ones, almost as fresh and juicy as when stored. A mangold is never in greater danger of rotting that when it comes up clean and free from earth, for its fibres have then nothing to preserve their vitality. I consider it a bad plan to let them lie on the field in heaps after pulling. Mine are always thrown into the cart as they are lifted from their place, and at once placed in the clamp. As I do not pull them until late in October or early in November, a certain amount of damp or wet earth adheres to their roots. Those with two or three fangs always keep best. Those with only one fine tap-root hold little earth, and consequently rot early; so we use that sort for early consumption. We thatch the clamp with soft barley straw, which lies close, and keeps out both frost and heat. Hard glassy new wheat straw won't exclude the frost. A little later we earth them up—that is, plough round the clamp, and enclose them in a thick cover of earth. They keep good until September or October.

Early in the Morning, and sometimes late at night, you may, by an occasional look-out see what is neither profitable nor agreeable. A young man who complained of farming was advised by a sagacious friend to go of a summer's morning about daybreak, and drink a glass of water from a spring at the farther part of the farm. The very first morning that he did so, he found a neighbouring person taking out his horse, &c., that had been feeding all night in his fields. I know of an instance where a cunning fellow always turned his horse out at night, and fetched it home before daybreak in the morning. It was often in people's fields, or lost. A farmer wisely offered a shilling to his men every time they could take it to the pound. This settled the matter, and the offender soon sold his horse. A great many things disappear from a farm late and early. Wood, and even coals, sometimes walk off.

A Hint to Coursers.—A farmer aquaintance of mine, who had greyhounds, was always lucky in having hares on his farm, although he did not preserve. Hares always make to a gate, where they get taken by the poachers. This farmer caught his hares at night, in a

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gate-net, and gave them a sound whipping with a lady's riding whip. He then turned them down, and however sharply driven, they would never attempt a gate a gain.

Pasture.-Most of our old or permanent pastures, on certain soils, are weedy, exhausted, and unprofitable. If pasture is desired, let it be laid down for two or three years, but no longer. Hay crops are generally good the first and second year after laying down, but soon become weak and unprofitable. This I know from practical experience. Cultivation is so fertilizing and valuable on certain, and indeed on most soils, that the absence of it for any length ot time is decidedly unprofitable. Of course there are exceptions to this rule.

Waste Brings Want, and this as true of a nation as of an individual. At the present rate of waste of the constituents of our food after we have consumed it, the nation must become pro tanto poorer and more dependent on other nations for its supply of food. London alone sends into its Thames, in seven years, the whole of a year's produce of the United Kingdom, or its equivalent, which costs about £150,000,000; and as our town populations are estimated at 15,000,000, the waste in seven years is that from food which has cost £1,000,000,000, or much more than the total amount of our national debt. These are not imaginary figures, as I shall now prove. Our population is 32,000,000, our farmed area is only 46,000,000 acres, having, at £4 an acre, an annual produce worth £184,000,000; so that 12 acre of British soil is not near enough to feed each individual, and we, therefore, have to draw upon foreign countries for the remainder. As their production of food per acre is less than half that of our own (in come cases not a-third), another 20,000,000 of acres are probably required to supply us. I speak of bread, meat, potatoes, butter, and 'cheese, and leave out of consideration the vast area of land required for tea, coffee, sugar, wine, spices, &c. Well, then, we require 2 acres each to feed ourselves and our horses—I mean the available produce of 2 acres, because the farmers have 1,000,000 of farm horses which consume, probably, the

produce of 4,000,000 to 5,000,000 of acres; licensed, or taxed horses, non-agricultural, number 1,500,000, and they no doubt consume the produce of some 5,000,000 or 6,000,000 of acres. If I add to that of our own production all the tea, sugar, coffee, wine, &c., received from foreign countries, and consumed in London, and all the products of our fisheries, the amount I have named will be vastly increased. It probably takes the available produce of 20,000 acres to feed Londoners for one day, and 20,000 acres to feed their horses for a week. To what extent, in manurial money value, do we Londoners thus withhold from the land? Mr Lawes, and our other chemical authorities, estimate the manurial results of its consumption of food at per-centages, according to its constituents, varying from 10 to 40 per cent. of cost. We may, therefore, safely value the voidances at one-tenth of the value of the food consumed. At this rate the loss to London might be put at £2,000,000 sterling annually, or for all the towns of Britain £10,000,000 annually. There is an unerring way of testing this question-a crop grown on I acre, if consumed on that acre, will fertilize it, but if the crops of 2 acres are consumed on 1 acre, the fertilization is amply sufficient to produce a great crop. Therefore, if each individual on an average consumes the produce of 2 acres, the voidances resulting from it, if all economized, ought to fertilize 1 acre. On this principle or calculation,

The

the population of London and their horses should fertilize 3,000,000 of acres annually. Of course there can be no reasonable hope of this taking place, but it illustrates the folly and waste of applying the annual voidances of fifty people to a single acre of land, and continuing to do this year after year. Even at this rate, 60,000 acres would be required to utilize the sewage of the 3,000,000 population of London. This question is of such importance nationally, that our Legislature and Government should, in my opinion, take initiative action. upon it, by the purchase of a sufficient area in various directions, and a re-sale when properly completed. City of Glasgow, by a single pipe of 4 feet diameter, and a fall of 5 feet per mile, has, at a cost of a million sterling, obtained from Lock Katrine, 40 miles distant, 221⁄2 million gallons of pure water daily. Steam power would, at a cost of 8s. 6d. per 1000 tons of sewage, raise it 200 feet high, which, at a fall of 5 feet per mile, would convey 40 miles away from London. But then the sewaged land must be drained, naturally or artificially; so it is a "big job," which will ultimately force its way to a solution. Still, as compared with our railways, it is, for engineers, a very little job. It was estimated that we shall require this year 13,000,000 qr. of foreign wheat independent of our enormous imports of other kinds of grain, meat, butter, cheese, and a million of foreign eggs daily.

it

brake and heather grow luxuriantly. There are not many rare plants to be collected in the locality, yet the whole are of an interesting description, and would well reward the botanist or amateur collector of wild flowers. Curiously enough, the fallow deer do not seem to thrive in the locality, for although a herd of them near this have plenty of grass and shelter, they are quite stunted in growth and do not shew the

antlers those bred in the woods or among the fastnesses of the north, do. Highland cattle thrive well upon the meadows-their graceful and shaggy appearance giving an artistic effect to the landscape.

