376 OPERATIONS OF ORDER AND KEEPING. 



over plants in propagating them by cuttings, leaves, and the different 

 modes of grafting and budding ; but greater still is that of creating new 

 kinds of fruits or flowers by cross-fecundation, or improving a wild 

 plant so as entirely to change its character. As examples of what may 

 be done, we may refer to the common carrot, which in five genera- 

 tions from seed was brought from a wild state to be fit for the table, by 

 M. Vilmorin ; and among flowers to the heart's-ease, which in the course 

 of the last twenty years has, by cross-breeding and selection, been 

 raised from a flower with thin crumpled petals and irregular shape, 

 to one of our most symmetrical and flat firm-petalled florists' flowers. 

 In more recent varieties we would point to the wondrous improvements 

 in pelargoniums, especially the variegated varieties, fuchsias, begonias, 

 vegetables, grapes, peaches, nectarines, &c. We conclude by reminding 

 the amateur that the blossoms or fruit produced by newly-originated 

 plants the first or second year, are often inferior to what the same 

 plant will produce when it has acquired a greater degree of vigour ; 

 and that to do justice to new varieties of herbaceous plants, they should 

 be allowed to flower at least two years, and ligneous plants to flower 

 and fruit, three, or even four years before they are rejected. Seedlings 

 often sport and manifest the most extraordinary vagaries before they 

 settle down into their true characters. 



Operations of Order and Keeping. 



By order is to be understood that relation of objects to one another, 

 which shows that the one follows the other as an obvious or natural 

 consequence. Thus, suppose that on entering a kitchen garden we 

 observe a border along the walk separated from the larger compartment 

 by a continuous espalier rail ; this rail we naturally expect will be con- 

 tinued all round the garden, or if interrupted it will be by some 

 obvious and satisfactory cause. Suppose the line of railing discontinued 

 without any obvious reason ; in that case we should say there was a 

 want of order. Still more so should we be struck with a want of 

 order, if the walk were bordered by dwarf fruit trees, not in a straight 

 line or in a line parallel to that of the walk, but sometimes nearer and 

 sometimes farther from it, and with the trees also at irregular distances 

 in the line. Again, a striking want of order is sometimes seen in the 

 disposition of crops. Five or six patches of onions, carrots, potatoes, 

 cabbage, &c., all scattered here and there, as if they had been shot out 

 of a dung-cart in motion, instead of each being in a break or breadth 

 by itself. There is a secondary meaning in which the word order is 

 used among gardeners, which has reference to keeping; and thus a border 

 of flowers or other plants confused with weeds would be said to be 

 disorderly, or not in order. In the former case the term refers to 

 design, and in the latter to management ; and it may be easily con- 

 ceived that the unfavourable impression on a stranger is much graver 

 in the case in which it is of a permanent nature, than in the other 

 where it is only temporary. Neatness, as applied to horticultural 

 scenes and objects, may be considered as synonymous with cleanliness. 



