180 A BOOK ABOUT THE GAEDEN. 



who every now and then send their head-gardeners 

 to London to visit the nurseries and the shows. 



Of course there's a risk that gardeners who show 

 may shirk some of their duties, in order that they may 

 give more time to favourites. But it will he found 

 that, as a rule, though there are many exceptions, 

 they who show successful will have other things, 

 besides those in which they takes a lead, a little 

 better in quality and more abundant in quantity than 

 their neighbours, because they have more chances of 

 seeing that which is the best in its class, and of 

 learning how to humour it. 



So we will suppose, if you please, that it has been 

 decided by master and gardener that the latter is to 

 show, and pass on to the next question which conies 

 afore us, and that is, What to show ? It's a big 

 question, because a great many exhibitors fails from 

 trying to do too much. I remember reading in the 

 newspapers that, when a few of our cavalry went 

 a-galloping at Balaklava into the middle of the Kussian 

 army, one of them French generals remarked that it 

 was grand, but it wasn't war ; and it's no good for 

 a gardener, however much he may know, to go 

 a-chargiug on his bit of a spanned-roofed greenhouse 

 against a man with half a mile of glass. He may 

 now and then win a victory over some one bigger but 

 slower than himself, just as you've seen a game 

 bantam cock make a great Cochin stride off in search 

 of his mother ; but whenever he meets a gardener who 

 knows as much as he does, with more room and 

 resources, why, weight and size must tell, and the 

 lesser bird will get the spur in the brain. No doubt 



