120 NEW VARIETIES 



collecting. All the life and "fun" seem to be left in the garden. 

 For even if collectors themselves write the books they seem to have 

 an infallible instinct for omitting everything of human interest. 

 Do they ever tell why one variety costs ten times as much as an- 

 other and is worth it? Or what are the great improvements 

 to be made in any group and how they might be secured? Do 

 they not rather swing the censer before the dull god Botany, 

 grinding out technical descriptions (which have been better done 

 a hundred times before) in order to "show the gardener his place," 

 or get a reputation for profundity by the cheap and easy route? 



I do not say that collecting must lead to snobbery, extrava- 

 gance, selfishness. Those are excesses. On the contrary, collect- 

 ing, guided by a spirit of moderation, leads to higher forms 

 of knowledge and pleasure. So I say, "Go ahead, order your 

 fifty roses, delphiniums or what not, and God bless you!" But 

 while you are waiting for the plants to come from Europe, 

 let me show you how you can get far more pleasure out of 

 that collection than you might ever suspect. For the day 

 may come when you will be tempted to throw away most of 

 those varieties and never collect anything again. You will 

 chafe at the endless bother and expense of maintaining a big 

 collection; you may even tire of being a little tin god in your own 

 locality. At first it thrills one's spinal column to be pointed out 

 as "the man who can name a hundred varieties of dahlias." But 

 you soon find that there are thousands of other people who can 

 name a hundred varieties of something. This intellectual prowess, 

 which once dazzled you, is now seen to be only a cheap patter that 

 any amateur acquires after a single season with his collection. 

 And, worse than all, you see that mere collecting is not an end 

 in itself. 



