2GG THE GARDENER. [June 



Dr Lindley expressed tlie opinion that if the physiological principles 

 on which the operations of horticulture depended were correctly appre- 

 ciated, the grounds of our practice would be settled upon a more satis- 

 factory foundation than at present can be said to exist. This is no 

 doubt true; but things are just now pretty much where the doctor left 

 them. It might be pertinently asked, " Who are the physiologists" who 

 teach correct " principles " 1 Are they those who merely chronicle the 

 changes of opinion and practice that continually occur 1 or are they 

 those who make the said changes and prove their utility 1 If our pro- 

 fessed physiologists, who deliver oracular discourses before scientific 

 committees and the like, understood their work, such matters as 

 planting, pruning, training, and potting, <fec., should have been settled 

 long ago upon sure foundations ; but every cultivator is left to do what- 

 ever seems right in his own eyes, and the physiologist is always ready 

 to adapt his views to the necessities of the hour ; and the general and 

 somewhat vague and varied practices of the practical horticulturalist 

 form the basis of all his theories and deliberations. The vegetable 

 physiologist has, and always had, far more abundant and more accom- 

 modating materials to work upon than the physician, but he has not 

 made the same use of them, and is inconveniently far behind the latter 

 in his profession. The doctor does know when and where to amputate 

 a limb, and has ascertained, with some degree of accuracy, how his 

 patients, under certain conditions of health and circumstances, should 

 be treated ; but the vegetable physiologist has to wait and learn, and 

 is in a gulf of doubt and uncertainty on every occasion that anything 

 new in practice is announced. 



Mr Shirley Hibberd appears to have retreated from the field of 

 fruit-culture, and joined himself to the " Florists." The florists, what- 

 ever crotchets they may entertain, are a body of gentlemen, and will 

 no doubt appreciate their latest recruit as highly as he deserves. Mr 

 Shirley Hibberd has lately read a paper on the Tulip, giving us details 

 from the older catalogues, and no doubt considers he has obtained his 

 degree, and hence the characteristic manifesto which appeared in the 

 ' Gardeners' Magazine' lately, on the subjects of florists and their fa- 

 vourites. There are a great number of worthy people who do not 

 believe in the creed of the florist in its entirety ; and Mr Hibberd, who 

 has always been great in the " parts of speech," in his new-born en- 

 thusiasm applies to those people who think differently from him on the 

 subject, the following euphonious terms in about the space of a column 

 or so : superficial, shallow, flippant, low-bred, ignorant, floss-brained, 

 sour, nasty, and mean. If this does not crush " those who write " 

 against the florists' ideas, they must be credited with belonging to the 

 pachydermatous order of writers, and invulnerable. But we are curious 

 to know what the florists themselves think of their champion. 



It is but a short while since that a lecture was delivered on pruning 



