8 BY WAT OF DEDICATION. 



about gardening. The thought that I had 

 misled a lady whose age is not her only sin- 

 gularity, who looked to me for advice which 

 should be not at all the fanciful product of 

 the Garden of Gull, would give me great 

 pain. I trust that her autumn is a peaceful 

 one, and undisturbed by either the humorous 

 or the satirical side of Nature. 



You know that this attempt to tell the 

 truth about one of the most fascinating oc- 

 cupations in the world has not been without 

 its dangers. I have received anonymous 

 letters. Some of them were murderously 

 spelled; others were missives in such ele- 

 gant phrase and dress, that danger was only 

 to be apprehended in them by one skilled in 

 the mysteries of mediaeval poisoning, when 

 death flew on the wings of a perfume. One 

 lady, whose entreaty that I should pause had 

 something of command in it, wrote that my 

 strictures on " pusley " had so inflamed her 

 husband's zeal, that, in her absence in the 

 country, he had rooted up all her beds of 

 portulaca (a sort of cousin of the fat weed), 



