126 FLOWER-GARDENING. 



CHAPTER II. 



AN OUTLINE OF THE PRINCIPLES OF HORTI- 

 CULTURE. 



BY JOHN LINDLEY, F.R.S., 



Professor of Botany in the University of London, and Associate Secretary of the 

 Horticultural Society. 



I. GENERAL NATURE OF PLANTS. 



1. HORTICULTURE is the application of the arts of cultivation, 

 multiplication, and domestication to the vegetable kingdom. 

 Horticulture and Arboriculture are branches of Agriculture. 



2. The vegetable kingdom is composed of living beings, 

 destitute of sensation, with no power of moving spontaneously 

 from place to place, and called plants. 



3. Plants aje organized bodies, consisting of masses of tissue, 

 which is permeable by fluids or gaseous matter. 



4. Vegetable tissue consists either of minute bladders, or 

 tubes adhering by their contiguous surfaces, and leaving inter- 

 mediate passages where they do not touch. 



5. Tissue is called Cellular when it is composed of minute 

 bladders, which either approach the figure of a sphere, or are 

 obviously some modification of it, supposed to be caused by 

 extension or lateral compression. 



6. When newly formed it is in a very lax state, and possesses 

 great powers of absorption, probably on account of the exces- 

 sive permeability of its membrane, and the imperfect cohesion 

 of its cells. 



7. Cellular tissue, otherwise called Parenchyma, constitutes 



