in a climate like that which exists between the parallels of latitude two degrees north and two south of Boston.

The advice offered is certain, if followed, to give a satisfactory result. It is prepared for those who wish to learn; who, knowing but little, are ready to follow advice, not to discuss it. All such may feel assured that they may unhesitatingly follow these directions, and may confidently rely upon receiving their reward.

THE ESTATE.

As a necessary preliminary to the rest of the book, let me describe the character of the estate upon which we are to suppose ourselves living, and which we are to cultivate. It shall have an area of 60 acres, of which about 20 are farm; 13, flower-garden; 3, kitchen-garden; 11, orcharding for Pears, Peaches, Cherries, Plums, Quinces, Apricots, Nectarines, Apples and Nuts; 6 acres are occupied by barns, stables, greenhouse, grapehouse, hotbeds, nurseries, and dwelling-house; the balance is lawn, woods, ponds, and roads. The pond, woodland, lawn, and shrubbery are contiguous; the greenhouses, hothouses, hotbeds, etc., are near the dwelling-house and near to both kitchen and flower-gardens. The surface is uneven. By purchase or otherwise the estate has come into our hands unstocked, and with its roads, paths, pond, flower-beds, and plantations in an unfinished condition. We find the roads, paths, orchards, and most of the plantations to our mind, but in all other respects the place must be renewed, remodelled, and replanted. The plan at the end of the book shows a ground plan of this place, and is so lettered and provided with an index that the various operations recommended may be followed easily and understandingly.

It is plain that the place just described may properly be termed a Ferme orneè. Some American writers have seen fit to ridicule the use of this term as being inapplicable to our country, and of no real significance anywhere. Why they should make such an attack it is hard to tell, for certainly no other term sufficiently describes a country place that may gratify all the tastes of a lover of country life. A mere pleasure place where there is nothing for use, and all for beauty, would satisfy but few, as most persons

soon weary of merely enjoying. The man of earnest mind, who gladly unbends from serious work and wanders with the greatest satisfaction through lawns and flower-gardens, ultimately craves something more solid; a view of the practical part of life; a sight of the machinery by which all moves smoothly and profitably. Beside the mental gratification derived from a combination of pursuits, there is almost a duty laid upon every one who makes a country home, to provide occupation as well as recreation. Owners of country seats in America, are generally men who have retired from active business, and by having a farm connected with their homesteads, they secure something to do and to think about, and thus avoid the evil of mental inactivity.

Many who would agree with these ideas, may object to the term "orneè," as expressing a regard for beauty too great to be consistent with the profitable management of a farm. This is an error, and one to which Americans are especially prone, the sacrifice of the beautiful to the practical, as though the two things were incompatible. Under this impression they would lay out their farmroads straight, would strip hedge-rows and walls of nature's profusion of wild flowers and shrubs, as offending against neatness and order; they would plant their trees in straight rows; in a word, would make every thing as prosaic as the hoeing of corn or the milking of cows.

It is a mistake to wish thus to deprive agriculture of the pleasure which nature throws about it. Even if it is easier to plough up to a straight road or wall or row of trees, than to a curved line; what of that, if by planting trees in groups, and curving the roads, we can produce beautiful effects in form and color, and offer agreeable combinations of wood, grass, cultivated field, and distant landscape? The few dollars a year saved in the one case to the pocket, are no compensation for the loss of the pleasant lessons which the beauties of nature must teach every willing mind. It is natural that the present generation should imitate their fathers, whose success has been before their eyes from birth. They who have been taught that the value of the earth lies in the crops she brings, and that those methods are to be followed which will most surely give a large market value to those crops, will adopt unwill

ingly any course that seems to diminish the expected profits; but they who know how much more precious a worthy mental development is than any increase in the hoard of money, should advise all their pupils to cultivate the beautiful whenever it is possible, as the most powerful and delightful means of such development.

COMMENCEMENT OF THE YEAR.

Before entering on a description of the work before us in this new home during the next year, let us settle the time when the agricultural year begins: certainly not in January, when the harvest has long been garnered, and the preparations for the next year's planting are already in a forward state; not in March, when the frost fetters of the earth are unlocked, and the farmer goes out to consider what to do first, — but at the end of the harvest. Then the farmer begins his preparations for the succeeding year. What is true of agriculture, applies with yet more force to horticulture. January, the first month of the solar year, is not the first of the agricultural; that year extends from harvest to harvest, and we must begin to prepare for the next, in its succession, while we are yet reaping the fruits of the present year. In the latitude of Boston, the year really begins in November, when the harvests have been garnered, and nothing of the year's produce remains out of doors but a few root crops, which are to be gathered when we are preparing for the spring work. The same principle applies to the garden; only there the preparations must begin earlier than on the farm, as bulb-beds should be made, greenhouses stocked, and kitchen-gardens got in readiness before the frosts become seSome greenhouse plants should be lifted as early as the middle of August, and almost all by the last of September.

vere.

So, even at the risk of making our system badly proportioned, we must begin our description of the work to be done at the time when the gardener's year commences, and must take up the farmer's as we arrive at it. Therefore we shall date our year, not from the end of harvest, or November, but from September, as the month in which much of the next year's work is commenced.

CHAPTER II.

GREENHOUSE.

EPTEMBER. In September our flower-gardens are generally in their greatest beautythose beds at least which do not depend on perennial roots. The Verbenas, Salvias, Pelargoniums, Heliotropes and other bedding plants, have now attained their perfection, and although the annuals and perennials which have gladdened the earlier months are gone, they are not missed, their places being filled with the luxuriant growth of the plants we have just named. No month in the year gives such tender pleasure to the lover of the flower-garden. In it all the beauty of the spring and summer seem to concentrate, and to be intensified by apprehensions of early frosts, which shall turn color to blackness, and fragrance to the noisomeness of decay.

As the evenings grow cooler, the careful gardener is reminded that the next day he must get up the sashes on his hot, and clean out his cold, houses; that piles of mould, broken crocks, and pots must be collected in the plant-sheds, and every thing put into the best condition to facilitate transplanting and repotting. Commencing our work with the greenhouse, we will give a description of the house, its size and arrangements.

Our greenhouse A, as shown by the plan, is a two-thirds spanroofed house, with a lean-to shed behind, in which potting may be done, and where cisterns and fires are situated. It is 60 x 20 feet and 15 feet high in the middle. The front wall is 10 inches thick and 4 feet high; every 5 feet in the front wall there is a ventilator, 1 foot square; this ventilator opens between the two hot-water pipes, so that the fresh air reaches the plants only when properly warmed; all these ventilators can be closed and opened at once,