SB 

 9 



V. 2„ 



PREFACE 



The Gardener's Magazine will be found to have progressively 

 improved in the course of its publication, and this second volume 

 to be of considerably increased interest, compared with the first. 

 For this additional value conferred on our work, we are chiefly 

 indebted to our numerous contributors ; and, in some degree, to 

 our own increasing experience as Conductor. To our contributors 

 we offer our best thanks, and request a continuance of their favours. 



It can hardly be necessary to point to the Table of Contents or 

 the Index, to show the great variety of information contained in 

 this volume ; but we maybe allowed to direct especial attention to 

 the list of Garden Libraries (p. x.) which have been formed in 

 consequence of our suggestions on the subject of the Education of 

 Gardeners (pp. 108. 244. and 372.). We have no doubt that, as the 

 employers of gardeners see the advantage of having scientific 

 gardeners in preference to mere empirical practitioners, the 

 number of Garden Libraries will be increased ; and we entreat all 

 who agree with us in opinion on the subject to make their senti- 

 ments known, — employers to their gardeners, and gardeners to 

 their masters, — with a view to this end. The subject of Village 

 Libraries, Labourers' Institutions, and Itinerating Libraries, (p. 248. 

 373. and 376.) also deserves the consideration and support of all 

 those readers who think with us, that the most effectual source of 

 improvement in art and in society, is the general culture of the 

 human mind. 



A few enlightened individuals may bring an art to the highest 

 degree of perfection, and may record its principles, and the history 

 of its productions in books ; but unless the minds of those who 

 are to practise this art are so far enlightened as to be able to under- 

 stand and reason upon those principles, and draw proper and useful 

 inferences from that history, improvement can never become 

 generally beneficial to society, or permanently incorporated with 

 the practice of the country. It is this tendency to enlighten the 

 practical gardener that constitutes the principal value of the 

 Gardener's Magazine; and in this view of its object, and with a 

 prospect of its duration for many years, we look forward to a 

 generation of gardeners of superior intellect, character, and 

 happiness, as well as to new and higher sources of enjoyment for 

 the possessors of gardens. 



J. C. L. 

 London, Bays water, June, 1827. 



A 2 



