A Man Digging His Own Garden.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 869, 26 October 1888, Page 4

A Man Digging His Own Garden.

Why not, as well as every man his own brewer, baker, lawyer, and what not? Th process is infinitely more simple and far more sanitary than either of these, aud countless other things that every man is advised to become, be, or do for himself in these days of advice gratis ad libitum. Of all athletic exercises, with perhaps the single exception of cricket—and it is doubtful if that is an exception—the very best is digging. Probably every single muscle, vein, artery, and nerve in the body ia vigorously exeroised in the process. There is no no aid to digestion, no cure lor the blues, no receipt for a good night’s sleep, no quietus

for exoited brain or ruffled nerves, to match half an hour at honest digging once or twice a day. Most of the above evils are born of mental strain, worry, anxiety, monotony of labour, the dreary treadmill exertion of oounter or desk, and they fly like bats before the day-dawn, at sight, sound, or touoh of gleaming bright spade thrust into the earth. Let the tired and the weary, the drooping, those almost ready to faint, borrow leave to dig in their neighbours’ gardens, if they can neither hire nor purchase one of their owd. But meanwhile, let all the fortunate possessors of gardens hasten to do a whole or a part of the digging themselves. It is really the best work in the garden. Not a few owners slave over cleaning, dressing, watering it, and only have a man to do the digging. This is beginning at the wrong end—setting the labourer in fact to do the master’s work. Custom has reconciled society to this order. But looking at it from a sanitary and business point of view, it is nearly as bad as sending the porter to the bank while the merchant sweeps the office. Good digging is to the garden what the merchant’s skill and forethought are to his profits; yet honest digging has almost become the exception ; a sort of shambling, shuffling inversioii of the soil the rale. And yet, properly understood, and skillfully practised, the former i 3 more easy than the latter. . . . . In the North, where the young gardeners do all the digging and take pride in their work, the art of digging has been elevated almost to the level of a science ; and the lad or man who could not change hands at the end of his stitob, and dig equally well with his face to the ground he had dug, from left to right as from right to ieft, was considered an inferior workman. Hence, no sooner was the end of the brake or stitch reached than the spade was pitched ap .with a flourish, the left hand placed on the top instead of the right, and the digger faced round and proceeded in the opposite direction. In digging for health, this change of front and of hands is of very great importance. It brings the whole of the muscles of the body into more equal exercise, giving to each : side of the frame exactly the same weight to lift and equality of movement.—Frcm Cassell’s Popular Gardening.