In the work of laying-out, great care ought to be taken with regard to straightness and distances, and particularly as to the squareness of every part. To make lines perpendicular, and perfectly so, is, indeed, no difficult matter when one knows how to do it; but one must know how to do it, before one can do it at all. If the _gardener_ understand this much of geometry, he will do it without any difficulty; but if he only pretend to understand the matter, and begin to walk backward and forward, stretching out lines and cocking his eye, make no bones with him; send for a bricklayer, and see the stumps driven into the ground yourself. The four outside lines being laid down with perfect truth, it must be a bungling fellow indeed that cannot do the rest; but if they be only a little _askew_, you have a botch in your eye for the rest of your life, and a botch of your own making too. Gardeners seldom want for confidence in their own abilities; but this affair of raising perpendiculars upon a given line is a thing settled in a moment: you have nothing to do but to say to the gardener, "Come, let us see how you do it." He has but one way in which he can do it; and, if he do not immediately begin to work in that way, pack him off to get a bricklayer, even a botch in which trade will perform the work to the truth of a hair. _Seeds._ I incline to the opinion, that we should try seeds as our ancestors tried witches; not by fire, but by water; and that, following up their practice, we should reprobate and destroy all that do not _readily_ sink. _Melons._ It is a received opinion, a thing taken for granted, an axiom in horticulture, that _melon_ seed is the _better_ for being _old_. Mr. Marshall says, that it ought to be "_about four years old_, though some prefer it _much older_." And he afterwards observes, that "if new seed only _can be had_, it should be carried a week or two in the breeches-pocket, to dry away some of the more watery particles!" If _age_ be a recommendation in rules as well as in melon-seed, this rule has it; for English authors published it, and French authors _laughed at it_, more than a _century past!_ Those who can afford to have melons raised in their gardens, can afford to keep a _conjuror_ to raise them; and a conjuror will hardly condescend to follow _common sense_ in his practice. This would be lowering the profession in the eyes of the vulgar, and, which would be very dangerous, in the eyes of his employer. However, a great deal of this _stuff_ is traditionary; and how are we to find the conscience to blame a gardener for errors inculcated by gentlemen of erudition! _Sowing Seeds._ I do hope that it is unnecessary for me to say, that sowing according to the _moon_ is wholly absurd and ridiculous; and that it arose solely out of the circumstance, that our forefathers, who could not read, had neither almanack nor calendar to guide them, and who counted by moons and festivals, instead of by months, and days of months.