PREFACE. 



In presenting our Fii'st Volume to our numerous friends and 

 con'espondents, we must be allowed to say, that we do it with a 

 rery grateful recollection of the unlooked-for success with which 

 we have been honoured. The great kindness with which our 

 endeavours have been received — the gratifying notice into which 

 they have risen — and the wide and increasing extent of our circu- 

 lation, — while they have exceeded our expectations, almost our 

 hopes, — ^will serve to stimulate our future exertions to confinn and 

 secure, if not to command and deseiTe, this large share of public 

 pationage. 



We have proposed our plan — we have made our professions — 

 and our readers may now judge of the goodness of the one, and 

 the honesty of the other. Aware of the labour and constant 

 watchfulness which such a publication would require, we hold that 

 the circulation of nearly fifty thousand copies during the nine 

 months of our literary existence, is a convincing and most grati- 

 fying proof that we have neither shrunk from the fonner, nor been 

 cai'eless in the latter; — while the valuable assistance we have 

 received from our brother Florists has greatly lessened our toil 

 and quickened oiu: energies ; and wliile we profess for om'selves 

 tlic same unwearied attention to the interests of Floricultural 



