There is another kind of trenching often practised, called bastard-trenching, which is digging one spit deep and taking out the loose crumbs (as the loose mould at the bottom of the trench is called), and then filling the bottom of the trenching with manure, covering it with soil from the next trench, which in like manner is filled at the bottom with manure, and so on every trench until the work is done - the taking out the first trench and carrying it away to the end of the ground is the same as in other kinds of trenching.

How to supply to the soil, by the application of what is called manure, that which cropping has carried away or diminished, or which the soil does not contain, and without which plants would not have their proper food or nourishment, can only be properly understood by a thorough knowledge of the different kinds of soils, and of their deficiencies. Manure operates in two ways - either as direct food to the plant, or indirectly, by altering and modifying the ingredients of the soil. The best of all manure is farm-yard manure, since the salts and mineral ingredients present in the food of animals have passed off in the excreta. Chalk and lime will change the constitution of some ingredients already in the soil by decomposing, inter alia, salts of iron, rendering its oxide soluble. Common salt will decompose organic matter and give rise to the formation of carbon dioxide (carbonic acid) nitric acid, and ammonia, but its use too largely often caps (as it is expressively called) the ground, probably induced by killing that most useful of God's creatures, the earthworm, and so terminating its labours for the good of mankind.

The gardener will do well to avoid the use of the word stimulant as inapplicable to what are called highly concentrated manures. No such stimulant exists, nor does the structure of a plant apparently warrant the application of the word. Such highly concentrated manures are simply nourishment placed within the reach of the roots of the plant at the time it was ready and willing to assimilate it.

He should learn to identify some of the commoner forms of fungus, which he will often hear called cluster-cups, brand, mildew, smut, mould, or blight, etc, such as roestelia on the Pear leaf (Roestelia cancellata), Berberry cluster cups (AEcidium berberidis), Rose brand (Aregma mucronatum, Lycthea rosae), Corn mildew (Puccinia graminis), Hollyhock mildew (Puccinia malveacearum - common on Althaea officinalis and Malva sylvestris), Rose rust (Phragmidium mucronatum), white rust on cruciferous plants (Cystopus candidus), Potato mould (Peronospora infestans), Pea mould (Peronospora viciae), Rose blight (Sphaerotheca pannosa), Hop blight (Sphaerotheca castagnei), Pea blight (Erysiphe Martii) Salsafy and Scorzonera blight (Erysiphe lampro-carpa), Oidium fructigeum, concentric rings on Apples, Pears, Plums, etc.

Fungi are organisms endowed with life, with different modes of reproduction - one being by spores or seeds, of which the atmosphere appears to be always full, and to be the vehicle made use of for their dispersion. Those belonging to the epiphytal class seem as numerous as the phamogamous plants, on which they are most frequently found, almost to indicate that each living phaenogamous plant has its appointed guest in the shape of some fungus, without much restriction as to soil, situation, or climate. As living organisms they fulfil some beneficent object, and are apparently as much the object of the Creator's skill as other works of His. Some of them appear on plants in a low state of vitality in the autumn, assisting in the general changes then going on, helping forward the work of decomposition, and preparing the soil for new growths. Others induce chemical changes - others find a dwelling-place in the tissues of living leaves, apparently healthy leaves, but generally in the leaves of diseased, unhealthy, ill-grown, over-fed plants rendered unhealthy by over-draughts of liquid-manure supplied to them by him whose duty it was to have withheld it.

Their object seems to be by decomposing the tissues of plant-structure to cause them to make way for other and more healthy organisms.

The gardener has not much to fear from their visits, many of them are only barren states of other well-known fungi, which, as soon as they appear, can be easily got rid of. The appearance of others is the result of want of vigilance in purchasing, plants already infected, or seeds saved from plants (Hollyhocks or Tomatoes, for instance), which in their lifetime had been the hosts and entertainers of fungi, and which will produce plants infected like their parents, or in growing plants in a damp, unhealthy, draughty house, or in improperly opening the front lights of the vinery during forcing-time, and so letting in the spores of the mildew, most likely some state of Erysiphe communis, formerly thought to be an Oidium, and then called Oidium Tuckeri, or in planting Potatoes already infected with Peronospora infestans, or in using farm-yard manure, in which Potato-bines (which had entertained in their lifetime such guests as Peronospora infestans) have been placed to rot, instead of burning them, or in growing Roses in a draughty situation, or Peas in a dry shallow soil.

Again, if chips of wood find their way into the soil of the Vine-border, the spores of some common fungus in the soil, not one of epiphytal kind, will soon find out the chips of wood, and in the most systematic and beneficent way will forthwith split up their tissues, and return their carbon to the common stock; but in so doing the fungus growth will not be very particular to confine its growth to the chips, or to limit its duration of life to the exact period of time required for their decomposition, but will foliage about the border for other chips of wood on which to complete its career, and in so doing will materially damage the Vine-roots. It is no part of our object to explain the use of the spade, the scythe, the besom or broom in sweeping a lawn - it will be sufficient to state that unless learnt correctly, and that early in life, it will never be acquired in later years. Labore Vinces.