Confessions of an Amateur Gardener. By A. M. Dew - Smith. (Seeley
and Co.)—These Confessions originally appeared in the Pal/ Mall Gazette, and will already have amused many readers. Of definite and serviceable information there is little in Mrs. Dew-Smith's chapters ; but, thanks to her lively style and sense of humour, they are worthy of publication in book form. The perplexities of a lady gardener who comes to her work with more love than knowledge, and her odd blunders and curious methods of working when the gardener's eye is not on her, are very happily. described. She finds that Nature, even in a garden, is never wholly lovely. Birds are on the watch for worms, cats are on the watch for birds, the pitcher plant in the greenhouse lures ants into a back parlour, and, as the amateur gardener observes, our sympathies are continually being divided. " One is sorry for the hungry spider, who must go without his dinner for want of a fly, and extremely sorry for the fly, whose lot it is to provide the much-wished-for meal." She was advised to keep poultry by way of varying her vocation as a gardener, but when it was proposed to fatten chickens for the table, she discovered that the pursuit was barbarous, and had the coops broken up for firewood. These Confessions show that the writer's sympathy with her fellow- mortals was frequently in opposition to her duties as a gardener. A number of mouse-traps had been baited by her order, but in the early morning the lady's conscience pricked her, and in mortal fear of William, the gardener, she stole down at early dawn to give her prisoners liberty. "In the course of the day I asked William if he had caught any mice, and affected surprise when he replied in the negative. I repeated the inquiry every day for a fortnight, and always received the same answer. By dint of early rising I myself caught six, and sent them on their way rejoicing through a hole in the hedge." The mice thought it better not to return, and by this novel treatment the peas that needed protection were saved. It is almost impossible to write about a garden without saying something attractive, and Mrs. Dew-Smith has said a good many things for which the reader will thank her.
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