No. 129.] 343 



[From the London Qnarterly Reriew of July, 1851.] 



On Gardening. — "We are pleased to see this subject selected as 

 the first one of this number of that distinguished work. It is 

 another evidence of the growing importance of it. We therefore 

 extract the following : 



The Poet Cowley said, " I never had any other feeling so strong 

 and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, 

 that I might be master at least of a small house and a large gar- 

 den, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there 

 dedicate the remainder of my life only to the culture of them 

 and study of nature. How many hundred thousand times in 

 each of the nearly two hundred years since this epistle to John 

 Evelyn, Esq., was written, has the same ardeat longing been 

 breathed by lips that pant to inhale the fresh breeze of the coun- 

 try, instead of the smoke-laden air of the town ! Give me hut a 

 garden ! is the aspiration sighed forth in cities and in solitudes. 

 by children and their grandsires." 



I. P. Tupper says, " If sensation be imputed to plants, it may 

 with propriety be asked, wliether they are furnished with organs 

 similar to those which are the the seat of sensation in animals 1 

 Perhaps this would not be easiiy proved by ocular demonstra- 

 tion ; nor, indeed, is it necessary that the sentient organs of vege- 

 tables should have the same structure, seeing that all those other 

 parts which thej are allowed to possess in common with animals, 

 sensibly differ in their form and character." 



Dr. Darwin, in his Phytologia, remarks, that vegetables re- 

 semble animals in having absorbent, umbilical, placental, and 

 pulmonary vessels, arteries, glands, organs of reproduction, with 

 muscles, nerves, and brains, or common sensorium — nay, he 

 adds, " It is not impossible, if Spallanzani should continue his 

 experiments, that some beautiful productions might be generated 

 between the vegetable and animal kingdoms, like the eastern fable of 

 the rose and the nightingale. '''' 



At the present epoch, the horticultural societies and the great 

 nurserymen have their active agents surveying the world from 



