INTRODUCTION. 



IN all books upon Gardening a great variety of modes 

 of operating are comprehended, each of which has, it 

 may be supposed, its own peculiar merit under particular 

 circumstances. In several the very same mode is re- 

 peatedly recommended, with slight variations of phrase- 

 ology, in speaking of many different subjects ; and it has 

 at last become a common complaint, among those who 

 seek for information from books upon horticultural 

 subjects, that they can find plenty of rules of action, but 

 very few reasons. 



No greater boon could be bestowed upon the garden- 

 ing world than to reduce all horticultural operations to 

 their first principles, and to lay bare the naked causes 

 why in one case one mode of procedure is advisable, and 

 another in another. But there are few persons who are 

 competent to undertake this task ; it requires a com- 

 bination of great physiological knowledge, with a per- 

 fect acquaintance with the common manipulation of the 

 gardener's art, and much experience in all the little 

 accidents which are scarcely appreciable by the most 

 observing cultivator, with which the mere man of science 

 can necessarily have no acquaintance, but upon which 

 the success of a gardener's operations often mainly 

 depends; which are to the cultivator signs as certain of 

 the issue of his experiments, as to the mariner are the 

 almost invisible changes in the appearance of the heavens 

 by which the weather is prognosticated. 



Deeply impressed with a persuasion of the justice of 



A 4 



