INTRODUCTION. 
also to help and inflame the traveller with true short pictures of 
what treasures he may expect, no less than with simple directions 
by which he may know them. Much may have been omitted, 
and much done amiss; the best that in me lay has been done, 
and I can no more. Nor must it be thought that this book, 
written as a guide and guard against catalogues, considers these 
with an unfriendly eye. On the contrary, to all true gardeners 
a new catalogue is more precious than a prayer-book ; from cover 
to cover they are filled with kindly and seducing magic, making 
the rough ways plain and hard plants easy, and filling our gardens 
to overflowing with a thousand rich colours of hope unknown 
before. Yet against their seductions, their too-easy promises, 
their multiplication of names, the cultivator needs protection. 
There is, indeed, a sense in which “ le catalogue, c’est l’ennemi.” 
And therefore in these pages it will not be taken as implying any 
ingratitude or unfriendliness towards those luscious compilations, 
if I speak always as a determined critic of their protestations, 
plausibilities, and sweet pretences. 
THE Rock-GARDEN 
It is the custom, in books of this nature, to pad the volume 
out with a vast amount of prefatory matter, mainly repetitive, 
in which the author’s personal views (one’s friends call them this, 
one’s enemies, “ fads ’’) may be fully aired, and thereby the meat 
of the matter, in the centre of the tome, be unduly compressed. 
This work of mine, however, is already, in all conscience, large 
enough, without being further encumbered by long disquisitions 
and prefaces. Nor will my personal views (or fads) be found 
lacking in the pages that follow ; though I have indulged no undue 
passion for expansion, my own taste, experiences, and vagaries 
will be found fully set forth throughout the body of the book, in 
a series of personal verdicts which I hope may arouse the compli- 
ment of wrath from many a fellow-zealot who here sees his best- 
beloved plant dismissed as “ magenta.’ For the shed blood of 
disagreeing enthusiasts is the seed of the garden, and the hostilities 
XXV 
