This is a common experience. My neighbor doesn't consider he has done any thing mean to try my patience and ruin my garden ; the meanness is all on my side.

Now I recommend all my readers to keep a gun, if it be not against the law to fire a gun within the limits of your town; where it is, poisoned meal may take the place of the gun; and after fair notice, to kill every trespassing hen. Do it early in the season. If you must have the quarrel, save your garden; don't lose the garden and have the quarrel to boot.

The house located, the general arrangement of the place is next to be determined, and that this may be intelligent and satisfactory, make a plan of it, as you would like it when completed to your mind. If your land is perfectly level you may represent it accurately on paper, and however uneven its surface may be, a plan is an important aid in laying it out. My directions for making this plan will be general, and the plan in the book may be taken as an illustration; I shall return to my description of that plan presently. Measure off, upon a piece of drawing paper, the dimensions of your land—be it parallelogram or other shape-according to some scale supposing your land to measure, on one side, 120 feet, allow on paper each inch of a foot-rule to measure 30 feet, each half-inch to measure 15 feet, and so on; then one side of your plan will be 4 inches long. Go out and measure the distance from each front corner of the lot to the middle of the front of the house, also the distance from these corners to each corner of the house. Then measure the outside of the house all round, noting down the measurements as made. Return to the house and find that point on your plan which corresponds to the middle of the front of the house. To do this set the legs of a pair of dividers by your scale of 30 feet to the inch, so as to measure the distance from one corner of the lot to the middle of the front of the house, as you have noted it down. Set one leg of the dividers on that corner in the plan, and with the other leg make as much of a circle on the paper as will reach from the front line back into the plan farther than you think the front of the house will be; do the same thing with the corresponding measurement from the other corner, and where these two curves cross each other, will be the middle of the front

of the house on the plan. In the same way find the corners of the house on the plan; connect these by a line drawn straight through the middle point, and you have the front line of the plan of your house. From this line measure out in accordance with your notes all the sides of the house, and be sure that all the angles correspond to the real ones. Having put the house upon paper, go out again and decide where you will put the gates, which will give admission to the front and kitchen doors, bearing in mind what I have already said about them; also select the position for the henhouse. These points settled, ascertain the relative positions on the boundary lines, and returning with these measurements, apply them to the plan. Now draw your path to the front door, then that to the kitchen, and to the piazza. If the local circumstances make straight paths the most desirable and pleasant, make them straight; but otherwise curve them. If the surface is uneven keep the paths to the hollows as much as possible, and when you ascend a slope follow the easiest line of ascent. Curve the paths whenever this will enable you to produce a pleasant effect, by planting a group of trees or shrubs in the bend, or to give a good view of the house and garden, or for any good reason. Make them 5 feet wide at least. This will seem to you too wide to look well, a waste of ground, and involving expense in construction. In fact it will look better than any less width, and 6 feet is better than 5; for proof refer to any of the plans which accompany this book, where all the paths are 5 to 6 feet wide, and see that were they narrower the plans would look pinched and meagre. And as to waste of land and money, it is not wasting to make a thing satisfactory, which you must have in some form or other, as you must paths; and surely a path, which forces friends to walk in "Indian file," and talk to each other over their shoulders, is not satisfactory, but very annoying, and if it be over a small place, it forces us to notice and regret the narrow limits which lead to such scrimping. If on such a place the paths were wide enough for three or four persons to walk abreast, they would seem wasteful, for their breadth would be unnecessary and incongruous. If our path allows two persons to walk abreast easily, it is wide enough; I do not mean so that they can just squeeze along without treading on the border, but so

that they may walk, easily, side by side. And this brings us to a principle in path-making.

Most persons think that paths are the most important features on a plan, and that how they look, and into what pretty shapes they divide a surface, are the important questions. But if paths are rightly placed, and of proper width, they are the least important features in a place; if badly placed, the most important. For a path should never attract notice to itself, any more than a coat or the frame of a picture to themselves. It is merely a means of access to something, and should be so managed as to afford this access in the pleasantest way, and to do nothing more. If wide enough, its width attracts no attention; we walk along it, talking with our friends, and looking at the landscapes or the flowers.

Draw your paths then 5 feet wide; wherever two of them meet, round the corners so as to allow a wheelbarrow or a child's carriage to be drawn round them easily; this, too, being no waste of room. Next fix the place for your well, if that is to be out of doors, and turn a path to it. Next assign a place for the clothesyard, which should be large enough for use, and no larger; mark on your plan that this is to be surrounded by a hedge of evergreen, which, when grown, will effectually screen the yard from cold winds and from observation, so that washing-day may come and go unknown to any person outside the house.

