174 A BOOK ABOUT THE GAEDEN. 



fourth-rate exhibitors go home and tell their friends 

 that they have been and whopped the world, because 

 their betters wouldn't take the trouble to cool their 

 self-conceit. I say the public is disgusted, as well 

 they may be, because when folks goes out a-visiting, 

 they don't expect to be set down to gingerbread nuts 

 and cockles ; whereas, if you gives them a first-class 

 round o' beef, there's few or none complains. And on 

 this principle I always say, give a few fat prizes rather 

 than a many lean ones. If you offer a prize of 10 

 for twelve stove and greenhouse plants, half of them to 

 be in bloom ; a 5 prize for a collection of fruit ; and 

 give a good prize for vegetables, you will have some- 

 thing worth seeing in the different departments of 

 horticulture something for your visitors to admire, 

 and for your gardeners to copy. "But ,10 for a 

 dozen plants," I once heard a rich citizen say ; " why, 

 you'd buy the lot for 5." I kept silence, but I 

 thought that I should like to see the countenance of 

 Mr. Thomas Baines, or of Mr. Benjamin Williams, on 

 receiving the offer ; and I doubted whether the 

 politeness of Mr. William Cole would stand such a 

 provocation. 



Start well, my advice is, if you starts at all ; but 

 don't go sowing cinders and expecting kidney-beans. 

 They wins who ventures most. Did you ever hear 

 what Mr. Bruce Findlay, the curator of the Man- 

 chester Botanical Gardens, recommended the council 

 to do, when their shows was failures, and their funds 

 was low ? Why, to give a thousand pounds in 

 prizes, and to have the best national exhibition which 

 the best gardeners in England could produce during 



