385 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, Mabgh 26, 1861. 
and the gardener knows that moisture is fatal to his stores in 
the fruit-room. 
Putrefaction is also prevented by the exclusion of the atmo¬ 
spheric air, or, if it proceeds,Jt is by very slow degrees. An 
example of this is familiarly presented in a very effective mode 
adopted to preserve green Peas. These are put into dry glass 
bottles, and the bottles placed in water, then gradually made to 
boil.J The^clnef part of the air is thus driven from the bottles and 
they are corked down tightly, and the cork rosined over whilst 
thus heated. What little oxygen remains in the bottles is 
absorbed by the Peas, and these remain green and unaltered for 
months, requiring only the addition of a little soda to the 
water in which they are boiled, to be as tender and as green 
nearly as when first gathered. 
When a temperature of 45°, moisture,^and atmospheric air 
occur to dead vegetable matters, these absorb large quantities 
of oxygen, evolving also an equal volume of carbonic acid. If 
composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen only, the fumes they 
emit are not offensive; but if, as in the case of Onions and the 
Cabbage tribe, they contain a considerable portion of azote and 
sulphur, the smells emitted are disgusting. 
As in all other instances where vegetable substances absorb 
and combine oxygen gas in large quantities, much heat is 
evolved by them when putrefying; it is, in fact, a form of slow 
combustion or burning, and advantage is taken of this by 
employing leaves, stable-litter, and tan, as sources of heat in the 
gardener’s forcing-department. 
When the putrefactive process of plants is completed, there ) 
remains a soft black mas9, known as vegetable mould, or humus. 
One hundred parts of the humus of Wheat straw have of ex¬ 
tractive or apotheme rather more than twenty-six parts, and 
the residue is lime, peroxide of iron, phosphate of lime, and 
carbonaceous matter. This apotheme is identical with the ! 
humic acid of Liebig, the ulmic acid_of Braconnot, and the geic 
acid of Berzelius. It contains 
Carbon.466 
Hydrogen.2O0 
Oxygen.3 3'4 
1000 
It was once believed—indeed is still believed by a few men of 
science, that this apotheme is the immediate fertilising com¬ 
ponent of organic manures, being soluble under some circum¬ 
stances, and entering at once into the roots of plants dissolved 
in the moisture of the soil. But every relative research of : 
more modern chemistry is against this conclusion, and it is now 
tolerably certain that a chief nutritive portion of vegetable 
manui’es are their carbon converted into carbonic acid, absorbed, 
either in solution with the earth’s moisture, or in a gaseous 
form, by the roots. Apotheme is only one of the products 
formed during the progress of putrefaction, and is in its turn a 
source of carbonic acid. Carbonic acid has been long since 
showm to be beneficial if applied to a plant’s roots. It abounds 
in the sap of all vegetables, though this be drawn from their 
very lowest parts; whereas apotheme is injurious to them if they 
are growing in a solution of it, and analysers have failed to detect 
it even within the extreme vessels of roots. 
Acids are antiseptic, and retard the decay of vegetable matters, 
which explains why the woody fibre in peat soils remains so long 
unchanged, for those soils abound in gallic and other acids. 
Alkalies, on the other hand, accelerate vegetable decompo¬ 
sition ; and these being present in calcareous soils, is one reason 
that manures are sooner exhausted in them than in any other. 
Another reason for this rapid consumption is, that into cal¬ 
careous and siliceous soils the air easily penetrates, and the 
rapid progress of decay depends in a great measure upon the 
free access of oxygen gas. Such access is less easy to manures 
buried in clayey soils ; and, as a consequence, manures in them 
are much more permanent. 
Such is the progress, such the phenomena, attendant upon 
the death of plants; and but one more relative question remains 
for our consideration, Can death be averted from plants —can 
they be made, by man’s devices, an exception to that decree 
of "limited existence, which extends over all other organised 
creatures ? 