The next thing is to draw such a path as will traverse the whole garden, giving access to the henhouse on the way. Avoid sharp turns and corners, and it will seem to lead on without reference to the boundaries, whether near or distant, crooked or straight. Curve it to avoid inequalities in the surface, and for the sake of grace and beauty, but make all its curves as long and easy, and gently-changing as possible. A comparison between a straight and a crooked line, is almost always in favor of the straight; its simplicity and directness fills us with disgust for crooks, and sharp, unnecessary turns. The same principle will guide our choice between well and ill-curved lines; the best curve, like the line of beauty, possesses the good qualities of the straight line, and seems appropriate; the bad curve, like the wriggle of a wounded snake, is like the crooked line, meaningless. Do not think that because a line is not straight

b

b a, a, and b, b, be paths over the

same surface. If that surface were very uneven, and b, b, followed its undulations, or was lost among copses of trees and opened at every turn on some pleasant sight, it would be appropriate; but if short, and over a level surface as in our garden, the worst possible path. The changing path should beguile us along unconscious of any change, except as new objects are brought into view.

A gentleman once objected to a change made in his grounds, which would alter some straight paths to curved, that he should never like it, could never get along with it, for he was accustomed to walk much lost in reverie, or in thought, and should be constantly running into the borders if his paths were curved. This ' was a perfectly natural feeling; his idea of a curve was a crooked, hump-backed line. The change was made in accordance with the principles just laid down, and to this day he walks lost in his meditations, and has never yet been wrecked on the dreaded borders.

Our garden path was to give access to the henhouse, but should not quite touch it. Such a building should stand as far back from the line of direct walking as convenience will allow, for although it is useful and desirable, it is generally ugly and noisome. The former objection may be removed by vines well trained; the latter by sprinkling the pigpen occasionally with diluted sulphuric acid, and covering the floor of the house with plaster of Paris, chloride of lime, or charcoal, all of which answer the same purpose, being absorbants of ammoniacal, and other gases valuable for manure but disagreeable to smell.

You will now make, agreeably to directions before given, as many espaliers and of such kinds as you please. In the plan, to which we now return, there are 365 feet of espaliers, giving 45 trees 8 feet apart; of these 2 are Figs (sometimes they will bear, and sometimes not, but as curiosities have them), 4 Nectarines, 6 Apricots, 12 Peaches, 3 Plums, 3 Cherries, 15 Pears. Had you no other fruit these would be enough, but I shall let you have more. Where the paths A and B cross, you may turn back a short path, which will render access from one to the other easier; in the little trian

gle thus left, you may put an Apple-tree; it will do less mischief there than anywhere else. In so small a place plant no Apples in the borders, unless they are dwarfs; for when Apples are plentiful they are very cheap, and when scarce, your trees are not likely to do better than your neighbors; and no tree is so unprofitable in a small place as the Apple. It covers a large surface, shading it so that no smaller tree can grow, and gives no compensating return.

Dwarf Apples are not so bad, but I should never plant any. Cherries are about as bad, but occupy less room, so that I have put in a few in those swells of the path where there is room enough, also in places where you want a screen. Set dwarf Pears around the inside of the paths, 10 to 12 feet apart, as before described; our place will accommodate 18. We shall thus have 33 Pear-trees, the annual value of whose fruit will be not less than $2 per tree, when well established, and more if you use them yourself. For directions about planting, etc., refer back. Set currants between the Pears, each bush 3 feet from a tree, their centres 4 feet apart; there may be 50 Currants; in the place of some of these you can substitute Gooseberries if you choose.

From the clothesyard, measure back a strip of land 50 feet long and 5 wide, which will be large enough for the smallest sized Asparagus bed described under the directions for the culture of that vegetable. I have made it 12 feet wide to insure a sufficient supply. At right angles to the lower or north end of the Asparagus bed, are rows of Horseradish; cultivate this as I have directed, and short as the rows are, they will furnish enough for any family. At the west of the clothesyard is the Raspberry bed, 6 rows allowing 125 plants at 3 feet apart, and 2 feet in the row. Perpendicular to the Raspberry and Asparagus beds, are 7 rows of Strawberries of different lengths, quite enough to give a good supply through the season. Enclosed by these different beds is an area, not large certainly, but enough to give, under good manage. ment, an abundant supply of summer vegetables.

By planting only so many vegetables as will suffice for your family, you may have an abundance and variety for that purpose; but if you are possessed with the usual spring mania for planting every thing in large quantities, you will be cramped for room. Twenty