HOW TO GROW SPECIMEN PLANTS. 287 



plant in good soil, and supplies water enough to keep it in 

 vigorous growth ; the latter is one of the highest arts of 

 horticulture, and very few of our professed gardeners un- 

 derstand any thing about it. 



The general ignorance on this subject is the more 

 surprising, as all are ready to admit the beauty of a well- 

 grown plant, and to. decry the long-jointed, straggling 

 specimens, so often a disgrace to our collections. Yet we 

 see our green-houses filled with illy-grown plants, poor, 

 drawn specimens, struggling up to the light, and crowned 

 by a bunch of bloom, on stems several feet long, and entirely 

 destitute of foliage. All this is doing violence to nature ; 

 in their wild state, free and unconfined in the open air, 

 most plants and trees are symmetrical pictures of beauty. 

 Nature does all things well, and art but approaches perfec- 

 tion when it approximates to nature. Could our green- 

 houses be ample enough to allow to each plant the same 

 space and conditions of growth which it obtains in its 

 native climate, could we allow free room for both 

 roots and branches, each plant would be a specimen 

 needing only the free use of the knife to repress 

 and prune out too great luxuriance. Nature would do all 

 the rest ; a tree would develop into a tree, and when roots 



