614 FOREST CULTURE AND 
forms of plants, and by educating the community to 
higher horticultural conceptions. You need not ex- 
clude the Rose, which we all appreciate as the queen 
of flowers ; you need not banish anything else that 
is brilliant or gay or odorous, from Bulbs and Carna- 
tions to Petunias, Pelargoniums, or Dahlias, or any 
other favorite flower; but let us allow also for the 
higher decorative and utilitarian work of horticulture 
afair scope. Letus study to embrace all that is attract- 
ive in any form, whether native or foreign, into one 
grand whole of magnificence, without singling out a 
few transitory plants for almost exclusive culture, and 
without sacrificing to a monotony which may become 
finally comparable to the Tulip monomania of a darker 
age, all loftier cultural interest, all that in this direc- 
tion is elevated and great. 
So vast are the treasures which floral plenty is shed- 
ding out before us, and so abundant and diversified 
are the gifts which from all zones are poured into the 
rich gardens of the centres of commerce, such as the 
British metropolis, that it would be a wise measure 
to endow a state garden like ours so far as to secure 
and to retain exclusively the talent and industry of a 
professional horticulturist for selecting in London for 
us, to watch the arrival of every new plant of impor- 
tance, to transmit it under vigilant care, and to con- 
duct our interchanges there and from thence on a 
vastly-extended scale. The amateur cultivators and 
the traders in plants, as also the administrators of 
public estates, are alike interested in such a measure, 
so long as it is not with the object of monopolizing 
with selfish views of local aggrandizement the riches 
thus acquired, and so long as it remains our aim to 
