55 THE IWIJKS AND C.ARPEXS OF TAIilS. [Chap. III. 



is the same. It has heen shown over and over again by eminent 

 men that the methods of investigation applied to the most 

 difficult problems that have yet engaged the attention of man 

 differ in no essential respect from those used by the humblest 

 observant cultivator. What is true scientifically must be true 

 also in practice. Such an expression as " It is right enough in 

 theory but wrong in practice " is nonsense. Nothing can be 

 " right in theory and wrong in practice." 



Who is to l)lame for this state of things ? Chiefly the class of 

 botanists and " scientific " men who do not rise higher in the 

 study of the vegetable kingdom than the stage of mere techni- 

 calities and their application. We might suppose that the 

 Eoyal Horticultural Society of London would not propagate 

 errors of this kind. But this is precisely what it does, and at 

 its meeting at Birmingham there were a " scientific " and a 

 " practical " congress. Addresses were also given on separate 

 days on " recent progress in scientific " and " recent progress in 

 practical " horticulture ; as if these terms did not mean one and 

 the same thing. Thus a society for the encouragement of 

 gardening says, in effect, to gardeners : Your labours and 

 observations have nothing to do with science (knowledge), and 

 we will take care that there is no mingling of such different 

 classes. Your "practical" notions are of some slight account; 

 we will devote a day to them as soon as we have completed 

 our " scientific " labours. And thus a puerile distinction is 

 maintained by the very body whose true work it should be to 

 counteract the effects of a use of language false in itself and 

 hurtful to horticulture. 



Looking round on all the miserable ugliness and mismanage- 

 ment in this unfortunate Garden of Plants, I thought of the kind 

 of national botanic garden that would be worthy of France. The 

 objects of a national garden should be threefold — to show living 

 examples of the vegetation of the country in which it occurs ; to 

 grow in the open air plants from other countries likely to be of 

 value for use or ornament in that country ; and also to display as 

 far as possible the vegetation of distant and very different 

 countries. We will leave this last question entirely out of sight, 

 and think only of France, its vegetation and its improvements, in 

 garden and in farm, in orchard and in forest. 



