The gases arising from the decaying of the coarse manure in the soil tend to lighten it, instead of being wasted in the air, as is the case when the manure is in heaps or in the barnyard. By plowing-time in the spring the manure will have assimilated with the soil and will be thoroughly worked through the cultivated surface, thus affording food for the crops in all stages. If such manure is applied in the spring, it will make dry or thin soil still drier, and unless plowed well under, where it would take the roots a long time to reach it, will burn the young plants up if the season should happen to be a dry one. The great value of compost in starting young plants is that it affords rich food in proper form for the tender young rootlets, enabling the young plants to make a quick, tender growth, which is very essential if vegetables of fine quality are desired. By fall manuring and plowing the whole garden is composted, while the action of the frost on the lumps and ridges pulverizes them, leaving the soil in a fine, friable condition. LAYING OUT THE GARDEN. It is most convenient to have the garden as nearly square as possible, which in our garden of one acre will be 208 x 208 feet. This makes the length of the rows a very good measure of the quantity to be grown, and affords as many rows to the ground as can be profitably worked, for it is desirable that the rows should be as nearly east and west as possible, and they should be the long way of the plot (if not a square), as it will result in great saving of time in planting and cultivating. Moving the line and drawing the cultivators out of one row and turning into the next, takes nearly as much time as the working of the short row. In plowing, a good, wide headland should be left at each end of the garden; it should be wide enough to allow the horse and cultivator to come clear out from between the rows and to turn into the next row, without damaging the plants at the ends of the rows by trampling and dragging the cultivator over them. In winter, while there is plenty of time before the spring opens, the summer campaign should be planned--what vegetables are to be raised and what quantity of each will be needed, in what part of the garden it will be best to plant each variety so that the pollen from different members of the same family, such as cucumbers and cantaloupes, will not mix and spoil each other’s fine flavor. If the soil is of different quality in different parts of the garden, it should be planned so that the heavy and the lighter portions shall be occupied by such crops as will succeed best in the respective soils.