Masters's Hortus Duroverni. 609 



whose use the Horticultural Register is intended> is a defect which ought 

 not to be passed over. 



Among the paragraphs we find one signed J. Simpson, Holloway, 

 stating that he has been very unsuccessful with Bishop's dwarf pea, and 

 advising the conductors of the Horticultural Register never to " recom- 

 mend inferior articles merely because they are new." " Some people," he 

 says, " run away with the notion, that because a thing is new it must of 

 necessity be good. You are practical men," he adds, " and therefore 

 may be considered competent to give a proper opinion on any article when, 

 you have seen it." The conductors state that they were almost as much 

 disappointed with Bishop's dwarf pea as their correspondent : they say, 

 " we consider it more adapted to field culture than a garden." We should 

 be glad to know, from such of our readers as have cultivated Bishop's pea, 

 the result of their experience. In the course of our tour thus far (Kil- 

 marnock), we have seen it in very general culture, and heard no complaints 

 of it ; in some places, it was praised. 



Oiu- readers may expect that we should now say something of the ge- 

 neral merits of this new periodical, professing, as it does, to treat upon the 

 same subjects as our own ; and being, in its arrangement and manner of 

 execution, even to the vignette on its cover, a close imitation of our 

 Magazines. As the greater part of the work consists of extracts from 

 those Magazines, or of matter which has already appeared or (as in the 

 case of the botanical and other periodicals) is constantly appearing in 

 them, we cannot be expected to offer any criticism upon it. We have sug- 

 gested the improvement which it admits of, with respect to accentuation 

 and derivation ; which, for the benefit of practical men, we trust will be 

 attended to in future Numbers. In the treatment of gardening as an art of 

 design and taste, the Horticultural Register has, at present, given no proofs 

 of knowledge. It would indeed be, perhaps, too much, to expect practical 

 gardeners to excel in this department of the art, with their present degree 

 of school education, and their want of that leisure which is necessary to 

 enable any one to acquire an artist's eye and hand. The period will come, 

 however, when taste in a practical gardener will be considered as necessary 

 as a knowledge of culture ; and the requisite education and leisure will 

 of course follow. In the mean time, the Horticultural Register will help 

 to pave the way for this state of things, by spreading a knowledge of vege- 

 table culture, which will serve as a preliminary step, among those whose 

 minds are not yet prepared to enter upon the higher departments of the 

 art. On this account, and because we think it will at all events do good, we 

 sincerely wish it success ; and this wish our readers will the more readily 

 give us credit for, when we assure them, that we consider the Horticultural 

 Register in the light of a pioneer to the circulation of the Gardener's 

 Magazine and the Magazine of Natural History. 

 Masters, Wm., F.H.S., Curator of the Canterbury Museum, &c. : Hortus 



Duroverni : being a Catalogue of Plants and Seeds cultivated and sold 



by the Author at Canterbury. London and Canterbury, 1831. Third 



Edition, small 8vo. 2s. 6d. 



The plants are arranged in these divisions : hardy perennials, hardy trees 

 and shrubs, green-house and hot-house plants, fruits, and culinary roots ; 

 and the seeds into those for the purposes of agriculture, and the flower- 

 garden and kitchen-garden. Under each division a rich collection, for a 

 provincial nursery, of well selected species and varieties is exhibited. 

 Besides these things, the book merits notice, as the first we have seen in 

 which the significant typography, and, for the most part, plan, of Loudon's 

 Hortus Britdnnicus are adopted. It is almost as scientific as that, as far as 

 it goes, and as far as can consist with an alphabetic distribution of the 

 genera, for the purposes of trade, under each division. In the column of 



Vol. VII. — No. 34. r r 



