INFLUENCE OF HORTICULTURAL EXHIBITIONS. 



(unless to remove some branch that has fallen into deca}^) than to give a nicer curve 

 to the rainbow, or add freshness to the dew-drop. If any of our readers, who still 

 stand by the pruning knife, will only give themselves up to the study of such trees as 

 these — trees that have the most completely developed forms that nature stamps upon 

 the species, they are certain to arrive at the same conclusions. For the beautiful in 

 nature, though not alike visible to every man, never fails to dawn, sooner or later, 

 upon all who seek her in the right spirit. 



And in art too — no great master of landscape, no Claude, or PoussiN, or Turner, 

 paints mutilated trees ; but trees of grand and majestic heads, full of health and ma- 

 jesty, or grandly stamped with the wild irregularity of nature in her sterner types. 

 The few Dutch or French artists who are the exceptions to this, and have copied 

 those emblems of pruned deformity — the pollard trees that figure in the landscapes of 

 the Low Countries — have given local truthfulness to their landscapes, at the expense 

 of everything like sylvan loveliness. A pollard willow should be the very type and 

 model of beauty in the eye of the champion of the pruning saw. Its finest parallels 

 in the art of mending nature's proportions for the sake of beauty, are in the flattened 

 heads of a certain tribe of Indians, and the deformed feet of Chinese women. What 

 nature has especially shaped for a delight to the eye, and a fine suggestion to the spi- 

 ritual sense, as a beautiful tree, or the human form divine, man should not lightly un- 

 dertake to remodel or clip of its fair proportions. 



I^nrtirultiiral (Eijiiliitinns. 



THEIR INFLUENCE UPON CULTIVATION AND TASTE.* 



If the question was put to us — what, within the last seven years has contributed the 

 most to the promotion of first-class cultivation among gardeners? — we could have no hesi' 

 tation in answering, the public exhibitions of plants; for, though there may be many who 

 may profess not to have been so influenced, there can be no question that the first great 

 cause of improvements has been the noble examples of skill periodically brought together 

 under the auspices of these Societies; which examples, being to a very great extent parti- 

 cularly described, and sometimes pictorially represented by means of engravings, have, 

 through the medium of the horticultural press, been sent through the length and breadth 

 of the land, — thus penetrating and eradicating prejudices in the craniunis of some of our 

 would-be wise countrymen, which could not have been eradicated by other means. Again 

 the employers of gardeners have Avitnessed what could be accomplished by proper man- 

 agement; and hence, where the means were allovved, the gardener had nothing but his 

 own want of skill to blame, if he did not accomplish that which others had -done before 

 him. Apart, however, from the influence of these fdes upon cultivation, there can be no 

 doubt they have effected much good in guiding the artist, and in improving and correcting 

 the taste of the middle and higher classes of society, and of this we need no stronger proof 

 than the fact that manufacturers look to nature and not to art, for patterns to beautify the 

 productions of the silk loom, &c.; while artists in wax and ai'tificial flowers imi 



* From the London Gardeners' Magazine of Botany. 



