ACCLIMATING AN EEROR. 265 



Wlien you see the result, be not tempted to adopt it, unless 

 it is a strikingly good thing. Let no mediocre claims tempt 

 you to add one to the thousands of middling things already 

 in cultivation. Better to count the time lost altogether, and 

 begin again, than to be the avowed raiser of any unworthy 

 novelty. We have a thousand more varieties of roses in 

 cultivation than are worth the trouble. Pansies, fuchsias, 

 calceolarias, cinerarias, verbenas, apples, pears, plums, and 

 other things, have been multiphed until there wants a general 

 sweep out ; and it is bad taste to add anything to our garden- 

 catalogue that is of secondary quality. If it be not entirely 

 novel and good, or a complete advance over anything in the 

 same way, have nothing to do with it. Better raise one good 

 thing a-year, than twenty middling ones ; for named flowers 

 multiply, until people are deterred from selecting by the 

 number they have to select from ; and the fruit-catalogues 

 perplex every man who wishes to plant, by the vast numbers 

 of varieties, all said to be good, but three-fourths of which are 

 inferior, and not worth growing in a small garden. Were it 

 not that select hsts are from time to time published for the 

 guidance of amateurs, the t-ask of selection would be hopeless. 



ACCLIMATIN'G— AN EEEOR 



Much has been written on the subject of acclimating plants. 

 Many great names have been associated with papers on the 

 mode of accomplishing so desirable an object; and how far 

 have we unproved the constitution of any one plant, flower, or 

 vegetable ? Is the original potato more hardy than it was 

 the day it was imported? Will the dahlia, though it has 

 been obtained from seed year after year for half a century, or 

 near it, stand a single degree of frost ? We confess our faith 

 in the possibility of obtaining from seed a hardier race of any- 

 thing than we now possess. We believe we may say, that we 

 have found some trifling difierence in. the capacity of some 

 varieties to bear rough usage and some exposure ; but this is 

 not acclimating, this is improving the breed, a very different 

 thing from acclimating. Those who advocate the possibility 

 of changing the constitution of a tender plant make a great 

 mistake. They give us instructions how to do certain things 

 in a certain way, and say that this, or that, or the othei 



