March, 1914 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
205 
each month as they are in season, and a 
score-card record kept, as above. 
Perennials from seed are to be shown 
at the exhibitions, as per program, and 
score-card records kept. 
After the program was adopted we 
came to the subject of the day — Soils and 
Their Chemical Make-up and Altering 
Them Chemically, — which is, of course, 
only another name for fertilizing. This 
had always seemed to me a very hopeless 
and uninteresting matter; but we had a 
man from the State Experiment Station 
who talked about it exactly the way the 
lecturer in the domestic science course 
used to talk about dietetics, and the first 
thing I knew I was so worked up over 
the starving of plants through improper 
feeding that I felt quite equal to demand¬ 
ing of the Government a plant pure-food 
commissioner. Of course, the poor things 
are as helpless as babies, and many times 
it seems as if we do not feed them they 
are bound to suffer from malnutrition. 
Viewing them in this light makes fer¬ 
tilizers somehow seem a little less inele¬ 
gant — puts a human interest in it, so to 
speak. 
The Government are surveying soils all 
over the country, and when they finish 
there will not be an inch of this United 
States that has not been measured and 
classified and put up in test tubes and 
recorded and the records put away where 
anyone living in any neighborhood may 
be able to refer to them and learn exactly 
all about tbe dirt in his back vard. This 
is very encouraging, I think, and as soon 
as they come to my county I shall invest 
in the report. Meantime, this agricul¬ 
tural college man took away with him 
about a bushel of dirt done up in a little 
one-pound sugar bag and labeled with 
the name of the member who had do¬ 
nated it, and he is going to send back to 
us a report on each donation, together 
with a prescription for a tonic to build 
it up—providing, of course, it needs 
building up. 
I should not have supposed that there 
was anything left to say about earth after 
Miss Lucy’s talk of last month; but now 
I am beginning to wonder if it would be 
possible to tell all about it in a lifetime. 
There seem to be so many different 
viewpoints, and conditions change so. 
That is, conditions change because we 
change the plant which we wish to grow 
in a given place, and what seems to be 
one plant’s meat is another plant’s poison, 
or almost as bad as that. Of course, 
Miss Lucy has always known this, but 
then, she has always known everything 
about the garden, anyway, and her plants 
have always been like happy, well-fed 
children in consequence. This year I am 
going to see if I cannot have some happy, 
well-fed plant children, too! 
Western < Electric 
ones 
\ ' 1 
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' 
The 
Telephone 
Within the Home 
-,/ Every modern home should be provided with 
Inter-phones for communication between floors or 
between rooms on the same floor. Not only comfort, but 
efficiency in home management must be considered. Wasted 
effort and tiresome stair climbing should be saved both to 
mistress and maid. 
Western Electric Inter-phones are easily installed in any 
house and should certainly be provided for in the specifi¬ 
cations of every new home when the wiring can be done 
at slight expense. 
The special two-station set, shown in the illustration, can be put up 
between any two rooms, and the work can be done by anyone as easily 
as putting in a door bell. J 
Your local electric goods store should be able to supply you. If they 
haven’t this Inter-phone outfit, we will mail it direct to you by parcel 
post. It includes two Inter-phones and the necessary wire, etc., with 
simple directions for setting up. Price, $15. 
Write for “The Way of Convenience.” It is booklet No. 31-A. 
There is an opportunity for agents to rep¬ 
resent us in some unoccupied territories. 
WESTERN ELECTRIC COMPANY 
Manufacturers of the 7,500,000 “Bell” Telephones 
463 West St., New York. Houses in all Principal Cities 
of the United States and Canada. 
Agents Everywhere 
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In writing to advertisers please mention House & Garden. 
