Taste in Horticulture and in Designs. 15 



sion, which oftentimes may be found there. We have also 

 seen in some a very Umited area of a few feet of neatly kept 

 borders and beds, much fewer plants, yet of such choice selec- 

 tion, and admirable adaptation to the circumstances of the 

 place, as to afford a degree of pleasure as satisfactory as it 

 was unexpected. We have been often most sadly disappoint- 

 ed in our expectations of some 7iew species, some rare or lately 

 introduced variety^ through the careless or unpropitious man- 

 ner in which it has been presented to our eye, and again as 

 agreeably surprised to find, in some other collection, points of 

 real merit and of excellence, which a better growth, or more 

 favorable coincidences, have brought out. Were plants, like 

 some other organized beings, as sensitive to a careless and in- 

 different regard to them, or to their wants, we could imagine 

 how often and how deeply they must be wounded in their 

 feelings, or shocked, at the want of common sense and of just 

 propriety exercised towards them. In floriculture, more than 

 half the art of culture depends on the proper taste employed 

 in bringing out and setting forth the distinctive merits of the 

 subject under consideration : — this the more especially, if the 

 subject be a plant of some well known kind, in which the ge- 

 nius of the florist would develope some new beauty, hitherto 

 unperceived ; or if, again, it be some new variety of an old 

 and well known kind of flower, where none but his critical 

 eye would be able to see the distinctive marks of the variety 

 from the original species, uifless his contrirance or his art 

 should make them at once prominent. To these ends, the 

 florist must become not only the artist, but the inventor : and 

 the more fertile his mind in experiments, the more successful 

 will he be in expedients. Whoever has had &x\y practical ex- 

 perience in floriculture knows well how much soils and ma- 

 nures aflect the growth and general habit. The cultivator of 

 fruits, too, is well aware how much depends on good man- 

 agement, not only of cultivation in the soil, but also of judi- 

 cious training, and artistical operations above the ground, on 

 the body, branches, entire plant itself. Would he produce 

 fair specimens of fruit, he knows that he must most carefully 

 train, prune, ripen. JXo superfluous growth must be allowed 

 to hinder the more important portions, on which are to de- 

 pend the healthy and operative functions. Every tree, every 



