53-^ Letter on the Managetnent of the Garden 



Anon. : A Letter to Thomas Andrew Knight, Esq. Pres. Hort. Soc, on the 



Management of the Garden and Funds of the Horticultural Society. 



London. Pamph,, 8vo, pp. 26. Is. 6d. 



We are well satisfied to see this spirited pamphlet, not that we think it 

 will do much good at present, for the reasons which we have already given 

 (p. 469.), but because it will prepare the way for judicious reformation at a 

 period when it shall become practicable. We recognise in the author of 

 the pamphlet one of our earliest and best correspondents, and one of the 

 most active and valuable members of one of the grandest associations of the 

 present age, the Society for the DiiFiision of Useful Knowledge. It is but 

 justice to this eminent individual, here to state that at the commencement 

 of the Gardener's Magazine he communicated to it many of his ideas as to 

 the management of the affairs of the Horticultural Society, but that we 

 considered it prudent, at that time, only to publish a part of them, lest we 

 should give our work a controversial character. We published enough in 

 our Second Number (Vol. L p. 149.) to show what was our opinion at the 

 time. Had the Societ)' with their immense income confined their attention 

 to such objects as could not be attained by individuals ; had they given an 

 impulse to the science of the art, and to the minds of gardeners, instead of 

 monopolising the introduction of fruits and flowers, and such like matters, 

 which would all have found their way into the country through travellers 

 and nurserymen; had they in short directed their efforts to the mind of 

 gardening, instead of its empirical practices, they would have done much 

 good. But they have mistaken the means for the end, and staked their 

 claim for public approbation on the most costly quarto volumes of Trans- 

 actions, the house in Regent Street, the garden at Chiswick, with its 

 splendid fetes, and their fist of Fellows, which, like that of the Medico- 

 Botanical Society, is graced with all the crowned heads of Europe. 



" Ille ego qui qicondam, &c. I am he who, some few years ago, took the 

 liberty of addressing a Letter to the late Sir Humphrey Davy, then President 

 of the Royal Society, on the Management of the British Museum, and in 

 which I took a glance at the affairs of the Society under his management. 

 I now, with humbler flight, am about to take the same liberty with you, as 

 President of the Horticultural, which I did with Sir H. Davy, as President 

 of the Royal, Society. 



" I feel, however, the difference of the subject — that the motion of sap 

 and the cutting of cabbages are not such important points as those I for- 

 merly touched on. I beg my address may excite no uncomfortable feeling. 

 I wish to set your mind at ease on this score at once. 1 have no cause of 

 positive complaint against you. ^ I am not going to say one word about 

 Turner's defalcations *, though I must say it was vexatious, that, amongst 

 all the responsible and non-responsible officers of the Society, none were 

 found cunning enough to make him give security, and that none were found 

 active enough to prevent his running away — which might, it is said, have 

 been easily done .1 am well aware you have never willingly de- 

 scended to prosecute the poor devils of collectors, and were no zealous 

 party to the hauling Mr. Don into the Court of Chancery, and threatening 

 him with the abyss of a court of common-law. f — Of all this I acquit you ; 

 but you are sorely guilty of misprision of treason, if not of actual commis- 



* Turner, we are informed, is now a waiter at a coffee-house in Paris. — Cond. 



" f Mr. Don was employed as a collector to the Society, and because he ventured to publish 

 (contrary to his agreement, I admit) some recollections on a botanical subject, he had a bill in 

 Chancery filed against him, poor devil ; but the public has never yet reaped the benefit, in any 

 other shape, of his labours." [We hope the history of the prosecution of Mr. George Don, and 

 of the persecution of the gardener Christie, may at some future time be given to the public. 

 Christie has never held up his head since ; and, indeed, he and Mr. Don are not the only persons 

 who have been connected with the Horticultural Sooiety whom a certain individual has threat- 

 ened to ruin.] 



