and of Rural Improvement generally, during 1837. 531 



tages of mutual verbal discussion, among persons engaged in the 

 same pursuit, are so great, that they can scarcely be exaggerated. 

 The very circumstance of acquiring facility in expressing our 

 opinions in an off-hand manner is, next to writing a good letter, 

 a great personal recommendation to any man. It may be said 

 to be to the mind what cleanliness and propriety of dress are to 

 the body ; and it never can fail to insure respect. We have often 

 taken occasion, in this Magazine, to recommend the study of 

 English grammar, composition, and letter-writing to young gar- 

 deners ; because, it is by the appearance and manners, or by the 

 correspondence, of an applicant that the greater number of the 

 employers of gardeners judge of their general merits. To have 

 a good address, and to be able to write a good letter, will not 

 enable a gardener to keep a place after he has got it; but it will 

 go farther towards securing him the preference in a competition 

 for one, than any other kind of knowledge that we are aware of; 

 unless, indeed, the proposed employer has some knowledge of 

 gardening himself, or relies solely on the judgment of another to 

 choose his gardener. We say nothing here of the professional 

 advantages which the members of such an institution as the West 

 London Gardeners' Association will derive from it, since they 

 must be obvious to every one. Associations of this kind, in 

 connexion with a system of examination similar to that now prac- 

 tised by the Horticultural Society (see Vol. XII. p. 610.), would 

 probably go farther towards raising the scientific character of 

 gardeners than any other cause whatever. 



THE SCIENCE OF GARDENING. 



Vegetable Physiology and Systematic Botany. — The subject of 

 hybridising, or cross-breeding, in plants has been philosophically 

 treated by the Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert (see p. 270.), and the 

 doctrine confirmed, that it is by art thus employed, and by selec- 

 tion, that the most ornamental and the most useful varieties of ve- 

 getables are to be procured by man from the species supplied by 

 nature ; which species, with reference to human enjoyment, may be 

 considered as the raw material for man's manufacture or adaptation 

 to his use. It may not, at first sight, appear that cross-breeding 

 is of equal importance in culinary vegetables and forest trees as 

 it is in flowers and fruits ; but this is merely because selection has 

 been more employed in the case of these productions than 

 hybridising. Cultivators, however, of the garden, the farm, and 

 the forest, are every year paying more and more attention to the 

 subject of procuring improved varieties; and what Mr. Herbert 

 has done in flowers, and Mr. Knight in fruits, will be, in time, 

 effected in the connnon vegetables and corns, and even in forest 

 trees. Some very interesting physiological remarks by Mr. 

 Beaton (p. 203.), having immediate application to the manage* 



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