Among the suitable vegetables, I may name a sort of perennial spinach which yields a wonderful amount of produce on a small area. Four years ago I took the house in which I now reside, and found the garden overgrown with a weed that appeared like beet, the leaves being much larger than ordinary spinach. I tried in vain to eradicate it, then gave some leaves to my fowls. They ate them greedily. After this I had some boiled, and found that the supposed weed is an excellent spinach, which may be sown broadcast in thick patches, without any interspaces, and cut down again and again all the year round, fresh leaves springing up from the roots until the autumn, when it throws up tall flowering stems, and yields an abundant crop of seeds. I have some now, self-sown, that have survived the whole of the late severe winter, while turnip-tops, cabbages, and everything else have perished. I have sown the ordinary spinach seed in the usual manner in rows, and comparing it with the self-sown dense patches of this intruder, find the latter produces, square yard against square yard, six or eight times as much of available eatable crop. None of my friends who are amateur gardeners know this variety; but a few days since, I called on Messrs. James Carter and Co., the wholesale seedsmen of Holborn, and described it. They gave me a packet of what they call “Perpetual spinach beet,” which, as may be seen by comparison with the seeds of those I have here of my own growing, is probably the same. Messrs. Carter and Co. tell me that the plant is very little known, and the seed scarce from want of cultivation and demand. I therefore step so far aside to describe and recommend it as specially suited for obtaining large crops on small areas.[33] I also recommend a mode of growing cabbages that I have found very profitable, viz., to sow the seed broadcast in richly manured beds or patches and leave the plants crowding together; cut them down while very young, without destroying the centre bud; let them sprout again and again. They thus yield a succession of crops, every leaf of which is eatable. This, instead of transplanting and growing large plants, which, however desirable for sale in the market, are far less profitable for home use. Celery may be grown in like manner, and cut down young and green for boiling. Some collateral advantages may be fairly anticipated in cases where the back-yard is fully enclosed by the canvas. In the first place, the air coming into the house from the back will be more or less filtered from the grimy irritant particles with which our London atmosphere is loaded, besides obtaining the oxygen given off by the growing plants, and the ozone which recent investigations have shown to be produced where aromatic plants—such as kitchen herbs—are growing. Lavender, which is very hardy, and spreads spontaneously, might be grown for this purpose.