606 Retrospective Criticism. 



thereof from the rest of the world before any are issued to fellows who are 

 not engaged in that line of commerce. 



I am not insensible to the talent, the science, the enterprize, and the 

 liberality of commercial gardeners. If they wish to form a joint stock com- 

 pany, for the purpose of discovering and importing new and valuable foreign 

 productions exclusively for the use of the trade, it is competent for them 

 to do so, and then let them charge and exclude as they please ; but if Mr. 

 Loddiges, or Mr. Kennedy, puts down each his four guineas against my four 

 guineas, or his ten pounds against my ten pounds, for the garden, I contend 

 that we are partners and equals in this speculation : and I am jealous, and, 

 I believe, justly so, that these gentlemen shall get their ^('rbutus procera, 

 or Camellia reticulata, or Pinus Douglasi, when I am denied it. But it 

 will be said, they contribute articles to the garden, and take these by way 

 of exchange. I, however, should much prefer that what they contribute in 

 plants should rather be paid for in money, or in plants which there is little 

 difficulty in obtaining, than in articles of peculiar rarity or excellence : the 

 latter ought to be distributed among all of the fellows who wish to obtain 

 them as equally and impartially as possible. All do not wish for the 

 same articles. A florist has no room for a pine 240 ft. high ; a landscape- 

 gardener cares not for a new grey-edged auricula ; an orchardist may not 

 covet an amaryllis. But all, if they know that the circumstance of their 

 not being in trade excludes them from the fail* share of the returns of the 

 joint adventure, would naturally and reasonably hasten to dissolve the 

 partnership. For my own part, I must say, that, if your advice is adopted, 

 I shall withdraw my name from the list of fellows ; and I also avow my 

 hope, that one effect of the recent change in our councils will be, not 

 a more niggardly, but a more abundant issue to country fellows, who 

 cannot attend the Society's meetings, of all articles they may desire, 

 which it is in the power of the Society to bestow. I believe that if 

 the concerns of the Society be conducted with impartiality and judgment, 

 commercial gardeners, very many of whom I know, and most highly esteem 

 and admire, may combine with private persons not engaged in trade to 

 sustain, as they did to form, this Society, with justice and satisfaction to 

 each class ; but the gentlemen are not so dependent on the nurserymen, 

 but that if too great a preference is given to the latter in the distribution 

 of new plants, the gentlemen may fearlessly withdraw and form another 

 society, exclusively consisting of persons not engaged in trade, and send 

 out their exploring botanists, and enrich their collection with objects which 

 shall be impartially distributed among the members, so that they need not 

 pay twice over for the same thing, or suffer the unpleasant alternative of 

 waiting till the article is divulged over the whole kingdom, and become 

 dog-cheap, before they can enrich their own garden with the very thing 

 which then- combined enterprise introduced. And, if the fellows of the 

 Society are to be at all remunerated with a share of the produce, how are 

 those who live in the country to obtain it, except through the medium of 

 writing to the Society's officers for it ? If all the country residents were to 

 withdraw from the Society, the catalogue of fellows would be extremely 

 diminished, and their means of effecting the useful objects of their union 

 much curtailed. I am, Sir, &c. — Causidicus, June, 1830. 



The Cottage System, fyc. — I am afraid our opinions may clash respecting 

 cottagers. What I wished to correct was what had appeared in the 

 Quarterly, and you bad copied into the Gardener's Magazine, respecting 

 the late and present Duke of Northumberland. The late duke, certainly 

 at the sacrifice of several thousands a year in rental, carried the cottage 

 system completely into effect. The cottages that were built had two apart- 

 ments, a thing unusual in the county before ; and had each half an acre of 

 land attached, as garden and potato-ground: those who possessed, or 

 wished to have, a cow, had from 5 to 9 acres of old grass land let for that 



