PREFACE. 



THIS volume owes its existence principally to the repeated requests 

 of a number of our fair patrons, and amateur supporters, whose en- 

 quiries and wishes for a practical manual on Floraculture, at last in- 

 duced us to prepare a work on the subject. That now offered is given 

 unaffectedly and simply as a plain and easy treatise on this increasing- 

 ly interesting subject. It will at once be perceived that there are no 

 pretensions to literary claims the directions are given in the simplest 

 manner the arrangement made as lucidly as was in our power and 

 the whole is presented with the single wish of its being practically use- 

 ful. How far our object has been attained of course our readers must 

 judge. Nothing has been intentionally concealed ; and all that is as- 

 serted is the result of minute observation, close application, and an 

 extended continuous experience from childhood. We pretend not to 

 infallibility, and are not so sanguine as to declare our views the most 

 perfect that can be attained. But we can so far say, that the prac- 

 tice here recommended has been found very successful. 



Some very probably may be disappointed in not having the means 

 of propagating as clearly delineated as those of culture ; but to have 

 entered into all the minutiae connected therewith, would have formed 

 materials for two volumes larger than the present. We might have 

 described that branch, as it has already been done in works published 



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