1 50 Abridgments of Communications. 



of the individuals who compose it, and, therefore, any 

 measure which has a tendency to repress individual energy, 

 and induce a reliance on others, is injurious. Of this nature 

 is all monopoly, and we think the horticultural society attempt 

 too much in this way ; from the one extreme of sending out 

 botanical collectors to every part of the world, to the other 

 of supplying gentlemen with practical gardeners. We con- 

 sider the latter point, indeed, as so utterly at variance with 

 the dignity of the society, that we are astonished it should be 

 persisted in. An institution with " His sacred Majesty" as a 

 patron, and emperors and kings as members, to keep an 

 office for servants ! And while all this is being attended to, 

 the gardening comforts of the laboring classes is totally ne- 

 glected. (See Art. I. p. 101.) 



But we would not confine a grand, central, horticultural 

 society, like that of London, to bare utility ; we would wish 

 it to have a splendid garden as an additional ornament to the 

 metropolis, and a first-rate specimen of the art of garden- 

 ing. This, once done, could be kept up at such an annual 

 expence as it might reasonably be expected would be raised 

 by the ordinary income of the society ; but independently 

 altogether of utility or splendour we think it very questionable 

 if the present system of embracing so many objects both at 

 home and abroad, can be continued for many years longer. 



Art. XVI. Abridgments of Communications which want of 

 room precludes our inserting at length. 



The authors of the following papers are requested to ex- 

 cuse the Conductor for the liberty he has taken in presenting 

 their communications in an abridged state. There is not one 

 of them that would not have done credit to its writer and to 

 the magazine if printed at length ; and some of them were 

 actually put in type for that purpose ; but want of room and 

 the disadvantages of delay have compelled us to follow this 

 course. 



1. On the Cultivation of Gourds and Pompions. By Mr. 

 Henry Gray, Gardener, Camberwell. Dated December 

 12th, 1825. 



Mr. Gray's employer had lived a good deal in the West 

 Indies, and there acquired a taste for using the different va- 

 rieties of edible gourds, as a substitute for our common 

 culinary vegetables. Mr. Gray plants in the paths between 

 asparagus beds, and lets the vines run over them ; and he 



