Chapter 74

TRANSPLANTING OF FLOWERS. Annuals and perennials, sown in March or April, may be transplanted about the end of May. A showery season is preferable, or they must frequently be watered till they have taken root. In the summer time the evening is the proper season, and care should be taken not to break the fibres in digging up the root. Chinasters, columbines, marigolds, pinks, stocks, hollyhocks, mallows, sweetwilliams, wallflowers, and various others, may be sown and transplanted in this manner.

TRAPS. Garden traps, such as are contrived for the purpose of destroying mice and other vermin; which are often conveyed into such places with the straw, litter, and other matters that are made use of in them; and which are extremely hurtful and troublesome in the spring season, in destroying peas and beans, as well as lettuces, melons, and cucumbers in frames. Traps for this purpose are contrived in a great many ways; but as field vermin are very shy, and will rarely enter traps which are close, the following simple cheap form has been advised, though it has nothing of novelty in it. These traps may be made by stringing garden beans on a piece of fine pack-thread, in the manner of beads, and then driving two small stake-like pieces of wood into the ground at the breadth of a brick from each other, and setting up a brick, flat stone, or board with a weight on it, inclining to an angle of about forty-five degrees; tying the string, with the beans on it, round the brick or other substances and stakes, to support them in their inclining position, being careful to place all the beans on the under sides of the bricks or other matters. The mice in eating the beans, in such cases, will also destroy the pack-thread, and by such means disengage the brick or other weighty body, which by falling on them readily destroys them. Mice are always best got rid of by some sort of simple open traps of this nature.

TREACLE BEER. Pour two quarts of boiling water on a pound of treacle, and stir them together. Add six quarts of cold water, and a tea-cupful of yeast. Tun it into a cask, cover it close down, and it will be fit to drink in two or three days. If made in large quantities, or intended to keep, put in a handful of malt and hops, and when the fermentation is over, stop it up close.

TREACLE POSSET. Add two table-spoonfuls of treacle to a pint of milk, and when ready to boil, stir it briskly over the fire till it curdles. Strain it off after standing covered a few minutes. This whey promotes perspiration, is suitable for a cold, and children will take it very freely.

