THE FLORAL WORLD 



AND 



GAEDEN GUIDE 



MARCH, 186T. 



COLLECTING AND SELECTING. 



pIATEUR cultivators who are not bound hand and foot 

 to the delusions of the bedding system, find exhaustless 

 amusement in collecting representatives of various 

 families of plants adapted to the means at their com- 

 mand for keeping and cultivating them. Where the 

 bedding system reigns in its full severity, this is impossible, for 

 greenhouses, frames, and nursery beds are all filled to overflowing 

 with the monotonous round of subjects that are to be planted in 

 May, that are to bloom in July, that are to be ragged in September, 

 and that are to be housed in October, leaving the places they occu- 

 pied empty and cold till May returns again. Collecting allies hor- 

 ticultural recreation with botanical science, afl:brds scope for the 

 exercise of thought, and occasionally quickens inquiry and research ; 

 it instils into the mind a larger knowledge, and into the heart a 

 warmer love of plants than is possible where the garden is kept as a 

 place for a mere display of colour during three or four months of the 

 whole year. It is next to impossible to avoid collecting when an 

 interest has been created for certain forms of vegetation. The lover 

 of ferns is always in want of certain species and varieties ; the cul- 

 tivator of succulents, of bulbs, of hardy herbaceous plants, of choice 

 trees and shrubs, finds that his possessions are so many keys to the 

 vegetable kingdom, and at every advance of knowledge accomplished 

 by their aid, he learns how many more interesting and beautiful 

 plants there are in the world which he has not yet obtained, and 

 which he would rejoice to possess. Collecting is, in fact, an exciting 

 pursuit, and we could sooner forgive a man for wasting his substance 

 in riotous gardening, when this passion had seized him, than if he 

 were under a geranium or verbena spell, revolving only amid half-a- 

 dozen species of plants, and deriving no higher pleasure from his 

 garden than repeating upon its surface the designs he is already tired 

 of in carpets, chintzes, and wall-papers. Eor the public promenade, 

 as for the great garden, where there is room for everything, and 

 ample means to boot, good bedding is one of the necessities of the 

 decorative part of horticulture ; but in the small garden, which is 



VOL. II. — NO. III. 5 



