COTTAGE ECONOMY. 
tongued Dram timber 13 inch thick; and the 
partition-standards are 4 inches broad and 2 thick, 
and are placed at distances of 16 inches, and, as 
well as all the ceilings, covered over with the 
best Baltic split lath. The outside doors are 
made of 13 inch ploughed, tongued, and beaded 
deal, and have each on its back three cross-bars, 
8 inches broad, of one inch thick deal; and all 
are hung with strong cross-tailed hinges, and 
mounted with strong stock-locks and iron lift- 
ing-latches. The window-sashes are framed two 
inches thick, with # inch astragals, and glazed 
with 3d crown glass. The roofs are covered with 
close-jointed ? inch sarking, and slated with good 
slates from the nearest slate-quarry or slate-mar- 
ket; and the ridges and flanks are covered with 
lead, 12 inches broad, and of 5 pounds to the su- 
perficial foot. All the walls, ceilings, and parti- 
tions are finished with two coats of good plaster 
lime; and all the windows and outside-doors re- 
ceive three coats of the best oil paint. The minor 
details of the interior, and all the details of the 
outhouses, are furnished in a neat and substan- 
tial manner, in full keeping with the character 
of the general masonry and carpentry. 
COTTAGE ALLOTMENTS. See Attorment 
SysTEem, 
COTTAGE ECONOMY. The prudent, thrifty, 
| and effective management of the domestic affairs, 
_ and particularly of the household expenses, of a 
peasant’s family. Cobbett’s well-known tract on 
this subject has been antiquated by the progres- 
sion of society; but an excellent paper, compiled 
by French Burke, Esq., from essays submitted to 
the Royal English Agricultural Society of Eng- 
land, was published in the third volume of that 
Society’s Journal, and a cheap, minute, compre- 
hensive, and exceedingly good manual, under the 
title of ‘The Working Man’s Wife,’ was recently 
published by the London Religious Tract Society. 
“To use without waste the food which Provi- 
dence supplies for the wants of man,” remarks 
Mr. Burke, “is of the greatest importance to 
those who have but little to spend ; and nothing 
so completely disarms the stings of poverty as 
the means of rendering a scanty pittance capable 
of producing a comfortable meal. If, therefore, 
by teaching them a little of simple cookery, it 
can be occasionally so changed as to make it 
somewhat more savoury at the same cost, there 
can be little doubt that it would materially add 
to their comforts, and then attach them still 
more to their homes.” Ample instructions on 
this point, and on others also of far higher impor- 
tance, are contained in the Tract Society’s man- 
ual; and a copy of the book may be had for a 
shilling. Many valuable hints, though somewhat 
diffusive and suited more to the peasantry of 
Ireland than to those of Britain, occur likewise 
in some of the tracts and pamphlets of Martin 
Doyle. See the article Farm-Servanrs. 
COTTAGE GARDENING. A small piece of 
garden ground affords a cottager useful employ- 
COTTAGE GARDENING. 877 
ment during his hours of leisure, enables him to 
add greatly to his resources and his domestic 
comfort, and indirectly but powerfully improves 
his moral character, and heightens the tone of 
his healthy feeling of independence. But it ought 
not merely to be possessed by him, but wisely 
managed, and kept in skilful cultivation. Many 
cottage gardens are kept in a condition only a 
degree or two better than savage, indicating 
total ignorance of all true principles of cultiva- 
tion, and displaying a barbarous indifference, not 
only to taste and beauty, but to the most com- 
mon tidiness and order; and these, so far from | 
really benefitting their owners, encourage their 
miserable habits, incite them to disregard or con- 
temn improvement, and exert a malign influence 
upon the taste and progress of the surrounding 
community. Ill kept cottage gardens, in fact, 
sustain exactly the same relation to the princi- 
ples and arts of cultivation, which filthy, irregu- 
lar, ill-managed houses do to the principles and 
arts of domestic economy. 
The land of a cottage garden may, from being 
situated on the lowest dip of the surrounding 
surface, or from the comparative sponginess of its 
soil, or from the retentiveness of its subsoil, or 
from the overflowings upon it of some land-spring, 
be too wet for the successful cultivation of kit- 
chen vegetables; and, in every such instance, it | 
ought to be promptly and thoroughly drained. 
But, in even the worst case, the digging of a 
ditch round the outside, and the forming of 
either an outlet or “a swallow” at the lowest 
corner, will be sufficient. When the garden ad- 
joins a public road, or a waste, or a common 
field, it ought to be protected by a good hedge or 
by a ditch and hedge, or by a deep ditch and 
paling ; but if it be an allotment piece, it ought 
not to be separated from adjacent pieces by more 
than a footpath, or other simple boundary line ; 
for unless hedges are quite necessary for protec- 
tion, they serve as retreats for slugs and mis- 
chievous insects. All timber and ornamental 
trees, particularly poplars, ash-trees, willows, 
alders, birches, and mountain-ashes, when grow- 
ing in the hedge-rows or upon the margin of cot- 
tage gardens, are excessive intruders, and make 
fearful curtailments upon the amount of useful 
crops which might be raised. Unless a kitchen- 
garden, whether old enclosure or new allotment, 
have been quite recently trenched, a new tenant 
should resolve to trench it piece by piece till, 
within as short a period as his convenience will 
allow, the whole of it obtain a new surface. 
Trenching is indispensable for deep-rooting plants, 
and serviceable to the most shallow-rooting ones ; 
it deepens the soil, and facilitates the perform- 
ance of all future operations; it buries weeds 
and sickly mould, and converts a useless or nox- 
ious surface into a useful, root-feeding substra- 
tum; and it secures a greatly improved circula- 
tion of both air and moisture, and averts many 
bad effects both of excessive rain and excessive 