Alogether, a visit to Waverley Abbey will be found to be a great treat, and we would strongly recommend it to the notice of tourists in pursuit of health and pleasure.

D.

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Trees and Shrubs for English Plantations. By AUGUSTUS MONTGREDIEN. London: John Murray. THIS new candidate for public favour, like all other books, has its merits and its demerits. It professes to do a great deal in the way of disseminating knowledge, and it does so, but the knowledge it disseminates, we opine, is not always of the kind its author intended it to be. It is a sort of quasi-scientific diagnosis of 621 species of trees and shrubs "suitable for English plantations." Had our author abandoned the scientific diagnosis, which is scarcely complete, and given his readers some practical information upon the habits and characters of the trees and the shrubs he selects, as well as some of its distinguished fellows that he leaves out in the cold, we should have been vastly better pleased with the production, and it would have been decidedly a far more popular work. To amplify, by additional detail, some of the trees and shrubs noted in Loudon's "Arboretum," is good enough in its way, and to specify some of the novelties that have been introduced since, is also good and proper; but there might have been a good hundred species left out of the list, and another good hundred taken in their places. Still, when we take into consideration that the writer speaks from personal experience, that, in fact "he has made the arboricultural branch of botanical science a special study for many years, that he posesses in his own grounds specimens of nearly all the species he has described, and, in most cases, the descriptions are based on his personal examination of the living plants," we must take the book for what it is worth, and judge it upon what it contains, rather than be discursive over what it omits. One word more upon the presumption of the author, and what we have to say will afterwards be words of approval. If the author has made the arboricultural branch of botanical science a special study, how has he foundered so dreadfully upon the simple question of nomenclature? Not to speak of the question of division of species at all, what school of botanical science, we would ask, permits such species as Abies nigra and Piceas nobilis, to be ranked in the same specific terms of distinction as Abies Menziesii? The rendering of Abies Canadensis or Cephalonica might be permissible; but those specific terms or surnames, indicating colour, or habit, or form, to be placed on a level with those bearing Latinized English names of individuals, does not shew much acquaintance with "the arboricultural branch of botanical science."

Decidedly the most useful portion of the book is contained in Part II. The classification of species into groups with reference to their foliage, is an instructive chapter, and will be found to be valuable matter to

all who read it. There are also chapters on evergreen plants, fine-foliaged plants-plants remarkable for the beauty and diversity of colour of the leaves. Then there is a chapter on the classification of species into groups with reference to their flowers. There is also a colour table which provides a ready reference list to all inquirers. There is also a classification of species with reference to fruit and also as to their value as timber trees. Chapter XIII., on the different forms of tree life, is a most instructive one. It contains lists of species with fastigiate, horizontal, or pendulous branches; of those remarkable for the singularity of aspect; of such as are remarkable for rapidity of growth; of those suitable for hedges; of such as thrive under the drip of trees, or in the smoke of cities, or on the sea coast, or in peat soil, or in swampy places, or such as form suitable cover for game. As indicating the mode of treatment, we quote from List 31, page 306—

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SPECIES THRIVING IN THE SMOKE OF CITIES.

stood as merely comparative. No plant can either "Of course the expression thriving' is to be undergrow or flower so well in the impure atmosphere of large towns as in the open country. But whereas most trees and shrubs dwindle away and die under the mephitic influence of air surcharged with carbon, &c., The list is not a long one, but it may be hoped that there are a few that will withstand it tolerably well. further experiments will be made with a view to extend it. Esculus Hippocastanum; Ailantus glandulosa (a large tree with beautiful leaves, much used for shade in continental towns, and amongst other places on the Boulevards in Paris); Ampelopsis hederacea (the abrotanum; Aucuba japonica; Catalpa syringefolia; Virginian Creeper); Amygdalus communis; Artemisia Cydonia japonica; Cytisus Laburnum; Ficus carica (the fig tree occasionally found in odd out-of-the-way nooks, court-yards and close areas, not fruiting, but freely producing its beautiful large leaves); Hedera helix; Jasminum officinale (the Cape Jasmine, whose introduction dates earlier than our earliest gardening records); Ligustrum vulgare (and probably the lucidum); Paulownia imperialis; Phillyrea media ; Platanus occidentalis (the plant which of all larger trees is probably the one which answers best for city cultivation, owing to its smooth leaves and ever-peeling bark); Quercus Ilex; Rhamnus Alaternus; Rhus typhina; Ribes sanguinea; Robinia pseudacacia ; Sophora japonica; Viburnum opulus."

The Plain Path to Good Gardening; or, How to Grow Vegetables, Fruits, and Flowers successfully. By Samuel Wood. London: G. T. Goodwin. AMONG the thousands that live and enjoy life in the suburbs of our cities and in the country, there is a manifest disposition to grow flowers. Wherever there