X BY WAY OF DEDICATION. 



increased practical turn to my reports of 

 what I know about gardening. The thought 

 that I had misled a lady, whose age is not 

 her only singularity, who looked to me for 

 advice which should be not at all the fanciful 

 product of the Garden of Gull, would give 

 me great pain. I trust that her autumn is a 

 peaceful one, and undisturbed by either the 

 humorous or the satirical side of Nature. 



You know that this attempt to tell the 

 truth about one of the most fascinating occu 

 pations in the world has not been without 

 its dangers. I have received anonymous 

 letters. Some of them were murderously 

 spelled; others were missives in such 

 elegant phrase and dress, that danger was 

 only to be apprehended in them by one 

 skilled in the mysteries of mediaeval poison 

 ing, when death flew on the wings of a 

 perfume. One lady, whose entreaty that I 

 should pause had something of command in 

 it, wrote that my strictures on &quot; pusley &quot; had 

 so inflamed her husband s zeal, that, in her 

 absence in the country, he had rooted up all 



