156 THE GARDENER. [April 



THE EDUCATION OF GARDENERS. 



As you invite correspondence on this "vexed" question, allow me 

 to offer a few remarks on the paper of A. W. in the ' Gardener ' for 

 March. Although I do not profess to attempt the solution of this 

 question, nor to say that I quite understand what A. W. exactly means, 

 there are certain rather lamentable statements in his paper, which, as 

 they appear to me, are easily enough understood. And these state- 

 ments are such, that when first read they create the inclination to fling 

 them, as an insult to gardeners and gardening, back at A. W. " with 

 all the force of a battering-ram." Such as "the true definition of 

 gardening is dress and keep ;" " There can be no connection between 

 gardening and science ;" "It follows that speculative" (by which it is 

 supposed A. W. means theoretical) " knowledge is useless in learning 

 the trade of gardening, for it is a practical business; the man, therefore, 

 must exercise his hands." Surely this is bringing us down to the 

 lowest level of rule of thumb, or to something little better than the 

 instinct of the inferior animals ! What would the medical faculty 

 think were any one to say that the true definition of their profession 

 is. Keep your patient's face clean and his hair well brushed ; there 

 is no need to study his stomach^ What would the general think 

 were any one (I sincerely hope A. W. is not a gardener) to say to him 

 that the true definition of war was just pipeclay and blacking 1 There 

 is a legend in the Highlands which speaks of a man who carried his 

 head under his arm. What a capital gardener he would have made, 

 could he just exercise his hands ! Yet in the midst of all this con- 

 demnation of theoretical learning or knowledge A. W. writes about 

 " the first principles of the practical." But finding these and such 

 sentences as "knowledge is power — an intellectual substance," one is 

 tempted to say — what they hope — that A. W. cannot be accepted as 

 an authority on the necessity or non-necessity of theoretical knowledge 

 or a " theoretical intellectual substance " in fitting a man for being an 

 intelligent practical gardener. But conceiving that the drift of A. W. 

 is to show that theoretical knowledge — say, for instance, of the structure 

 and functions of plants, or of any of the sciences, which, as clever men 

 are teaching us, bear upon the many points of horticulture — is of no 

 service in the practice of that profession, I can abstract no other 

 meaning from his remarks. I beg to differ widely from him, and 

 have no hesitation in saying that the gardener who has not studied 

 the structure and functions of plants, to say nothing of the many other 

 principles with which a gardener has to do, labours under a very great 

 disadvantage, as compared with the man who has acquainted himself 



