G2 THK GARDENKR. [Feb. 



language is the writer's own. We perused not long since, in one of 

 the monthlies, an article entitled " Poetic Parallels," in which a large 

 number of examples were furnished from the most eminent authors, 

 showing how writers sometimes think and write alike, that probably 

 never read a line of each other's productions. Burns, Scott, Long- 

 fellow, and even Shakespeare, are all unconscious plagiarists of this 

 kind, and such examples should make us cautious in attributing 

 blame ; but after all, the real " brain-sucker " is easily detected, and 

 the horticultural plagiarist does not appear to be an adept in the 

 art of disguising the appropriated articles of his neighbours. He 

 seems to be rather a stupid type of the class, and when detected in 

 his pilferings he generally either endeavours to extricate himself by a 

 lame excuse that carries falsity on the face of it, or he offers no defence 

 at all, and shows no shame. The worst sufferers by these literary pirates 

 are not the robbed parties, but the editors of the papers, who receive 

 their communications in the faith that they are original, only to dis- 

 cover, almost to a certainty, that they are probably the production of 

 another, to whom, maybe, would have been accorded a less favourable 

 reception — all of which is no doubt exceedingly mortifying. But 

 editors may be easily deceived in this way, and no fault to them. An 

 editor of one of the horticultural journals, who was bitten in this way 

 some time back, acknowledged the fact at once and in the most courteous 

 manner, and stated that it was impossible he or any editor could, 

 at the present day, " read a tittle of the articles that were written," 

 hence any nefariously disposed rogue might deceive them. The best 

 cure is to pillory the thief well, and not to screen him by accepting his 

 explanations when these are so manifestly untrue. It is not long since 

 an industrious writer was shown up, who was engaged in reproducing 

 the chapters of another writer almost en bloc — whole pages being trans- 

 ferred with scarcely a word of alteration ; and yet he had the audacity 

 to write to the author to declare that it was a coincidence merely — he 

 had never read the papers in question. This was something like a co- 

 incidence surely. Another sent a leading article to a paper, only the 

 dates, names of places, and a few other particulars of which were his own. 

 He made one amusing and fatal mistake, however. The real writer had 

 described himself as living on the borders of a certain northern county ; 

 but the plagiarist, who wrote from Wales, had missed this point, and 

 we had the remarkable fact furnished of a man living and practising 

 in two different parts of the country at one and the same time. 



Another somewhat noted practitioner was induced to deliver a lec- 

 ture on a certain horticultural topic in a town not a hundred miles 

 from St Helens in Lancashire, and finding its way into a local paper, 

 was discovered to have been copied in great part from one of the hor- 

 ticultural papers, to which it had been communicated some years before 

 by another writer. In this case the plagiarist had not the excuse of 

 want of experience on the subject of the lecture to plead, but chose, 



