BRIEF REMARKS. 319 



lie boasts, perhaps, tliat this crown, that guinea, or the other medal, 

 are the onlj'^ known ones in existence ; but can he increase them ? 

 Can he oblige a single friend with an offset? Will it ever be better? 

 but, if another be found lii^e it, will it not be worse? What has he 

 rare that the florist may not in his own estimation equal? The Tulip- 

 grower would say, " What coin have you got equal to my fine 

 Louis XVI. ?" And no possessor of tiie only coin of a kind prizes 

 liimself more upon his treasure than a florist does in twenty different 

 flowers of twenty different families. The lover of the garden is a 

 general collector, and a creator of new beauties into tiie bargain ; he 

 sows his seed with pleasure, he watches the progress of his plants with 

 interest, he looks for their opening flowers or swelling fruits with 

 anxiety ; and if his hopes are crowned by one solitary plant, fruit, or 

 flower, better than his present stock, he is repaid for all his trouble, 

 labour, and watciifulness ; if not, he begins again, nothing daunted, 

 saying to himself, " Bad luck now, better another time." Is there 

 any fruit eats so sweet as that from our own garden ? Does not every 

 day develope some new claim to our attention ? Every new visitor in 

 the form of a flower, or fruit, or vegetable, is a welcome one. A man 

 does not go into his garden, as he nmst into a gallery of pictures, a 

 cabinet of coins, or a museum of natural history, to see the same things 

 in the same places time after time : he finds something new every day : 

 his beds of Tulips and Ranunculuses, his collections of Picotees, Car- 

 nations, and Pinks, his Pansies, Dahlias, Auriculas, Poiyantiiuses, and 

 other flowers, come in, one after the other, to reward him for his recre- 

 ation ; for, thougli there be much exertion occasionally required, he 

 Mill not call it labour. His vegetables and his fruit repay him for the 

 trouble and exjaense lie incurs; and, after all, there is one sweetener 

 to all his cares, one refreshing reward for all his anxieties, one circum- 

 stance that gives an additional relish to all he personally enjoys, and it 

 is this, — he has not to seek a connoisseur to participate in his happiness, 

 for ask whom he may to see his establishment, all the classes of society 

 are delighted with a well-kept garden. It delights all the senses ; its 

 fragrance, its brilliancy, its usefulness, all speak to us in language not 

 to be misunderstood upon tlie numerous pleasures and duties wiiich arc 

 inseparable. But there is one point of which we must not lose sight; 

 it is the facility with which every class of society can accommodate his 

 gardening to his means, and yet excel as far as he goes ; one cottager, 

 M'ith scarcely more ground outside his house than his house covers, can 

 be king above his neighbours for the growth of Stocks ; anotiier prides 

 himself upon his double Larkspurs ; a third will allow none to surpass 

 him in Pinks ; a fourth will shine in Pansies ; and so, according to the 

 means at his disposal, the owner of a garden may be ambitious, suc- 

 cessful, and happy. — Thomas Miller. 



An economical Greenhouse and propaoating House.- — The 

 summer of 1849 was to me the commencement of a new era. I had 

 read of beautiful beds of Scarlet Geraniums ; the richness and splendour 

 of the Verbena and the Petunia, the Heliotrope and the Cuphea, also 

 came under my notice; and by dint of begging — very common with 

 amateur florists — by the end of July I found myself possessed of some 



