I need not give any of the “instances” that have come under my notice of great advantage accruing to the garden as well as to the one who gardens without an indifferent understudy--every one who reads this book is in a position to supply such an omission. I am sure that there is no country town or village that cannot mention the name of some family, a member or several members of which have been hard at work raising flowers or vegetables or growing fruit, with immediately satisfactory results, and a prospect of something greatly in advance in the future. I am only in a position to speak definitely on behalf of the working proprietor, but I am certain that the daughters of the house who have been working so marvellously for the first time in their lives, at the turning out of munitions, taking the place of men in fields and byres, and doing active duties in connection with hospitals, huts, and canteens, will not now be content to go back to their tennis and teas and “districts” as before. They will find their souls in other and more profitable directions, and it is pretty certain that the production of food will occupy a large number of the emancipated ones. We shall have vegetables and fruit and eggs in such abundance as was never dreamt of four years ago. Why, already potato crops of twelve tons to the acre are quite common, whereas an aggregate of eight and nine tons was considered very good in 1912. We all know the improvement that has been brought about in regard to poultry, in spite of the weathercockerel admonition of the Department of the Government, which one month sent out a million circulars imploring all sorts and conditions of people to keep poultry, and backed this up with a second million advising the immediate slaughter of all fowls who had a fancy for cereals as a food; the others were to be fed on the crumbs that fell from the master's table, but if the master were known to give the crumbs to birds instead of eating them himself or making them into those poultices, recommended by another Department that called them puddings, he would be prosecuted. Later on we were to be provided with a certain amount of stuff for pure bred fowls, in order that only the purest and best strains should be kept; but no provision in the way of provisions was made for the cockerels! The cockerels were to be discouraged, but the breeding of pure fowls was to be encouraged! It took another million or so of buff Orpmgton circulars to explain just what was meant by the Department, and even then it needed a highly-trained intelligence to explain the explanation. [Illustration: 0186]