Retrospective Criticism. 367 



cattle, and the stems left to seed, and possess themselves of the beach or 

 sand. They would thus render these barren wastes most useful to the 

 farmer; and fix the sands, which now drive, and cover all before them. 

 Sand, this very sand, is the best of all possible manures for clay and heavy 

 land ; and, where it can be obtained, no other manure would be required 

 during a man's life for such soils. If he could, in time, carry 500 loads per 

 acre, it would work well at all seasons, and be the richest part of his farm. 

 Pray call the attention of your readers to this fact. — A. X. Feb. 8. 1832. 



Art. V. Retrospective Criticism. 



Corrections to last Number. — In Dr. Hamilton's notice of the Pita 

 de Guataca, p. 240. line 21., for " a small apple," read " a small pine- 

 apple." 



Mr. Toivard's Mode of having Volumes prepared for dried Specimens of 

 Plants. — Sir, Your description of this mode occurs in Vol. IV. p. 436., 

 and not p. 468., as you have wrongly indicated in Vol. VII. p. 155. — 

 A Porer. 



The Writings of Gardeners. — The following reason why the writings of 

 gardeners " are not rendered so instructive as they might be, and as they 

 ought to be, by those who pretend to teach," is given in the Repertory of 

 Patent Inventions for May, p. 310. : — " There are professional arcana, which 

 writers may never intend to reveal ; and, in fact, it is scarcely reasonable to 

 expect that they, who have a living to earn by their professional pursuits, 

 should lay open to public view all the secrets of their art, particularly 

 those more delicate minutiae upon which chiefly depends the success of an 

 important operation. The blame, in reality, attaches to the insincerity 

 of the pretence, not to the prudence of the writer." 



Our contemporary was never farther from the truth than in the foregoing 

 professional charge, which may justly be considered a libel on the whole 

 race of modern gardeners. There is not a British horticultural writer, from 

 Abercrombie (the author of Every Man his own Gardener, in 1766) to 

 the present day, whose works do not contradict our contemporary's asser- 

 tion. Gardeners may have described the processes of their art imperfectly, 

 from not being in the habit of writing ; but our contemporary must know 

 very little, indeed, either about gardeners or their art, or he would never 

 have allowed himself to indulge in the strain which we have quoted. He 

 grounds his observation on a passage in the introduction to Cobbett's Eng- 

 lish Gardener, very well calculated to sell that book, because it promises to 

 tell all that is known, and that has never been told before; but if any pos- 

 sessor of Cobbett's work will turn to Mawe's Every Man his own Gar- 

 dener, even to any of the earlier editions, he will find all that Cobbett has 

 done (and, as he would insinuate, for the first time) done better half a cen- 

 tury ago. What Cobbett undertakes is merely to describe minutely the 

 mechanical processes, which Abercrombie had done long before. Cobbett 

 knows as little of vegetable physiology, or of the science of gardening, as the 

 editor of the Repertory of Patent Inventions evidently does of the practice 

 of gardening, or of its professors. If a further proof of this were required, 

 the paper the editor has quoted to illustrate his observation would prove 

 his ignorance of the subject, as, though very good in itself, it does not 

 contain a single fact that was not previously well known, and that had not 

 been as well told before. — Cond. 



Correction of an Error in the Encyclopaedia of Plants. — "Dielytra," 

 instead of Dielytra. The same error also occurs several times in the 

 body of the book. Dr. Hooker, in his Botanical Magazine, No. 3031., 

 remarks : — " Dielytra is from dis, twice, and elytron, a cover ; in allusion 



