How to Grow Good Asparagus. 637 



It is unnecessary for lis to comment upon this article, so 

 far as regards the growth of asparagus, according to the plan 

 of Mr. Cuthill. We are as firm a disbeliever in " quacks,^' 

 or in " gardening nostrums," and " all fiddle-faddle schemes," 

 for arriving at perfection in horticulture, as Dr. Lindley. We 

 have so expressed ourselves, and shall take another opportu- 

 nity to review at length the whole subject. John Bull is 

 not the only person who is bored with " conundrums," which 

 are thought by the perpetrators of them to be the only things 

 by which a gardener may prosper. Brother Jonathan is even 

 more to be pitied than John Bull, for John has an abundance 

 of real knowledge, even among the " farrago of interested 

 and disinterested recommendations by which he is surround- 

 ed." But with Jonathan to be set on the wrong track before 

 he knows the right, will only make him ten thousand times 

 worse off than Johnny. 



Dr. Lindley himself is not without his crotchets : witness 

 his advocacy of Polmaise heating, even after it was aban- 

 doned by nearly every one of its early advocates. Witness 

 also the peculiarly scientific character of his earlier works 

 on scientific Botany, almost unreadable to any but the 

 professed Botanist, whose descriptions of plants were as 

 far from popular as they could well be. Yet now we see 

 him advocating reform in nomenclature, with a desire to do 

 away, as far as possible, with all superfluous technical lan- 

 guage. 



Upon the subject of horticultural quackery we think he- 

 is about correct. Occupying the situation he does under 

 the Horticultural Society, and as editor of the Chronicley 

 he has so many opportunities to see through the shallow- 

 ness of garden pretenders, whose whole knowledge is de- 

 rived from superficial reading, that he could not omit a. 

 fitting opportunity to give utterance to his views. — Ed.] 



VOL. XVI. NO. XII. 68 



