Considering that the best farmers so long knew the advantage of rolling their fields after seed-sowing, it was always a matter of surprise that the practice had never become part of good gardening, and still more of a surprise when Mr. Henderson's paper on firming the soil appeared in our columns, at the objections some made against it. Yet the evidences of the value of such a practice could be stumbled against almost any day. The American Agriculturist recently gives an illustration of this, which is worth repeating here:

"Peter Henderson, the author of 'Gardening for Profit,' in insisting upon the great importance of firming the soil over seeds and plants, writes us: ' It was rather an amusing incident that first brought to the attention of a truck farmer, of Charleston, S. C, the importance of firming the soil. It seems that a gentleman of color, having the constitutional weakness for chickens peculiar to some of his race, got into a hen-roost and helped himself bountifully. In evading the highroad, he struck a bee-line through a newly sown turnip field, where he left tracks that led to his detection. But these tracks did more. They showed to Squire Buncombe, whose chickens had suffered, that wherever the foot of the colored citizen had fallen, there he had a " stand " of turnips, and nowhere else (for they had been loosely sown and the weather was dry). The lesson was heeded, and has been worth tens of thousands of dollars to the farmers of South Carolina, who, it seems, were never before sufficiently alive to the importance of firming the soil until the unfortunate negro showed them the way.' "