TREATMENT OF CHILDREN. It ought to be an invariable rule with all who have the care of children, to give them food only when it is needful. Instead of observing this simple and obvious rule, it is too common, throughout every period of childhood, to pervert the use of food by giving it when it is not wanted, and consequently when it does mischief, not only in a physical but in a moral point of view. To give food as an indulgence, or in a way of reward, or to withhold it as a matter of punishment, are alike injurious. A proper quantity of food is necessary in all cases, to sustain their health and growth; and their faults ought to be corrected by more rational means. The idea of making them suffer in their health and growth on account of their behaviour, is sufficient to fill every considerate mind with horror. It is the project only of extreme weakness, to attempt to correct the disposition by creating bodily sufferings, which are so prone to hurt the temper, even at an age when reason has gained a more powerful ascendancy. Eatables usually given to children by well-meaning but injudicious persons, in order to pacify or conciliate, are still worse than the privations inflicted by way of punishment. Sugar plums, sugar candy, barley sugar, sweetmeats, and most kinds of cakes, are unwholesome, and cloying to the appetite. Till children begin to run about, the uniformity of their lives makes it probable that the quantity of food they require in the day is nearly the same, and that it may be given to them statedly at the same time. By establishing a judicious regularity with regard to both, much benefit will accrue to their health and comfort. The same rule should be applied to infants at the breast, as well as after they are weaned. By allowing proper intervals between the times of giving children suck, the breast of the mother becomes duly replenished with milk, and the stomach of the infant properly emptied to receive a fresh supply. The supposition that an infant wants food every time it cries, is highly fanciful; and it is perfectly ridiculous to see the poor squalling thing thrown on its back, and nearly suffocated with food to prevent its crying, when it is more likely that the previous uneasiness arises from an overloaded stomach. Even the mother's milk, the lightest of all food, will disagree with the child, if the administration of it is improperly repeated. A very injurious practice is sometimes adopted, in suckling a child beyond the proper period, which ought by all means to be discountenanced, as evidently unnatural, and tending to produce weakness both in body and mind. Suckling should not be continued after the cutting of the first teeth, when the clearest indication is given, that the food which was adapted to the earliest stage of infancy ceases to be proper. Attention should also be paid to the quantity as well as to quality of the food given, for though a child will sleep with an overloaded stomach, it will not be the refreshing sleep of health. When the stomach is filled beyond the proper medium, it induces a similar kind of heaviness to that arising from opiates and intoxicating liquors; and instead of awakening refreshed and lively, the child will be heavy and fretful. By the time that children begin to run about, the increase of their exercise will require an increase of nourishment: but those who overload them with food at any time, in hopes of strengthening them, are very much deceived. No prejudice is equally fatal to such numbers of children. Whatever unnecessary food a child receives, weakens instead of strengthening it: for when the stomach is overfilled, its power of digestion is impaired, and food undigested is so far from yielding nourishment, that it only serves to debilitate the whole system, and to occasion a variety of diseases. Amongst these are obstructions, distention of the body, rickets, scrophula, slow fevers, consumptions, and convulsion fits. Another pernicious custom prevails with regard to the diet of children, when they begin to take other nourishment besides their mother's milk, and that is by giving them such as their stomachs are unable to digest, and indulging them also in a mixture of such things at their meals as are hurtful to every body, and more especially to children, considering the feeble and delicate state of their organs. This injudicious indulgence is sometimes defended on the plea of its being necessary to accustom them to all kinds of food; but this idea is highly erroneous. Their stomachs must have time to acquire strength sufficient to enable them to digest varieties of food; and the filling them with indigestible things is not the way to give them strength. Children can only acquire strength gradually with their proper growth, which will always be impeded if the stomach is disordered. Food for infants should be very simple, and easy of digestion. When they require something more solid than spoonmeats alone, they should have bread with them. Plain puddings, mild vegetables, and wholesome ripe fruits, eaten with bread, are also good for them. Animal food is better deferred till their increased capacity for exercise will permit it with greater safety, and then care must be taken that the exercise be proportioned to this kind of food. The first use of it should be gradual, not exceeding two or three times in a week. An exception should be made to these rules in the instances of scrophulous and rickety children, as much bread is always hurtful in these cases, and fruits are particularly pernicious. Plain animal food is found to be the most suitable to their state. The utmost care should be taken under all circumstances to procure genuine unadulterated bread for children, as the great support of life. If the perverted habits of the present generation give them an indifference as to what bread they eat, or a vitiated taste for adulterated bread, they still owe it to their children as a sacred duty, not to undermine their constitution by this injurious composition. The poor, and many also of the middling ranks of society are unhappily compelled to this species of infanticide, as it may almost be called, by being driven into large towns to gain a subsistence, and thus, from the difficulty of doing otherwise, being obliged to take their bread of bakers, instead of making wholesome bread at home, as in former times, in more favourable situations. While these are to be pitied, what shall be said of those whose fortunes place them above this painful necessity. Let them at at least rear their children on wholesome food, and with unsophisticated habits, as the most unequivocal testimony of parental affection performing its duty towards its offspring. It is proper also to observe, that children ought not to be hurried in their eating, as it is of great importance that they should acquire a habit of chewing their food well. They will derive from it the various advantages of being less likely to eat their food hot, of thus preparing what they eat properly for the stomach, instead of imposing upon it what is the real office of the teeth; and also that of checking them from eating too much. When food is not properly masticated, the stomach is longer before it feels satisfied; which is perhaps the most frequent, and certainly the most excusable cause of eating more than is fairly sufficient. Thoughtless people will often, for their own amusement, give children morsels of high dishes, and sips of spirituous or fermented liquors, to see whether they will relish them, or make faces at them. But trifling as this may seem, it would be better that it were never practised, for the sake of preserving the natural purity of their tastes as long as possible.