or barn-yard manure while it is yet cool, and not after fermentation has made much progress, or while the process is going on, otherwise it drives off instead of preserving the ammonia.

ASH COMPOST.

Ash compost may be made with equal parts of unleached ashes and gypsum, carefully mixed or sifted together. The mixture should be kept dry, and applied to crops for which it is suitable before rain, either full-handed, broadcast, or a good handful to each hill spread over it.

GUANO COMPOST, &c.

Guano or unleached hen manure, mixed with one half the bulk of ground gypsum and four or five times the bulk of light, rich loam, the whole being thoroughly mixed and sifted together, and allowed to lie for a few weeks in a dry place, being turned once or twice in that time, will become thoroughly incorporated, and may be applied, even by inexperienced hands, without the risk which often attends their use in an unmixed state. When applied, this compost should be covered, and not merely spread upon the hill like ash compost.

For top-dressing grain, for grass, or fruit-trees, guano should always be well sifted and powdered, and mixed with at least so much common earth as may serve to keep down its unpleasant dust in sowing, as well as to prevent loss by wind. In this state it may be used at the rate of two, three, or four hundred pounds to the acre.

For flower composts, see directions under that head, p. 443.

LIQUID MANURE.

Ordinary liquid manure is the drainage of the stable or the barn-yard, preserved in a tank or pond-hole, and applied by means of a sprinkling-cart or watering-pot. Of the drainage from the stable, each forty gallons may be reckoned worth as much as an ordinary carman's load of manure. The value of barn-yard drainings is very variable, depending on the form and soil of the yard bottom, amount of exposure, and quantity of rain.

For special uses, it has long been a practice in "the rural districts" to prepare liquid manure artificially by putting water upon hen manure or other material in a barrel, stirring it once in a while, and using it when it has settled for various crops, particularly onions, for the raising of which in a superior manner it has had for fifty years a sort of farmers' patent. It may, however, be made useful to almost all crops, particularly upon poor land, and where light manuring has been unavoidable. In a tank, such as that described p. 33, it is easy to prepare it in quantity by adding as may be found necessary manure from the hen-roost, or poudrette, or guano, either of which, or a mixture of them, may be used in the proportion of about one barrel of either of the two former or twenty pounds of the latter to a hundred gallons of water. On each occasion for its use, after the quantity required has been taken out, it should be thoroughly stirred, adding water or manure, if necessary.

It may be made in a barrel at discretion, with one pound of guano, or ta feu, to from three to five gallons of water, or with a mixture of bone-dust and sheep manure, or with poudrette and hen manure, without special regard to proportions, but applying it carefully to the earth around the plant, and not to its foliage. With this view, whenever it is applied to growing crops, a watering-pot without the rose should be used; but in applying it to ground that is not sown, or in which the seed has not yet sprouted, the rose should be upon the watering-pot. The repeated and moderate use of it is better than an excessive supply at once, and evening will be found the best time for its application.

CHAPTER V.

Reproduction in wild and cultivated Plants.-Vitality of Seeds dependent on certain conditions.

REPRODUCTION.

No clearer statement can be made of the general objects of the vast vegetable growth covering and beautifying our earth than that furnished by the pen of inspiration, "He causeth grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man, that he may bring forth fruit out of the earth." But in relation to each separate species or variety of plant, an inherent tendency or disposition to reproduction is its special and most marked peculiarity, as if simple self-perpetuation and multiplication in its offspring were the sole ends of its existence, though it is also apparent that through this tendency or disposition the general and ultimate objects proposed are effectually and directly reached.

It is interesting also to observe that this tendency or disposition to reproduction is in general put forth freely only in a single channel; it may be by offshoots or by seeds, but commonly, if freely by seeds, then not largely by offshoots; and if by offshoots, whether naturally or as a result of cultivation, then not freely by seeds.

