Arthur J. Simons

I have only leafed through this book (and its companion volume) so this review is very much a first impression. The work had been withdrawn from the RHS Library at Wisley because it does not reflect modern horticultural practice. I was drawn to it for the sake of the drawings of trenching (double digging) and bastard trenching, the long list of composting methods and, particularly, for the cavalier use of deadly poisons in the 1940s. The reader is told how to introduce carbon disulphide into mole runs and, should that prove ineffective, to poison the critters with cyanide of calcium. One wonders if the Golden Age of British Crime Fiction would have got off the ground without the contents of the standard garden shed.… (más)

I have only leafed through this book (and its companion volume) so this review is very much a first impression. The work had been withdrawn from the RHS Library at Wisley presumably because it does not reflect modern horticultural practice. I was drawn to it for the sake of the drawings of trenching (double digging) and bastard trenching, the long list of composting methods and, particularly, for the cavalier use of deadly poisons in the 1940s. The reader is told how to introduce carbon disulphide into mole runs and, should that prove ineffective, to poison the critters with cyanide of calcium. One wonders if the Golden Age of British Crime Fiction would have got off the ground without the contents of the standard garden shed.… (más)