the material may be. As there is not much to do now out of doors,
it is a good time to look over the notes which were made concerning
various crops in the past season, and to attend to the seed list.

Seed sowing should be practised with exceeding caution; but great things
may be done where there are warm, sheltered, dry borders, and suitable
appliances for screening and forwarding early crops. Under these
favourable conditions, we advise the sowing of small breadths of a few
choice subjects towards the end of the month; and, this being done,
every care should be taken to nurse the seedlings through the trying
times that are before them. Such things as tender young Radishes,
Onions, small Salads, Spinach, Cabbage, and Carrots never come in too
early; the trouble often is that they are seen in the market while as
yet they are invisible in the garden. Hedges of Hornbeam, Laurel, or
Holly, to break the force of the wind, are valuable for sheltering early
borders, and walls are great aids to earliness by the warmth they
reflect and the dryness they promote.

The soil for these early crops should be light and rich, and the
position extra well drained, to prevent the slightest accumulation of
water during heavy rains. Supposing you have such a border, sow upon it,
as early as weather will permit, any of the smaller sorts of Cabbage
Lettuce, Onion, Long Scarlet Radish, Round Spinach, Cabbage, and Carrot.
All these crops may be grown in frames with greater safety, and in many
exposed places the warm border is almost an impossibility. Reed hurdles
and loose dry litter should be always ready when early cropping is in
hand; and old lights, and even old doors, and any and every kind of
screen may be made use of at times to protect the early seed-beds from
snow, severe frost, and the dry blast of an east wind.

==Forcing== is one of the fine arts in the English garden. It is an art
easily acquired up to a certain point, but beyond that point full of
difficulty. Every step in this business is a conflict with Nature, and
in such a conflict the devices of man must occasionally fail. A golden
rule is to be found in the proverb 'The more haste the less speed.'
Whatever the source of heat, it should be moderate at first, and should
be augmented slowly. The earlier the forced articles are required the
more careful should be the preparation for them, and the more moderate
the temperature in the first instance. There must be at command a