INTRODUCTION. 



him till a suitable one occur. During this time, he brings 

 forward his stock of knowledge of new plants and of new modes 

 of culture to the present standard, and goes to his place a 

 first-rate gardener as before. Another gardener, remotely 

 situated, who remains in the same situation for twenty years, 

 can scarcely avoid during that time falling greatly behind in 

 the knowledge of modern improvements. Supposing him to 

 leave his situation and go to work in a London nursery, 

 he would be astonished at the number of new plants intro- 

 duced ; at the abundance and cheapness of such as were rare 

 when he was formerly there; at the number of new varieties 

 of fruits, of which he had not before even heard the names; at 

 new modes of propagation for rare plants, and new modes of 

 culture for common crops. This has been the case at all times, 

 but it is more particularly so at present, when the progress of 

 horticultural improvement is rapid beyond all former prece- 

 dent. There seems, as we have before observed, no means so 

 likely to put gardeners residing at a distance on a footing with 

 those round the metropolis, as the circulation of a Gardener's 

 Magazine and Register, recording every thing new as it occurs, 

 and open to the communications both of practical and of theo- 

 retical men. By means of such a work all gardeners whose 

 previous information and habits are such, that they can derive 

 advantage from reading, will be enabled to keep up their stock 

 of knowledge to the full standard of value. Those who cannot 

 or will not read, never have been, nor ever can be, first-rate 

 gardeners. 



While the Gardener's Magazine is improving the knowledge 

 of gardeners, it will at the same time extend the sources of 

 enjoyment to be procured from a garden. Many gentlemen in 

 the country, who have not paid any attention to gardening 

 themselves, and whose worthy and industrious gardener has, 

 perhaps, gone on in the same track for twenty or thirty years, 

 have little idea of the variety of productions which their gar- 

 dens are calculated to afford at, perhaps, little or not more ex- 

 pence than is at present incurred. We pass over the modern 

 improvements in the forcing department, merely observing, that 

 there is no garden where cucumbers and melons are grown 

 which might not with little or no increase of stable-dung grow 

 pine apples. A number of kitchen gardens in the country are 

 worn out with age and cropping ; the fruit-trees against the 

 walls have ceased to bear freely : the walls are dilapidated by 

 the alternate driving and drawing of nails for perhaps half a 

 century ; and the soil is every where exhausted. The proprietor 

 submits to the privations necessarily incurred under these cir- 

 cumstances, and gradually becomes habituated to them, think- 



B 2 



