INTRODUCTION. 7 



inexperienced would be bewildered, while the moderately 

 well-informed gardener would be actually misled. A man's 

 system of pruning may be adapted to the locality, his system 

 of pine-growing may be dictated by peculiar circumstances ; 

 cucumber-culture, vine-training, and other very leading fea- 

 tures of his vocation may be very complete for liim and the 

 means at his command ; but take from his system any one 

 department, and give it without fully stating the circumstances 

 under which he does it and advises it, and it only tends to 

 mystify the general practice. The very means adopted under 

 some circumstances successfully, may be fatal under others. 

 'Whether the subject be the soil or compost employed, — the 

 time of planting, or potting, — the grafting, layering, top- 

 dressing, or any other distinct operation, — the man's different 

 ways and periods of doing these things may depend on facts 

 which we are not informed o:^ and should not be brought 

 forward. 



It is therefore necessary to caution all beginners against 

 adopting any plan, upon however good an authority, without 

 first being made acquainted with all the circumstances under 

 which such plan was successful. When a man is once 

 master of a sound, practical, and easy mode of management 

 for any subject, he may read all that has been vn-itten, and 

 use his own judgment as to any deviation. He is able then 

 to try a hundred experiments, on a small scale, without en- 

 dangering the general success of his gardening operations ; 

 but until he has, under some general system, accomplished 

 his objects up to a certain degree of success, he ought not to 

 be bewildered by twenty opinions, all widely different, upon 

 some main feature, only because the parties who have suc- 

 ceeded with it have had some correspondingly different mode 

 of doing the rest of the business connected with it. In the 

 simple operation of planting potatoes, practical men differ 

 exceedingly. Everything here depends upon the sort of 

 potatoes grown ; and the man who says he plants a yard 

 apart, and he who informs us that he plants only two feet, 

 may be both equally right ; but suppose a young beginner is 

 only told that Mr. A., a very large grower, plants a yard 

 apart, Mr. B., a grower of equal celebrity, plants two feet 

 apart — the main facts which dictate these different distances 

 are, that one of the parties is wiiting of dwarf, and the 

 other of a tall-growing kind ; now simple as this may be, it 



