Our National Gardens 



directed, and which lies near one of the entrance- 

 gates, he fancied he had seen everything, and 

 naturally came away with the idea that the great 

 national garden of which he had heard so much 

 was very small and very ugly. A guide of some 

 sort is necessary. If the stranger can go under 

 the guidance of one who knows the garden well, 

 that will be the best ; if he has no one who can 

 personally conduct him, he may buy one of the 

 guide-books on sale at the gates, and with some 

 little trouble he may choose for himself the parts 

 that he most wishes to see. But almost every 

 visitor will have a different object in view ; and if 

 I was asked to conduct a friend I should not take 

 him to the parts which I most liked myself, but 

 should find out what branch of botany or garden- 

 ing he most wished to study. If, for instance, he 

 wished to know something of the scientific arrange- 

 ment of plants I should take him to the strictly 

 Botanic Garden, where plants are arranged accord- 

 ing to their families in long narrow beds, each 

 bed representing a particular family, and contain- 

 ing good typical plants of the families ; but I 

 should not take any but a scientific student there, 

 for the garden is necessarily stiff and ugly. If he 

 wished to know something of the plants used in 

 medicine or commerce something of the economic 

 uses of plants or their commercial products I 

 should take him to the Economic House, in which 

 are grown, but in a very limited space, many of the 

 plants that are most useful to mankind, such as 

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