294 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER, 
September 
fumes arising from the sewage water, or liquid ma- 
nureTormed from animal dungs, are not thus detect¬ 
able, hut they are escaping in a degree proportionate 
to the strength of the manure, and all such escape is 
“ loss of money and bad husbandry.” 
“ But how can you apply it hut to the surface ?” 
We will tell you what we have been doing, and then 
you may judge for yourself. Between two rows of 
cabbage plants we haye sunk a row of garden-pots—• 
a pot between four plants—as represented in this dia¬ 
gram; the round dots being the pots, and the black 
dots the plants. What 
, , . the result maybe we can- 
o o not tell, for the experi- 
. . , ment has not yet been 
long enough conducted, 
, . , hut we do know that the 
o o liquid manure poured 
. , . into those pots gets down 
at once to the roots where 
it is required, soaking away to them through the holes 
in the bottom of the pots, and much less manure is 
required than where it is poured upon the surface, 
and there is much less evaporation. To the roots of 
celery plants it may he conveyed in a similar mode 
by having a draining pipe set up on end at intervals 
of 18 inches, close by the side of the row of plants, 
and having these pipes earthed up as the earthing 
up of the plants proceeds. We usually grow celery 
in double rows, the rows a foot apart, and here a 
single row of pipes may be put in between the rows 
of plants, and supply both. 
We owe the suggestion of underground application 
to Mr. Chadwick’s Essay, who says:— 
“ The observation of some casual examples of the 
increased vegetation marking strongly the course of 
house-drains wliich run close to the surface of lawns 
suggested the inquiry whether irrigation might not 
he conducted in covered instead of open channels of 
distribution. 
“ Such casual examples of subterranean irrigation 
on a small scale appeared to me to be demonstrative 
of the fact (shown experimentally by Sir Humphrey 
Davy, when he directed the neck of a retort under 
the soil, and discharged gas into the earth, which 
displayed afterwards an increased amount of fertility) 
that plants are supported by manure in combination 
with moisture in a gaseous state. This was also 
shown by the increased fertility of the vegetation of 
turf coverings over manure tanks, where the roots 
must apparently derive their whole nourishment from 
the moist or gaseous emanations.” 
How grateful to plants is this underground mode 
of applying manure is testified by the following facts: 
“ When wooden pipes were in use for the convey¬ 
ance of water under ground for the supply of towns, 
before iron pipes were introduced, one cause of ob¬ 
struction in the wooden pipes was the roots of trees 
getting into them. Mr. Mylne, the engineer of the 
New River Company, stated to me, that formerly if 
their wooden pipes were carried within thirty yards 
of trees, they were never safe from having the pipes 
in time stopped up by the roots. The roots ‘found’ 
the joints, and insinuated through them, and then 
spread out in “foxtails” of fibrous matter, two or 
three feet long, which have in time filled the pipes 
and seriously checked the flow of the water. Similar 
intrusions have been frequently found in earthen 
drains and water-pipes; but it has been reported to 
me by a good observer that roots have not, under 
similar circumstances, entered upon water-pipes of 
iron or lead. If it should appear that the roots are 
repelled from entrance by the rust or injurious pro¬ 
perties of the metals, that would seem to be an im¬ 
portant fact as to the selective powers of the roots. 
“ I have, however, been informed of instances 
where iron pipes, for the conveyance of warm water 
under ground, have been curiously surrounded by the 
root of the vine, which would appear to have sought 
the stimulus of the warmth. 
“ On taking down the walls of Kensington gardens, 
which were very thick, it was found that the roots 
had forced their way through them, to get into a 
ditch on the opposite side. I have been informed 
also of instances where roots have forced their way 
through the walls of houses into house-drains; and 
one instance has been mentioned to me where the 
roots, having grown, have in time actually lifted up 
and split the outer walls of the house. 
“ It is astonishing the depth that the roots even of 
the smaller vegetables will descend after the water: 
a deep drain outside the garden-wall at Welbeck was 
entirely stopped by the roots of some horseradish 
plants at the depth of seven feet in the ground. At 
Thoresby Park, Lord Manvers’s, a drain fourteen feet 
deep was entirely stopped by the roots of gorse grow¬ 
ing at a distance of six feet from the drain. At 
Saucethorpe, an estate of Lord Manvers, in Lincoln¬ 
shire, a drain nine feet deep was filled up by the roots 
of an elm tree which was growing upwards of fifty 
yards from the drain; but under these peculiar cir¬ 
cumstances, the elm tree grew at the end of a sunk 
fence, the wall of which was formed of turf. The 
root of the elm got between the turf wall and the 
solid bank, and worked its way along till it got into 
the drain, which it soon filled up. The roots of all 
trees will stop drains, but especially of soft wooded- 
trees, such as willow, alder, poplar, &c. Ash trees, 
too, are very dangerous neighbours to deep drains. 
In one case the roots of grass stopped a drain two 
feet deep in the parish of Mansfield Woodhouse ; the 
drain had been carried across a field of old turf to 
convey water for cattle from a higher level. The ex¬ 
planation of this disposition of the roots both of 
vegetables and trees to strike deeper than ordinary 
in pursuit of drains appear to be this :—in digging 
the drains, the sides are cut down straight, and the 
ground left like walls on each side, while over the 
drain the earth is all moved; between the solid and 
the moved soil for a long time something like a fissure 
or crevice remains. When the roots in their progress 
through the solid land reach this fissure, they pass 
down it, and so follow its course into the drains.” 
Our space warns us to conclude, but we shall re¬ 
sume the subject at the first possible opportunity. 
THE FRUIT-GARDEN. 
The Fig.—A s we have observed repeatedly before, 
rampant growth is the principal hindrance to a fruit¬ 
ful habit in the fig. This rampant character will bo 
found the greatest in the northern parts of the king- 
