INTRODUCTION. 
of gardeners seem only equalled in righteous acrimony by those 
of Patriarchs and Popes, Anglican Bishops, and other persons of 
profession presumably holy. It has been my endeavour, all 
through the book indeed, to preserve the vivid and personal note, 
at any cost to the arid grey gravity usually considered necessary 
to the dignity of a dictionary ; not only that so the work may 
perhaps be found more readable and pleasant, but also that other 
gardeners, finding their best-beloveds, maybe, here slighted or 
condemned, may be able to mitigate their wrath by constant con- 
templation of the fact that such opinions are but the obster dicta 
of a warm-blooded fellow-mortal, not the weighed everlasting 
pronouncements of some pompous and Olympian lexicographer, : 
veiled in an awful impersonality that admits of no appeal. 
Nor is there any need, again, to expatiate here on rock plants 
and their culture. Golden words of my own upon both these 
points may be purchased for sums varying from Is. 6d. to 7s. 6d. ; 
other people have also contributed nobly; books are both 
frequent and inexpensive. Why then should one go on saying 
at length what has already been soundly and copiously said before ? 
Said before, indeed, so often that by this time surely one may 
reasonably believe that all who feel the need of this book will have 
so far progressed in knowledge as no longer to need the informa- 
tion that plants have roots, and rocks a proper system of arrange- 
ment ? However, for the sake of completeness, I am informed 
that the good old'tale must, in a measure, be told anew, and that 
the salubrious powder of the book itself will not prove palatable 
unless with a preliminary dose of jam, in the way of instructive 
introductions, and a foreword of information. Notoriously in- 
capable as I am, therefore, of gauging public opinion on such 
matters (I have never, for my own part, been able to read the 
preliminary chapters of the English Flower Garden, which bulk so 
large in the volume; and have, indeed, always wished them away 
from that admirable book, so that one might come more immedi- 
ately to the “ osses,” cutting the cackle), I bow my head in obedi- 
ence, and submit to my editor, with the resolve none the less 
firmly rooted in my heart, that the oft-repeated words I now have 
XXV1 