This latter result is not uniformly accompanied by a destruction or disappearance of those organs of the plant which are necessary to the production of seed, for a few seeds are often produced; but, if the expression may be allowed, it seems to arise from a change in the direction of the virile force.

Striking illustrations of this are found in those varieties of onion which are cultivated chiefly for their offsets, and in the giant seedless pie-plant; and among flowers, by the tiger lily (lilium tigrinum), in which, although the floral organs of reproduction are full and prominent, yet no seed is yielded by them, the plant being increased moderately by offshoots or dividings

of the old root, and largely by the production upon the stem, at the bases of the leaves, of minute but perfect bulbs, which at first appear like small black buds. These are gradually loosened from the stem, and in due time, by throwing out a single root, cant themselves over on one side, and are shaken out of their parent leaf-cup by the slightest wind. This dislodgment being effected, the second or companion-root is pushed forth to effect the self-planting of the young bulb.

This tendency to mere increase, in whatever way it may be manifested, is satisfied, as we ought carefully to observe, by the most scanty growth in the plant, and in the grain with the very thinnest coating of flesh, or even, as in most seeds, by the production of the mere germ with its skin covering.

But the meagre growth of the wild plant, and the scanty covering of the seed, however abundantly sufficient for the absolute necessities of simple reproduction, fail utterly to meet the demands which are made upon them for support and comfort by the increased and increasing millions of mankind.

To obviate this difficulty, the efforts of cultivation are directed to the increase of the growth of the plant, or the enlargement of the fleshy substance of the seed. This effort, in the various grain-bearing plants, has resulted generally in an increase both of the plant-growth and of the grain, without any special drawback; but in many garden-plants the improved growth of the vegetable is attained at the expense of a partial or total loss of the power of seed production.

Thus a large, finely-headed cabbage or lettuce, or an improved melon, or pumpkin, or cucumber, will be likely to yield a much scantier crop of seed than one which is inferior.

The same law holds among flowers. Almost all wild flowers are single, and these, as well as the inferior single flowers of cultivated varieties, seed freely; but from those fine double flowers which cultivation has produced, it is often very difficult to obtain seed at all, as is often experienced in the case of superior balsams, pinks, &c.

VITALITY OF SEEDS.

The vital principle of a seed resides in its germ, which is a

perfectly-formed but minute plant of its specific variety. It seems probable that under suitable conditions the vitality of most small seeds might be retained for an indefinite period, extending even to many centuries, as in the "mummy wheat," the seeds thrown up from far below the earth's surface, or those which, being largely diffused through the surface soil, vegetate where they had been unknown for ages, when opened to the sun's influence and supplied with appropriate stimulus, or when the long-flooded upland produces swamp plants.

The strength and continuance of this vital principle in seeds depends on a great variety of circumstances in their production and storing. Seeds imperfectly ripened or insufficiently dried, as is not unfrequently the case with imported European seeds and grains, even after they have passed through the process of a moderate kiln-drying, though they may be of fine, plump appearance, yet will not, in general, bear keeping. Seeds that have in any manner become damp and heated, or musty, are risky or worthless; or if kept in a very hot place in vessels or packages through which evaporation goes on freely, or continued in it so long that the heat itself induces a change in the chemical condition of the seed, they may lose the vital power. Tables professing to give the various ages to which different seeds may be kept are therefore of little value; but, assuming that seeds are well ripened and stored with ordinary care, most kinds may be safely sown at five, and many at ten years old.

As in trees checking the exuberance of growth induces disposition to fruitfulness, so it has come to be regarded as a general rule that plants, particularly of the more luxuriant kinds, if raised from seeds which have been kept a year or two, run less to mere plant growth, and are more productive in fruit or seed than those raised from new seeds. Upon this theory cucumber and melon seeds intended for planting in frames are carefully kept for many years by persons curious in such matters, and sometimes, when for any reason it is desired to use them prematurely, artificial drying is resorted to as an equivalent.

In most seeds, however, age seems only, or at least chiefly, to affect the length of the period required for their germina