week" of August, to "get a piece of good rich deep ground in readiness, by dunging it if it want, and digging it deep for a crop of winter and spring spinach. When your ground is dug, if it be a light soil, which is best for spinach, tread it with your feet all over, then draw shallow drills of two feet apart, with your hoe flatwise; scatter the seeds of prickly spinach in drills, and cover them two inches deep, and make the ground smooth with a rake. You should, before you fill up the drills, set a little stick up at each end of them, that, in case of dry weather, you may stretch a line between them, which will show you where the spinach is sown, that you may water the rows if they require it. If the ground was dry on the surface, when you sowed the seed, you should have had the drills watered before they were covered. You may sow again a few rows, about the twentieth of the month."

Winter spinach is much superior to the spring, or round-leaved: it frequently may be gathered in December and January, continuing in full bearing till June or July: the inflorescence then becomes visible, and the plants should be pulled up for use, in thinning order, for they yet remain tender and juicy.

420. To save the seed, "either sow a quantity of each sort for the purpose, in spring and autumn; or leave some plants of the autumn or spring sowings: they will shoot up stalks in May, and flower in June; when, and not before, the male and female plants will discover themselves; the former producing its flowers in spikes, with stamina, containing the yellow male farina; the female plants exhibiting flowers in close lateral clusters at the joints of the stalk. Leave the male plants till they have discharged their farina, after which they soon decay, but the females continue their growth till they perfect the seed in July and August."-(ABERCROMBIE.) Pull up the stalks, spread them out to dry in the sun, and to harden the seed; then thresh it out for use, and keep it, as all other seeds should be preserved, in a cool dry room, in a drawer or bag.

Subject 3. NEW ZEALAND SPINACH:-Tetragonia expansa; Ficoidea. Class xii. Order ii. Icosandria Digynia, of Linnæus.

421. The whole that follows is so interesting, that I have not hesitated to extract it, without abbreviation, from page 637, of the Encyclopædia of Gardening. "New Zealand Spinach is a half hardy annnual, with numerous branches, round, succulent, pale green, thick, and strong, somewhat procumbent, but elevating their terminations. The leaves are fleshy, growing alternately at small distances from each other, in shortish petioles; they are of a deltoid

shape," (a term which implies a resemblance to the Greek letter D, or Delta-▲,) "but rather elongated, being two or three inches broad at the top, and from three to four inches long; the apex is almost sharp-pointed, and the two extremities of the base are bluntly rounded; the whole leaf is smooth, with entire edges, dark green above, below paler, and thickly studded with aqueous tubercles; the midrib and veins project conspicuously on the under surface. The flowers are sessile" (closely seated)" in the alæ of the leaves, small and green, and, except that they show their yellow antheræ when they expand, they are very inconspicuous. The fruit when ripe has a dry pericarp of a rude shape, somewhat like the cone of Arbor Vitæ, with four or five hornlike processes enclosing the seed, which is to be sown in its covering. It is a native of New Zealand, by the sides of woods, in bushy sandy places, and though not used by the inhabitants, yet being considered by the naturalists who accompanied Captain Cook, as of the same nature as the chenopodium (see FOSTER, Plant. Esculent., &c.), it was served to the sailors, boiled, every day at breakfast and dinner. It was introduced here by Sir Joseph Banks, in 1772, and treated as a green-house plant; but has lately been found to grow in the open air as freely as the kidney bean or nasturtium. As a summer species, it is as valuable as the orache, or perhaps more so. Every gardener knows the plague that attends the frequent sowing of common spinach through the warm season of the year; without that trouble it is impossible to have it good, and with the utmost care it cannot always be obtained exactly as it ought to be, (particularly when the weather is hot and dry,) from the rapidity with which the young plants run to seed. The New Zealand spinage, if watered, grows freely, and produces leaves of the greatest succulency in the hottest weather. Anderson, one of its earliest cultivators, had only nine plants, from which, he says, "I have been enabled to send in a gathering for the kitchen every other day since the middle of June, so that I consider a bed with about twenty plants, quite sufficient to give a daily supply, if required, for a large table.

"It is dressed in the same manner as common spinage, and whether boiled plain, or stewed, is considered by some as superior to it; there is a softness and mildness in its taste, added to its flavour, which resembles that of spinage, in which it has an advantage over that herb."

The directions given by Mr. Anderson are correct and truly practical; this I have ascertained: the growth and productiveness of the plant are prodigious; but I have scarcely found any person who preferred the taste of the vegetable to that of the winter spinach.

Its chief merit appears to consist in being fully in season from June to November. I have raised abundance of seed by setting one plant against a south-east wall, and training the branches right and left. In 1831, I gathered the seed-vessels in succession, during September and October. It will frequently sow itself, come up in the following spring, and grow as freely as if cultivated by art.