Those who assert that grafting completely renovates the scion 
maintain the affirmative. Eroin these we differ; for though it 
is happily true that grafting upon a young and vigorous stock 
imparts to the scion a supply of sap of which the parent stem is 
incapable, yet this incapacity is only premonitory of the departure 
of power, which will, alter a transient increase of strength, occur 
to its removed member. Every subsequent scion, however 
frequently, and whilst in apparent health, removed to another 
youthful stock, will be found to have a period of renewed vigour 
and productiveness of shorter duration than its predecessor. 
The Golden Pippin is occasionally quoted as a contrary proof: 
but this example has no such weight; for, supposing that this 
fruit yet exists, still it has not passed the age beyond which the 
period of unproductiveness and death in the Apple tree may be 
delayed by grafting; for we have no mention of this fruit that 
at all justifies the conclusion that the Golden Pippin existed 
much more than three centuries ago. A Pearmain Apple is 
mentioned in records as old as King John (a.d. 1205); but the 
Pippin is not noticed by any authority earlier than the reign of 
Henry the Eighth (1509). Lambard mentions that Tenham in 
Kent, famous for its Cherry gardens and Apple orchards, was 
the place where that king’s fruiterer first planted Cherries, 
Pippins, and the Golden Reinette. 
Supposing, then, that the Golden Pippin of our days is a 
genuine portion of the Tenham trees, handed down to us by 
successive graftings, yet still, it has not exceeded the age as¬ 
signed by naturalists as that beyond which the life of the Apple 
does not extend. But then another question will arise—Supposing 
our Golden Pippin does appear to survive the allotted period, 
who will undertake to demonstrate that the Golden Pippin of 
Tenham still exists ? It is quite certain that a majority of the 
Apples for which the title of Golden Pippin is claimed have no 
pretensions to the distinction, and more than one old person 
with whom it was once a favourite fruit, now declare that it is 
no longer obtainable. 
Be this as it may, even if the variety in question has not 
departed, yet no organised creature shall endure through all 
time. Grafting may postpone the arrival of death, as the 
transfusion of blood will revive for a while the sinking animal, 
but the postponement cannot be for a time indefinite: the day 
must come in both the animal and the scion when its vessels 
shall be without the energy to propel or to assimilate the vital 
fluid, though afforded to it from the most youthful and most 
vigorous source. The scion may be made to grow vigorously, 
but who will venture to assert that the parent from which that 
scion was taken is existing, and can be made to exist on its own 
roots through an infinity of years ?—J. 
PUTTERIDGE BURY, ITS KITCHEN GARDEN 
AND FARM. 
(Continued from page 214.) 
It is too much the custom of those who visit a first-rate 
garden to disregard the compartment where the most important 
things are grown. Houses for specimen plants, flower-beds, or, 
perhaps, the Grape and Pine-houses get a share of notice ; but 
the poor vegetable quarters are left unnoticed. This is certainly 
wrong, and I have no doubt but vegetables will have their day 
as other things have had. Whoever thought some thirty or 
more years ago that farming would have become so fashionable 
a pirrsuit amongst the highest of the land ? and when we see the 
same class take such interest in the different branches of rural 
economy, as, for instance, the breeding of poultry, fancy rabbits, 
pigeons, and other things, we may fairly expect the contents of 
the kitchen garden to have their share when the time comes ; but 
as I purpose giving a few hints on this subject at a future time 
I must not draw the remarks previously made on the garden at 
Putteridge to a close, without saying that the kitchen garden is, 
like the pleasure-ground, also in good order. In shape it is a 
parallelogram, the longest side facing the south. It is sur¬ 
rounded by good walls, and some useful vineries occupy part of 
the north wall. T he south side of the south wall forms the con¬ 
servatory wall, and joins the ribbon-border previously mentioned. 
The kitchen garden is divided in two by a broad walk length¬ 
ways through the centre; and by the sides of this walk dwarf 
Pear and Apple trees were in full bearing and very healthy. 
The side walls were flanked on one side (the inner one), by 
espalier-trained trees of the same kinds ; but none of the trees 
m the garden seemed higher than the walls, which were about 
the usual height—12 feet more or less. Excellent crops of 
vegetables were observable everywhere, and the same neatness, 
order, and regularity prevailed here as in the more showy part 
