HOW TO POPULARIZE THE TASTE FOR PLANTING. 297 



" differs from another," fall off for ever then we say, thereafter he 

 is one of the nurseryman's best customers. Begging is both too 

 slow and too dependent a position for him, and his garden soon 

 fills up by ransacking the nurseryman's catalogues, and it is more 

 likely to be swamped by the myriad of things which he would 

 think very much alike, (if he had not bought them by different 

 appellations,) than by any empty spaces waiting for the liberality of 

 more enterprising cultivators. 



And thus, if the nurseryman can satisfy himself with our rea- 

 soning that he ought not object to the amateur's becoming a gra- 

 tuitous distributor of certain plants, we would persuade him for 

 much the same reason, to follow the example himself. No person 

 can propagate a tree or plant with so little cost, and so much ease, 

 as one whose business it is to do so. And we may add, no one is 

 more likely to know the really desirable varieties of trees or plants, 

 than he is. No one so well knows as himself that the newest 

 things most zealously sought after at high prices are by no 

 means those which will give the most permanent satisfaction in a 

 family garden. And accordingly, it is almost always the older 

 and well-tried standard trees and plants those that the nursery- 

 man can best afford to spare, those that he can grow most cheaply, 

 that he would best serve the diffusion of popular taste by distri- 

 buting gratis. We think it would be best for all parties if the 

 variety were very limited and we doubt whether the distribution 

 of two valuable hardy trees or climbers for five years, or till they 

 became so common all over the surroundings as to make a distinct 

 feature of embellishment, would not be more serviceable than dis- 

 seminating a larger number of species. It may appear to some of 

 our commercial readers, an odd recommendation to urge them to 

 give away precisely that which it is their business to sell but we 

 are not talking at random, when we say most confidently, that such 

 a course, steadily pursued by amateurs and nurserymen throughout 

 the country, for ten years, would increase the taste for planting, and 

 the demand for trees, five hundred fold. 



The third means is by what the Horticultural Societies may do. 



We believe there are now about forty Horticultural Societies in 

 North America. Hitherto they have contented themselves, year 