422. Culture.-The seed should be sown in the latter end of March in a pot, which must be placed in a melon-frame; the seedling plants, while small, should be set out singly in small pots, and kept, under the shelter of a cold frame, until about the twentieth of May, when the mildness of the season will probably allow of their being planted out, without risk of their being killed by frost. At that time, a bed must be prepared for the reception of the plants, by forming a trench two feet wide, and one foot deep, which must be filled level to the surface with rotten dung from an old cucumber bed; the dung must be covered with six inches of garden mould, thus creating an elevated ridge in the middle of the bed, the sides of which must extend three feet from the centre. The plants must be put out three feet apart; I planted mine at only two feet distance from each other, but they were too near. In five or six weeks from the planting, their branches will have grown sufficiently to allow the gathering of the leaves for use. In dry seasons, the plants will probably require a good supply of water. They put forth their branches vigorously as soon as they have taken to the ground, and extend, before the end of the season, three feet on each side from the centre of the bed.

"In gathering for use, the young leaves must be pinched off the branches, taking care to leave the leading shoot uninjured; this, with the smaller branches which subsequently arise from the alæ of the leaves which have been gathered, will produce a supply until a late period of the year; for the plants are sufficiently hardy to withstand the frosts which kill nasturtiums, potatoes, and such tender vegetables." (ANDERSON, in Hort. Trans., Vol. IV. 492.)

PART II.

OPERATIONS IN THE VEGETABLE GARDEN FOR THE

MONTH OF AUGUST.

423. Sow-Winter spinach-the prickly seeded (419), in the first and second week.

Cabbage-seed, early York, sugar loaf, Fulham (111), for the main summer supply,-in the first week.

Onions, to come in about the end of March,-not later than the second week.

Radish (352), for autumnal use,-two or three times in the month.

Lettuce (485), the white Cos, brown Bath, or Capuchin, for late autumnal supply, or to be transplanted next month to stand the winter:-sow some early.

Cauliflower,-between the twentieth day, and the close, as per Ball's method (120).

Plant-Slips of lavender, rue, rosemary, sage, hyssop, and marjoram.

Transplant-Broccoli, at the beginning, and again at the end of the month, for early and later spring use (124).

Cabbage (110), Savoys (116), for use in November and December. Brussels sprouts (117), Borecole (118):-all these at the commencement, and again towards the end of the month.

Celery (359), into trenches for blanching; once or twice: water it.

Endive, a full crop (489), in the second, and again in the fourth week.

Cut all sorts of sweet herbs, and aromatic and bitter plants for drying-choose a dry time, when they approach to full blossom.

Gather seed-capsules, or pods, as they ripen, and dry them in an airy situation.

Cut down artichoke stems as the fruit is taken; remove suckers from the plants, if it be desirable to have very large heads.

Earth up-in dry weather, the celery plants in the trenches, and repeat the earthing two or three times during the month.

Destroy weeds every where, remove litter, and attend to neatness and order.

SECTION III.

NATURAL HISTORY AND CULTIVATION OF BERRY-BEARING SHRUBS.

The CURRANT:-Ribes; Grossularea. Class v. Order i. Pentandria Monogynia, of Linnæus.

424. The essential generic character of the genus Ribes—which includes all the numerous varieties of the currant and gooseberry— according to the last edition of Sir J. E. SMITH's English Flora, is, "Berry with many seeds. Calyx bearing the petals. Style divided. Flower of five-petals superior."

Subject 1. Ribes rubrum.—The red and white currant is thus described. "No prickles; clusters smooth, pendulous; flowers but slightly concave: petals inversely heart-shaped. In mountainous woods, especially about the banks of rivers in the north of England and Scotland. Berries globular, red, and shining, each crowned with the withered flower:-in gardens, either red, white or fleshcoloured."

Subject 2. Ribes nigrum.-The black currant. "No prickles; clusters hairy, pendulous, with a separate flower-stalk at the base of cach; flower oblong. In sandy swamps and thickets, about the banks of rivers, in Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Warwickshire, Cumberland, and Essex. In Costesy island, near Norwich; between Norwich and Yarmouth, by the river in several places, and also in Scotland. Berries large, globular, black, gratefully subacid, with some flavour of the leaves."

Subject 3. Ribes grossularia.-The common gooseberry.— "Prickles, one, two, or three, under each bud: branches otherwise smooth, spreading: stalks single-flowered: bracteas close together: segments of the calyx reflexed, shorter than the tube. In woods and hedges about Darlington, plentiful. Apparently indigenous in Hamilton woods, Scotland. Berry elliptic oblong, or nearly globular, green or yellow, rough with scattered hairs."-(English Flora.) 425. Varieties of the Red Currant.-The Encyclopædia of Gardening mentions ten varieties, namely,

426. Propagation.-Currant-trees are raised from seed, by cuttings, and by suckers. The first method, by seed, includes all those