirmities. No one ; 
seemed to care about him, or respect him, and both he and 
his wife died and were buried unnoticed and unregretted. j 
I remember another man also who feathered his nest at 
the expense of his employer. He was bailiff in my own 
f amily, and when he was dismissed from his situation he 
boasted to his friends that he had made six hundred pounds 
since he had been at -. This man’s end was not j 
peace. Whatever money he really had secured made itself | 
wings, and he, and his wife too, died in poverty and trouble. 
1 dare say many of my readers can add instances of the 
same kind in their own experience, to these. Very seldom 
does such conduct escape punishment here on earth, for a 
“ woe ” has been uttered, by a voice whose words pass not 
away, against “ him that buildeth his house by unrighteous¬ 
ness, and his chambers by wrong.” A man may feather his 
nest warmly and snugly, but he will not sit in it in peace. 
He has robbed his neighbour —he has taken that which was 
not his right; if he thinks he has not openly broken the 
eighth commandment, lie has openly broken the tenth, and 
it will be difficult to prove that he has not done both, in the 
sight of Him who searcheth the heart. 
Let us feather our nests for eternity. Let us walk strictly 
by the statutes and precepts of God. Let us watch our 
hearts with diligence, for if they keep time and tune with 
the Word of God, neither our feet nor our hands will bo 
swift to do evil. Let us feather our nests so that we may lie 
down in them with a conscience void of offence. No nest 
will be soft, and warm, unless “ the everlasting arms ” are 
beneath us—unless we “trust in his wings,” and are “covered 
w ith his feathers." Let us all remember this. 
ALLOTMENT FARMING —February. 
We have now commenced the year in earnest ; and the 
appearance of the snowdrop, the coltsfoot, and some other 
harbingers of spring, will strongly remind us that we must 
put our house in order:;——must buckle on our armour, and 
! prepare “ to take the field.” Away, then, all wintry and 
I lethargic feelings; flowery Spring beckons us on; interest, 
i duty, and health, invite us to shake off all apathy. 
And now let us hope that our oft-repeated advice, to dig 
deep, and drain well, has been attended to by many of our ! 
readers; and that all proprietors, and those having power 
and influence over allottees and cottage gardeners, have 
strenuously used all fair influence, and all charitable and 
laudable means, to induce the holders of such plots to put 
faith in such practices, and assisted them, if needs be, in i 
such extra means to reclaim unfertile spots as are commonly 
beyond the poor man’s reach. 
To such as have omitted these necessary proceedings we 
can only say, better late than never. Much of such labour 
may yet be performed, only, with regard to the amelioration 
of soils for the current season, much valuable time has been ‘ 
lost; the mechanical texture of adhesive soils cannot well 
be brought into proper order without the action of a winter’s 
frost. Let any man who has possessed a piece of land 
for years of an apparently incorrigible character, and 1 
water-logged, let him thoroughly drain such land in Octo¬ 
ber, and after laying a mouth to empty itself, trench deep, 
ami ridge it. If there has been an average winter’s frost, j 
he will scarcely know his own plot again when breaking it 
down in March. Henceforth one-half the labour hitherto 1 
employed will suffice, and the productiveness, we will under- i 
take to say, will be doubled, independent of the application j 
of manures. If such be facts, surely they are sufficiently j 
persuasive. 
Rotations. —Judicious rotations are of much value; and 
all that is to be done this way should bo at once planned 
decisively for the whole year ; it only needs an hour’s close 
consideration. We do think that as a simple plan—and 
tedious ones will not answer with the generality of small 
holders—that the division of any given plot into three or 
four equal iiarts is a very convenient and safe mode of 
procedure. Thus throwing most of the crops into three 
broad classes, we may assume something like the following 
as descriptive terms:— 
Deepeners, Preparers, Exhausters, Stolen Crops.— 
By the first, we mean those crops for which it is particularly 
expedient that extra facilities be afforded, in order to render 
them highly profitable ; for on examination it will be found 
that they are the pivot on which the cottagers or allottee’s 
welfare mainly depends. It will, of course, be seen that 
what are ordinarily termed “ root crops ” are the kinds 
pointed to. The cultivator may have a pig, or he may not; 
he may even possess a cow: whether he does or no, these 
roots are the essential for the wintering ; and if he has 
children they will, at least, constitute the chief bulk of diet, 
notwithstanding the low price of wheat as compared with 
former times. On these, then, the small grower should 
expend his chief strength ; for they not only repay the extra 
labour involved in their culture, but serve a most important 
part in a good rotation—that of deepening the soil; and, by 
consequence, bringing up certain portions of what our 
chemists ana learned men term inorganic materials. What¬ 
ever persons with predisposed views may say, it is, we think, 
certainly proved by a concurrence of both science and prac¬ 
tice, that a gradual amelioration, and as gradual an uplifting 
of such material to blend with the surface-soil, is what may 
be justly termed a renewal. It is not simply a chemical 
affair; deep roots are generally enduring roots—that is, they 
will work during periods of extreme drought and heat, 
whilst shallow' roots are idle. 
As, then, we feel bound to advise that the whole of a 
garden, or allotment, be deep dug (or trenched, as some 
lolks have it) every third year, we do think that such labour 
is best expended over tbe “ root crops.” These, in the 
main, are fusiform, as our learned men term it—that is to 
say, spindle-shaped, or what country folks call tap-rooted. 
So growing them effects two objects; for since the chief , 
merit in these things is to have the greatest length, as well 
as bulk, why not make them the turning point for a period¬ 
ical deepening l 
If any man can dig deep every year, so much the better; 1 
this, however, all cannot do. We well remember, some , 
years since, trying a plan which turned out just the reverse 
of what we had intended. The gist of the matter was this: 
In the northern counties of England gardeners are fre¬ 
quently puzzled to find ground sufficiently poor on which 
to grow their beet, and their silver skinned onions, for 
ornamental pickles. Our agricultural friends will count 
this a capital joke; but their objects and the gardeners in 
