Modern Improvements in. Horticulture* 293 



We have now finished our view of the rise, progress, and 

 present state of British gardening ; it remains to look forward 

 to what may be the probable consequences of a continued 

 application of our present means, powers and knowledge, 

 (assisted by the popular feeling) in accomplishing further 

 improvements. The practice of gardening may be advanced 

 by individual and united exertions. Experimental and com- 

 parative practice is the proper province of Societies , results 

 which require extensive operations and information should 

 only be attempted by them ; and as they form a nucleus to 

 attract and receive new facts and discoveries, which are ever 

 floating down the current of practice, theirs is the task of 

 seizing and recording those fugitive casualties, which might 

 otherwise be lost. From combination of talent, much highly 

 beneficial intelligence and valuable instruction may be, as has 

 already been, derived ; and as their Transactions are published, 

 the end of their association is answered. 



But much may be obtained from the private and lonely 

 efforts of individuals, who, to a love of their profession, add the 

 laudable emulation and justifiable ambition of excelling in their 

 business, for their own satisfaction, their employers, or the 

 public good. Let such, each in their quiet and perhaps 

 humble sphere, be still pressing forward into the field of 

 experimental improvement, and divesting themselves of pre- 

 viously acquired rules, which may have degenerated into 

 prejudices, and which their own modesty, perhaps, or defer- 

 ence to the dictum of a parent or master, have riveted : let 

 such only think and act for themselves, and no doubt better 

 practice and useful consequences will be the result. 



Periodical pubUcations too, which admit communications, 

 reports, queries, and answers, on the art of gardening, are 

 eminently instrumental in embodying and circulating horticul- 

 tural intelligence ; and thereby forming a kind of intellectual 

 bond for the whole fraternity. 



To all these sources of future improvement it will only be 

 necessary to muster a few of the more prominent bars which 

 obstruct us in our march to success, and which operate to 

 defeat our best laid schemes and most careful endeavours 

 to secure what we wish to obtain ; and first, tho^eof the— 



