INTKODUCTION. 3 



deposited on the back of his gooseberry leaves, passed unheeded through their 

 different stages of development ; and the ravages the larvae committed on 

 crops were considered as inevitable blights, produced by the atmosphere. In 

 the present day, so much of the beauty and the value of the products of all 

 gardens is known to depend on subduing insects, that a knowledge of the 

 subject is considered essential to every gai'dener: but it is more especially 

 necessary that the possessor of a small garden should know how to keep 

 insects in subjection ; both because he is frequently his own gardener, and 

 because insects are more abundant in such gardens than in those of a larger 

 size, which are generally situated farther in the country, sometimes from the 

 comparatively weak and crowded state of the plants, and, in other instances, 

 from the absence of those natural enemies of insects, the small birds. 



One of the greatest of all the sources of enjoyment resulting from the pos- 

 session of a garden is, the endless variety which it produces, either by the 

 perpetual progress of vegetation which is going forward in it to maturity, dor- 

 mancy, or decay, or by the almost innumerable kinds of plants which may be 

 raised in even the smallest garden. Even the same trees, grown in the same 

 garden, are undergoing perpetual changes throughout the year ; and trees 

 change, also, in every succeeding year, relatively to that which is past ; 

 because they become larger and larger as they advance in age, and acquire 

 more of their characteristic and mature forms. The number of plants, and 

 especially of trees, which can be cultivated in any garden at one time is 

 necessarily circumscribed; but, if an amateur chose to limit the period during 

 which he cultivated each tree or plant to the time of its flowering with him 

 for the first time, he might, in the course of a few years, more or less in num- 

 ber according to the size of his garden, have had growing in it all the plants 

 in cultivation in the open air in Britain, with the exception of a few of the 

 larger of the forest trees ; and even these he might also have flowered, by 

 making use of plants raised from cuttings or layers, or of miniature trees, 

 made by ringing and rooting the branches of old trees in the Chinese manner. 

 Independently, however, of the variety and change resulting from the plants 

 cultivated, every month throughout the year has its particular operations and 

 its products : nay, it would not be too much to say, that during six months of 

 the year a change takes place, and is perceptible, in the plants of a garden, 

 every daj'; and every day has, in consequence, its operations audits products. 

 Even in winter, there is still something to do in every garden, however small 

 may be its extent : the walks require to be kept in order, and some plants 

 must be protected by litter or matting ; and, if there should be no trees to 

 prune, no groimd to dig, no manure to collect or to barrow out, no dung to 

 turn and prepare for hotbeds, there is, at all events, the preparation of names 

 or numbers for plants ; the cutting and painting of rods to tie them to ; the 

 sorting of seeds ; the making of baskets ; and the search after information on 

 the subjects of plants and their culture, in books. 



But imagine that to the villa garden there is added a small green-house, or 

 a flued pit ! What a source of amusement and interest does not either of 

 these garden structures hold out to the amateur gardener, during the winter 

 and spring I Exactly in proportion as, in autumn, the out-door operations 

 become fewer, the in-door operations of the green-house or pit become more 

 numerous; and, if the expense of a green-house should be objected to, much 

 of the produce of the green-house may be procured, at half the expense, by 



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