to say,
that, in carrying on a garden yourself, you must have a "consulting"
gardener; that is, a man to do the heavy and unpleasant work. To such a
man, I say, in language used by Demosthenes to the Athenians, and which
is my advice to all gardeners, "Fertilize, fertilize, fertilize!"

THIRTEENTH WEEK

I find that gardening has unsurpassed advantages for the study of
natural history; and some scientific facts have come under my
own observation, which cannot fail to interest naturalists and
un-naturalists in about the same degree. Much, for instance, has been
written about the toad, an animal without which no garden would be
complete. But little account has been made of his value: the beauty of
his eye alone has been dwelt on; and little has been said of his mouth,
and its important function as a fly and bug trap. His habits, and even
his origin, have been misunderstood. Why, as an illustration, are toads
so plenty after a thunder-shower? All my life long, no one has been able
to answer me that question. Why, after a heavy shower, and in the midst
of it, do such multitudes of toads, especially little ones, hop about on
the gravel-walks? For many years, I believed that they rained down; and
I suppose many people think so still. They are so small, and they
come in such numbers only in the shower, that the supposition is not
a violent one. "Thick as toads after a shower," is one of our
best proverbs. I asked an explanation 'of this of a thoughtful
woman,--indeed, a leader in the great movement to have all the toads hop
in any direction, without any distinction of sex or religion. Her reply
was, that the toads come out during the shower to get water. This,
however, is not the fact. I have discovered that they come out not to
get water. I deluged a dry flower-bed, the other night, with pailful
after pailful of water. Instantly the toads came out of their holes in
the dirt, by tens and twenties and fifties, to escape death by drowning.
The big ones fled away in a ridiculous streak of hopping; and the little
ones sprang about in the wildest confusion. The toad is just like any
other land animal: when his house is full of water, he quits it. These
facts, with the drawings of the water and the toads, are at the service
of the distinguished scientists of Albany in New York, who were so much
impressed by the Cardiff Giant.

The domestic cow is another animal whose ways I have a chance to study,
and also to obliterate in t