HISTORY AND SCIENCE OF GARDENING. 113 



surface of their leaves to the light, the manner in which the roots 

 will seek the best nourishment, and the invariable direction 

 assumed by twining stems, have been attributed to instinct. 



Vegetable Pathology relates to the diseases and casualties to 

 which vegetables are subject. Among other accidental injuries are 

 fractures, incisions, pruning, grafting, and felling of plants, and 

 destroying their leaves and bark. The leaves are destro3'ed by 

 various insects, and frequently by the hand of the cultivator, 

 though nothing can be more injurious. Diseases are corrupt 

 affections of the vegetable body, arising from a vitiated state of 

 of its juices, such as blight, canker, mildew, honey-dew, dropsy, 

 gangrene, etiolation, suffocation, contortion, and consumption. 



In conclusion, a few words on our third general division, the 

 pleasure and usefulness of the study and cultivation of plants 

 and vegetables, may be appropriate. The study of plants furnishes 

 us with a knowledge of the pleasing and interesting science which 

 has just been introduced, while their cultivation afibrds natural 

 and healthy employment, both of the physical and intellectual 

 powers. There is no truth in the remark that the study of botany 

 is beneficial only to a few, or that to cultivate flowers merely to 

 gratify the eye is useless. To the botanist no road is dreary, 

 no solitude barren, nor any journey wearisome, because he 

 finds so much to admire, so much to attract attention. He sees, 

 even upon the rock, mosses and lichens, which by their growth 

 and decay gradually prepare for the lofty palm and majestic oak. 

 The traveller may, by a knowledge of botany, be enabled to dis- 

 tinguish the poisonous from the edible fruit which is necessary to 

 satisfy his hunger, or even to save him from starvation. To the 

 man of leisure or wealth the benefit derived from this pursuit is as 

 great as that of the study of music, painting, literature, or any 

 other of the fine arts. The mechanic or laboring man needs 

 amusement as well as the man of leisure, and what recreation can 

 there be more innocent and pleasant, after tlie toils of day, than 

 that of the garden, where he can enjoy the cool and freshened air, 

 and watch over his little spot of useful vegetables, and delicious 

 fruits and beautiful flowers? where 



" not a tree, 



A plant, a leaf, a blossom, but contains 



A folio volume ; we may read and read 



And read again, and still find something new, 



Something to please and something to instruct." 



15 



