THE 



PROPAGATION AND IMPROVEMENT 



OF 



CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



INTRODUCTION. 



' To study culture, and with artful toil 

 To 'meliorate and tame the stubborn soil J 

 To give dissimilar yet fruitful lands 

 The grain, the herb, the plant that each demands ; 



These, these are arts pursued without a crime, 

 That leave no stain upon the wings of Time." 



COWPER. 



THE propagation and improvement of cultivated plants is one 

 of the most attractive and satisfying of all human occupations. 

 From the vegetable kingdom we derive, directly or indirectly, 

 our food and clothing ; and we have also the power to amelio- 

 rate or alter the supply, according to the tastes of the age in 

 which we live. This power to alter and improve the earth's 

 produce, if rightly used, becomes one of the most noble and 

 beneficial of all arts; one of the most intelligent of all the 

 practical ends of science or organised intelligence, and yet one 

 of which the very threshold is as yet barely reached. The 

 word food, as here used, has a wide meaning, for beauty, and 

 especially floral beauty, is food in one of the highest of all 

 the senses in which the word may be understood ; and although 

 it may not have originally been actually essential to the mere 

 existence of man as an animal, what a wealth of poetry and 

 beautiful ideas, which go to make life so keenly enjoyable, 

 should we have lost had not mankind from the earliest times 

 reverenced flowers, perhaps from a feeling of gratitude, since 



