

PREFACE, 



For nearly twenty years the Author of these pages 

 has laboured to make the gardeners of England 

 more generally aware than they are, even at pre- 

 sent, of the principles on which their practices are, 

 or ought to be, founded. The results of his early 

 researches have, from time to time, been made 

 public, and those, together with more that are new, 

 he now offers to his readers in a collected and 

 orderly form. 



He has thus laboured to impart the reasons for 



horticultural practice, because it is certain that 



gardening is no exception to the rule, that the 



worst of ignorance is an ignorance of the reasons 



for our conduct ; and if this volume aids in some 



j degree to remove such ignorance from the gardener, 



-^ the Author ^ill be happy in the consciousness that 



^ he has helped the advance of plant- culture from 



^ mere empiricism into the class of the rational 



^ sciences. 



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