some plantations, and a reformed husband, who has been for six months vainly 

 trying to complete his set of the Hor-ticulturist ! 



Such are a few only of the contending views which go to make up the host of 

 readers who "take in," as our grandfathers expressed it, a work like the present. 

 The poraologist would like it better if it had no flowers in it; the lover of flowers, 

 perhaps, has no taste for cultivating fruit. The man with a single idea for straw- 

 berries, wonders how we can ever dabble with architecture ; the farmer too often 

 sees no good in a vegetable garden ; a " calendar of operations" to him should 

 include pasturing and soiling cattle ; and thus it is with us all ; ivhat we hnow^ we 

 like to read about, in the hope of hiowing more. Surrounded, then, by these 

 difficulties, we have, pretty much, to follow our own tastes, and the course marked 

 out for us, and be satisfied if we enlist people of our own way of thinking ; well 

 convinced that in the multitude and crowd of periodicals each one can be suited. 



There has been much time and labor bestowed on the Horticulturist, by many 

 minds, since it made Philadelphia its home ; it has obtained a large additional 

 patronage, which evidently grows with the wealth and taste of the country, and 

 though its friends think its circulation not equal to the wants of the people, we 

 have learned therewith to be content, as we know, after a tour which has embraced 

 within the last eighteen months a very large part of the Union, that it has 

 appreciative readers on its topics everywhere. 



01^ PACKING TREES AND PLANTS. 



BY THOMAS MEEHAN, GERMANTOWN, TA. 



To one accustomed to packing nursery stock, nothing seems more simple; while 

 to outsiders it seems something of a mystery how plants which they have been 

 taught to believe require such nice proportions of light, heat, air, and moisture 

 with exact regularity, can exist for days and weeks, and endure long voyages, with 

 very little apparent inconvenience, though the supposed necessary conditions of 

 existence are so seemingly confused. Even many experienced packers, who are 

 perhaps known to be something superior in the art, would in many cases be unable 

 to give any reason for their respective processes. 



Hitherto we have had to follow the Chinese way of doing things in learning to 

 pack. It is related of a sailor stationed in a Chinese port, that he hired a native 

 tailor to make him a pair of pantaloons in place of one, which, on account of 

 two unseemly patches behind, were in a discreditable condition. The pair was 

 handed to Pig-ta-el for a pattern, and when the number of moons necessary for one 

 of these tardy gentlemen to complete the important piece of work, had passed 

 away, he returned with the new inexpressibles, but, with patches of the exact size, 

 and in the identical positions of those in the patterns on the new garment ! Thus 

 our packers pack exactly as their fathers, packed, because their fathers packed so, 

 and precisely as they were learned to pack. 



In the spring of the present year, I saw a large importation of roses and Nor- 

 way spruces opened. They were from a first class European house, and the 

 packing would have been pronounced by experienced hands very superior, yet 

 there was not one rose alive, while not a spruce out of thousands was injured, 

 were both packed exactly alike ; but what was life to the one, was death to 



