250 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
August 
In a former number (No. 40, p. 170) we promised to 
renew our observations upon Digging, and we now 
redeem our engagement, confining our observations 
to the best time for performing the operation, and 
the tool employed. 
We all know that the soil must be dug whenever 
it is required for cropping, but as the operation may 
usually be performed without detriment a day earlier 
or a day later, if there be a reason for so doing, we 
may observe that usually garden soils are dug with 
most ease the day after a fall of rain—the surface is 
then most easily penetrated by the spade, and the 
earth holds better together, so that each spadeful may 
be cut out and turned over without spilling. In 
very dry weather, to secure these desirable objects, it 
is very advantageous to soak with water in the even¬ 
ing the plot of ground that is to be dug the morning 
following. Whilst soil is very wet, or when covered 
with snow, it should never be dug. In the former 
state it not only increases the labour by the greater 
weight that is to be lifted, and by encumbering or 
clogging the spade, but the soil cannot be properly 
broken fine, and after the occurrence of a day or two 
of fine dry weather sinks into irregularities, owing to 
the settling down being varied in proportion to the un¬ 
certainty of the soil’s division: masses of mud always 
shrink to an extent proportionate to their wetness. 
Most gardeners object to digging while snow is upon 
the ground, and, as Dr. Lindley justly observes, the 
objection is not mere prejudice, for experience proves 
the bad result of the practice. The evil is owing to 
the great quantity of heat required to reduce ice or 
snow from the solid to the fluid state. A pound of 
snow newly fallen requires an equal weight of water, 
heated to 172°, to melt it, and then the dissolved 
mixture is only of the temperature of 32°. Ice re¬ 
quires the water to be a few degrees warmer, to pro¬ 
duce the same result. When ice or snow is allowed 
to remain on the surface, the quantity of heat ne¬ 
cessary to reduce it to a fluid state is obtained chiefly 
from the atmosphere ; but when buried so that the 
atmospheric heat cannot act directly upon it, the 
thawing must be very slowly effected, by the abstrac¬ 
tion of heat from the soil by which the frozen mass 
is surrounded. Instances have occurred of frozen 
soil not being completely thawed at midsummer; 
when so, the air, which fills the interstices of the 
soil, will be continually undergoing condensation as 
it comes in contact with the cold portions; and, ac¬ 
cordingly, the latter will be in a very saturated con¬ 
dition even after they have become thawed, as well 
as so cold as to be highly prejudicial to the vegetation 
of the seed, or to the emission of roots by plants de¬ 
posited in it. 
With the tools employed for digging—the spade 
and the fork—mechanical philosophy has more to do 
than the gardener ever pauses to apply when pur¬ 
chasing them. All the philosophy of the wedge and 
the lever offers light for our guidance in their con¬ 
struction. For instance, there is no law of me¬ 
chanics more certain than that the sharper or more 
acute the angles of the wedge, the narrower will be 
its back or thickness, and the greater will be its 
penetrating power. Now, the blade of the spade is 
a wedge, and its power of penetrating the soil is di¬ 
minished in proportion to its thickness; yet how 
pertinaciously do the makers of spades adhere to the 
old thick blade, instead of adopting that knife-like 
thinness, with a strong mid rib, adopted in making 
spades for digging drains, clay, &c., in the east ot 
England. Full one-third less power is expended in 
using this than in using the old thick-bladed spade. 
Another advantage of that tliin-bladed tool is that a 
foot-rest, playing by means of a ring-socket at one 
end up or down the handle, and fixing firmly at any 
one spot by means of a wedge, enables the operator 
to stir the soil to any desired depth within the power 
of the spade and of himself. 
Another circumstance worthy of consideration in 
digging is the adhesion of the soil to the blade of the 
spade. This adhesion, arising from the affinity or 
attraction between the metals (for the earths are 
most of them oxides, or metals combined with oxygen) 
is increased by the surface of the blade of the spade 
being also in the state of an oxide, or rusty. The 
affinity is not only then greater, causing them, in 
popular phraseology, “ to stick together,” but the 
friction, owing to the roughness of the spade’s sur¬ 
face, is greatly increased, and the expenditure of the 
workman’s strength proportionate. It is for this 
reason, as much as for the sake of tidiness and pre¬ 
servation of the tools, that all judicious liead-gar- 
deners strictly enforce the keeping of the garden 
tools clean and bright. 
When the soil is hard and difficult to penetrate, 
or, indeed, whenever it is sufficiently adhesive to 
permit its use, the fork should be employed in dig¬ 
ging, for it is as effectual a tool for the purpose, and 
requires labour less nearly in the same proportion 
that the edges of its three small wedged blades bear 
to the one long continuous edge of the spade. A 
drawing and description of the best form of fork for 
this purpose is given at p. 289 of our first volume. 
At the same place we notice “ Lyndon’s cast steel 
spade” as being the best generally purchaseable. Its 
blade is thinner and yet stronger than the spades 
usually produced by the wholesale manufacturers, 
and the form of its handle is far superior, giving, 
by being curved a little forward, better leverage than 
the straight handle of the spade of the east of Eng¬ 
land which we have recommended. 
This leads us briefly to observe that as the thrust¬ 
ing of the blade of the spade into the soil is go¬ 
verned by all the mechanical laws of the wedge, so 
is the separating and raising the spadeful of earth 
from the bed equally controlled by the laws of ano- 
