June 13.] 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
163 
sion, in order to maintain a regular supply of such as is 
good until the New Zealand spinach is able to supply 
what is requisite. Spinach should be kept in succession, 
that as soon as a crop is started for seed another crop 
should he coming in. Carrots, parsnips, potatoes, onions, 
scorzonera, salsafij, and all kinds of root crops cannot be 
too often surface-stirred; this is the trite means of 
encouraging a luxuriant and healthy growth, and of 
maintaining the same, besides its being such a kindly 
preparation for every succeeding crop. 
Rhubarb. —Desist from gathering any more for this 
season. Apply bountifully good liquid-manure, and 
encourage the greatest possible luxuriance, and then 
there will bo no fear of another season’s bountiful supply. 
Such kind of encouragement also must not be for¬ 
gotten with Sea-kale ,— one of the most esteemed and best 
of all vegetables, if well managed. A good portion of 
salt should always be dissolved in the liquid-manure, of 
which it is particularly fond. 
Capsicums and Chillies, now strong and well estab¬ 
lished in pots, may be turned out on a warm border, or 
where vacancies occur between fruit-trees against the 
wall, and to which they must be trained. If by the 
middle of September they should have not produced ripe 
fruit enough, take them up with a ball of earth, repot 
them, shade them in a frame, pit, or hothouse of any 
kind for a few days, and keep them under glass. They will . 
hardly feel the moving, and will produce abundance of 
either green or ripe fruit, whichever may be most re¬ 
quired for use, all winter and next spring. 
Tomatoes. —Keep their shoots thin, and trained into 
such vacancies as can be spared for them, taking care | 
to stop all side shoots down to the blossom showing 
growth. Abundance of fruit, either green or ripe, may 
thus be obtained all through the season, either for 
pickling, preserving, or for sauce. 
Ridge Cucumbers. —Attend well to their training 
and stopping; mulch over the whole bed, and if any 
kind of charred materials or mow-burnt hay can be 
spared to surface it with, so much the better. 
James Barnes. 
MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION. 
OUR VILLAGE WALKS 
By the authoress of “ My Flowers." 
How delightful it is to be once again watching the bursting 
forth of the spring buds and dowers ! To find the beautiful 
woods once more robing themselves in verdure ; and to 
observe daily less and less of the distant views, revealed so 
fully by the barrenness of winter. The days of spring are 
sometimes so warm, that it is a comfort to rest on a stile, or 
a fallen tree; and a never-ending book is always open before 
us when we give our minds to the objects we see around. 
The prostrate “ stick,” on which we are seated, may in itself 
awaken a deep and interesting train of thought, and tell us 
many things. A MS. has been placed in my hands, which 
is so full of interest and instruction, and conveys it so agree¬ 
ably to the mind, that I am sure I shall gratify my readers 
more by transcribing it than anything would do which I 
could place before them. 
“ Few things in existence are regarded with such utter 
contempt as the morsel of wood lying at our feet; and yet 
what a history and what a moral are attached to it! In the 
Mosaic history of creation, and so early as the eleventh verse 
of the first chapter in the Bible, the first objects named after 
the formation of the heaven and the earth, light and water, 
are ‘ the grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree ;’ 
and these were the productions of ‘ the third day.’ How 
important an influence has this particular substance exercised 
over the moral and physical nature of man ever since ; and, 
indeed, it may he remarked, that no other created substance 
has at all affected loth the moral and physical condition of 
mankind. In the garden of Eden, abundantly supplied as 
we know it must have been with everything to administer to 
the joy and necessities of our first parents, the most striking 
objects in it, in their view, must have been the two trees — 
‘ the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,' and ‘ the tree 
of life.' Although on the fall of man these were removed 
from his vision, yet the Almighty permitted every variety of 
tree, and shrub, and flower, to greet him in humbler forms 
in the external world; and not merely for purposes of utility, 
hut even of ornament and beauty. The fruit of a tree was 
the permitted instrument of man’s fall. The first, instru¬ 
ments of tillage, and the first weapons, offensive and defen¬ 
sive, [the consequences of that fall] in all parts of the 
globe, have been found made of wood; with this the first 
altar burned; and, pursuing the Mosaic history, as this same 
material may he considered to have been instrumental in the 
Fall, so it was plainly conducive to the safety of the human 
race in the ‘ark of gopher-wood’ (or cypress-treej, which 
Noah was divinely instructed to prepare,—the largest and 
most important vessel ever constructed, and admitted, 
from its proportions, to be of most extraordinary aptitude 
both for capacity and for natation. On the subsidence of 
the deluge, the first material substance presented to Noah 
was the branch of a tree. 
“ We cannot, within our scanty limits, dwell at any length 
on the various applications of wood in the history of man¬ 
kind. Tubal-cain was the first artificer in metals, but it seems 
as if all men had an intuitive knowlege of manipulating wood 
and stone. Referring, however, to the Sacred \olume, who 
can fail to think of ‘ the fire and the wood ’ in Abraham’s 
sacrifice; the blood on ‘ the two side-posts, and on the upper 
door-post of the houses wherein the passover should be kept; 
the patriarch leaning on his staff; the ark, and the various 
utensils of the altar service ; Moses’ rod; the ‘ weaver’s 
beam;’ the ‘ bow drawn at a venture;' and the fragment of 
wood, wherewith the idolater ‘ maketh for himself a god ? ’ 
And, without any remarks as to the application of wood for 
all the purposes of arts, and arms, and of humbler utility, 
how can we be wholly silent on the glories of the Temple? 
This stupendous fabric of surpassing beauty and splendour 
was constructed chiefly, as we are told, of ‘ timber of cedar,’ 
and ‘ timber of fir,’ from the forests of Lebanon. Following 
on in the path of Holy Scripture, how frequent are the allu¬ 
sions to the trees of the wood, in the parables and teaching of 
our Saviour, himself being, as was supposed, ‘ the carpenter’s 
son!’ 
“ But what can we say when our thoughts dwell on ‘ the 
acciu’sed tree,’ which sustained the Saviour’s blood-stained 
body until life had fled ? As in the earliest ages the ark had 
been instrumental in saving the lives of Noah and his family, 
so the unconscious wood became again the chief instrument 
in effecting the salvation of his believing descendants. And 
here, it may he well to remark, that although the goplier- 
wood is expressly mentioned as the species from which the 
ark was constructed, the exact material of which the cross 
was made is left hidden in darkness; probably to save it us 
well from undue veneration as from holy abhorrence.” 
I shall conclude this MS. in a future paper. "What a range 
of thought it opens up to us of things dear to the Christian’s 
heart! If we thus reflected, how large a volume might be 
comprised in one single walk ! and yet what a chaos is the 
mind most frequently, even as we gaze on the finest scenery! 
The bold and beautiful undulations of the ground—the rocky 
or chalky hollows among the hills—the cool green valleys 
that refresh the eye—and the broad mirror that sometimes 
spreads itself among them, all offer to us inexhaustible sub¬ 
jects for reflection and deep enjoyment; yet arc they admired 
