prayer, and reading the holy Scripture, must be attended with a blessing. A child so educated, is in the way of getting true wisdom here, and learning the way to everlasting happiness hereafter. It learns a Christian's hopes, and a Christian's duties. It learns to be peaceful, and loyal, and contented, and devout. The subject of my little story is a child of eleven years of age; the child of poor and pious parents, and one of a large family, who had received a Christian education, and been taught to kneel down every morning and evening to its prayers. He went into a farmer's service at the above age, and, on parting with him, his mother charged him never to neglect his prayers. The child slept in a room where there was a man-servant, and another boy. When he kneeled down, the others laughed at him; however, he went on; saying, that he had been instructed that it was right, and his duty to do so. After a time, the man, won by the boy's general conduct, said to the other, "Why, to be sure, this is nothing more than right; let us do so too." After which, they never failed to kneel down night and morning. Thus useful was the proper but modest behaviour of this little boy.

W.

To the Editor of the Cottager's Monthly Visitor. SIR,

THE kind of publication mentioned in your prospectus has long been wanted. If well conducted, it may guide the sentiments of many thousand heads of families in the kingdom, and prove a blessing to this and future generations. As useful information is intended to be blended with religious, I submit the following little Gardener's Calendar. I will send, if it is approved of, a Calendar, in proper time for each month in the year, and any other little thing that may

occur.

Your hearty well-wisher,

A B.X.

GARDENER'S CALENDAR.-JANUARY.

Let every thing be done in the garden that the weather will admit of. Dig and trench all vacant spots. Wheel in dung. Prune apple, pear, and plum trees. Clear them from moss, thus: in a mild, wet, foggy day, throw quick lime over the branches; wherever it strikes it will kill the moss; scrape it from the bodies of the trees. And whenever you boil meat, take the grease, while warm, and rub the trunks of the trees often; this will cure the canker in them: or train oil may be used for the same purpose. First Week.-Sow radish, spinage, and parsley. Second Week.--Sow peas and beans.

Third Week.-Sow marrowfat peas.

Fourth Week.-Sow lettuce, and plant cabbage. Plant trees and shrubs the whole month, if the weather is mild; and observe always to open the ground well before you plant. Let it be dug two spades deep, if your soil will allow it.

*****

This is a good time, now the leaves are off, to prune your gooseberry and currant bushes. If a gooseberry bush is left to itself, it soon gets thick and matted, and so full of wood, as to shut out the sun and air. The fruit will then be of a small size, and but little of it. Nothing in this world does well without industry. Use it then even in the matter of a gooseberry bush. Thin your bush well, cut out the wood from the middle, and you will have the branches covered with fruit, and of a much larger size. The currant bushes should be kept down by shortening the young shoots. The young shoots of either gooseberries or currants, stuck in the ground at this time of year, will strike root with great ease. Choose good, straight, healthy shoots, from the best sorts. When these grow to a good size, you can take away your old shabby ones. You may plant several together to take root, in a very small spot of moist ground, and remove them afterwards to the

place where you wish them to stand. You may increase your stock in this way as fast as you please; and if you have more than you want, you can accommodate a neighbour with some.

A rose, or a honeysuckle, growing up the side of a cottage, gives it a mighty pretty appearance; and it will be much prettier still, if these trees are properly managed. Don't be afraid of using the knife. The young shoots should be generally shortened, just above a bud, and several new shoots will then grow out; every new shoot will have a bunch of flowers, so that your tree becomes full, and handsome, and gay all over. But, if the cutting is neglected, the trees become thin at the bottom, and shabby, and will not have near so many flowers. This pruning should be done whilst the leaves are off. A China rose flowers several times in the year, and does all the better for being frequently cut. If you want to increase your stock, stick the pieces you cut off in the ground, and they will strike root, in a moist place, with ease. The young shoots of honeysuckles will do the same. Take care, however, to leave a hud at the bottom; and it may be well to stick the cutting so deep in the ground that two buds. may be covered, in case one fails of giving out a root. If you see a well trained China rose on the outside of a cottage, you generally see a neat and clean house within. And what can be prettier than an honest labourer's cottage, looking wholesome and tidy within and without? Cleanliness is a great thing both for health and comfort. A cleanly, sober, honest, pious, industrious, contented English labourer, is a truly happy man; and is about as respectable a character as any in the kingdom.

ON CULTIVATION.

From an Account of a Cottager's Cultivation in Shropshire. By the late Sir William Pulteney. WITHIN two miles and a half of Shrewsbury, a cottager, whose name is Richard Millward, has a house, and garden, and land, making altogether a very little more than an acre. He is a collier; and

the management of the ground is chiefly left to his wife Jane: they have six children alive, five boys and one girl. The soil was very bad; but is now changed. The wife has managed the ground in a particular way for thirteen years, with potatoes and wheat, chiefly by her own labour; and in a way which has yielded good crops, and of late fully equal, or rather superior, to the produce of the neighbouring farms, and with little or no expense; but she has improved her mode of culture during the last six years.

She divides the digging ground into two parts: in one of the divisions she sows wheat, and in the other she plants potatoes, alternately; on the wheatstubble she plants potatoes in rows, and sows wheat on the potatoe ground. She puts dung in the bottom of the rows where she plants the potatoes, but uses no dung for the wheat; and she has repeated this succession for nearly the thirteen years, but with better success and more economy, during the last six or seven years.

She provides manure by keeping a pig, and by collecting all the manure she can from her horse, and by mixing with it the scraping of the roads, &c. She forms it in a heap, and turns it before she puts it on her ground for potatoes. The ground is dug for potatoes in the months of March and April. After putting in the dung, the potatoes are planted in rows about twelve or fourteen inches distant: the

sets are placed about four or five inches apart in the

rows.

The dung is carried out in a wheelbarrow, and it takes a great many days to plant the whole: generally ten days.

Her husband always assists in digging after bis hours of ordinary labour. When the potatoes come above ground, the weeds are destroyed by the hoe, and the earth laid up on both sides to the shoots; and this is repeated from time to time, as the season requires. Handweeding is also used when necessary. In the month of October, when the potatoes are ripe, she takes off all the stalks, or haulm, of the potatoe, which she secures to produce manure by means of her pig. She now goes over the whole with a rake, and takes off all the weeds; and, before taking up the potatoes, she sows her wheat on as much of the ground as she can clear of potatoes that day. They are taken up with a three-pronged fork, in which her husband assists; and by the same operation the wheat-seed is covered deep. She leaves it quite rough, and the winter frost mellows the earth; and by the earth falling down, it adds much strength and vigour to the wheat-plants in the spring. Her crops of wheat have been of late always good, and better than her neighbours. The straw of her wheat she carefully preserves for litter to her pig, and to increase her manure.

When her potatoes are gathered, she separates the best for use; then a proper quantity for next year's seed; and the small sort are given to her pig. In her garden, she plants peas, beans, cabbages, early potatoes, and turnips. She sells her early potatoes, and peas, and cabbages, at Shrewsbury market, and boils the turnips for her pig. The only other expense of feeding her pig, is two or three bushels of peas, and when fit to kill, it weighs about 300 lb.

She buys it at the age of three or four