10 INTRODUCTION. 



it is only from this quarter that much improvement, in 

 our present state of knowledge, can be expected. Truth, 

 however, obliges us to admit that gardening has been 

 most successfully practiced when treated as an empiri- 

 cal art. Few of those who are minutely conversant 

 with its numerous manipulations have undergone such 

 an intellectual training as to enable them to wield gene- 

 ral principles with effect. Many who are not inexpert 

 or unsuccessful while they follow the routine practice (a 

 practice, be it remembered, founded on long experience 

 and close observation), egregiously fail when, with im- 

 perfect information, or ill-advised ingenuity, they en- 

 deavor to strike out new paths for themseHes. The 

 object of the art, too, limits the application of the de- 

 ductions of science. Its whole business consists in the 

 imitation of Nature, whose processes may indeed be, in 

 some measure, originated, as when a seed is inserted 

 in the ground, or modified, as in the artificial training 

 of fruit-trees, but which may not be entirely controlled, 

 much less counteracted. The principle of .vegetable 

 life will not endure interference beyond a certain point, 

 and our theoretical views should be so directed as to 

 interfere with it as little as possible. Observation and 

 experiment are the grand means by which the art has 

 arrived at its present state of advancement: at the 

 same time, it is obvious that an enlarged acquaintanee 

 with science will aid us in imitating the processes of 

 nature, will guide the hand of experiment, suggest con- 

 trivances, and enable us to guard against error ; and, 

 above all, will tend to dispel those prejudices which 

 practitioners in the empirical arts are so prone to cher- 

 ish. 



Gardening, Mr. Walpole observes, was probably one 



