ON BOTANY APPLIED TO HORTICULTURE. 223 



ARTICLE III. 



ON BOTANY APPLIED TO HORTICULTURE. 



BY MB. TODD, DENTON GARDENS, L1NCUENSJIIKE. 



To expatiate upon the various ways to which hotanical knowledge 

 can be applied to the alleviation of our individual and social wants, 

 or the gratifying of our peculiar tastes and inclinations, would be out 

 of place here, and foreign, indeed, to my intention. Therefore, with- 

 out dwelling upon the merits of botany as a source of intellectual 

 amusement, as an elegant adjunct to a person's philosophical attain- 

 ments, as an inducement to take fresh air and exercise, or as a means 

 of creating a taste for rural scenery, by familiarising the mind with 

 what is picturesque and beautiful, I shall pass on and merely treat of 

 it as it can be practically applied to the advancement of horticultural 

 science, and rendered a valuable auxiliary in the higher branches of 

 gardening. 



Botany furnishes us with a rich variety of vegetables ; horticulture 

 developes in the highest possible degree their peculiar excellences. 

 It is the province of botany to classify and describe the profusion of 

 plants which compose the " vegetable kingdom," to furnish us with 

 information respecting their local distribution on the earth's surface, 

 the nature of the climate, soil, and situation in which they are usually 

 found, with their time of flowering; it treats also of their medical 

 and economical qualities, with the purposes to which they are gene- 

 rally applied by the natives of the countries in which they are indi- 

 genous. Thus we see that botany furnishes the scientific gardener 

 with the requisite data upon which he may found a system of treat- 

 ment most congenial to the local and constitutional peculiarities of 

 any given species, whether indigenous or exotic. If lie knows the 

 principal characteristics of any particular order or genus he may not 

 unfrequently form a good idea of its individual members, as regards 

 their adaptation for ornamental, medical, or culinary "purposes ; and 

 whether they are docile under cultivation, and susceptible of much 

 improvement. Thus, in point of elegance, the natural order Ranun- 

 culacese far surpasses that of ymbellifera; the members of the 

 former are for the most part highly ornamental, and exhibit, under 

 cultivation, a remarkable tendency to become double, as the beautiful 

 foreign varieties of Anemone, Clematis, Ranunculus, Prconia, &c, 



