230 Flowers and Fruit. 



Europe), together with those attached to the different palaces in 

 Paris and its neighbourhood. I have also some few observations 

 to offer respecting their consequences on the habits of society, as 

 they appeared to me, which, I trust, will not be considered in- 

 consistent with the purpose of your publication, which is, if I 

 apprehend it rightly, intended not only to improve the condition 

 of the craft, but to diffuse a better feeling throughout all the 

 classes of society to which its perusal is extended. 



Art. III. Flowers and Fruit. By A. C. 



I AM not, as you will soon perceive, a scientific gardener : I 

 am but an ardent admirer of flowers and fruit ; one who takes 

 pleasure, when spring returns, to wander among the gardens, 

 and see the lilies shooting from the ground, and the buds of the 

 fruit trees full even to bursting. How a gowan grew into a 

 double daisy, and a crab into an apple, was the wonder of my 

 youth ; nor was it much less of a marvel how the vine put forth 

 its grapes, and the pine-apple sent forth its summer flavour 

 when the snow was yet unmelted on the hills. Much has been 

 changed by skill and science since my youthful days ; and the 

 rarest flowers and the richest fruits have, through human in- 

 genuity, become naturalised in this cold moist island. I ac- 

 knowledge the presence of much that is new ; but I lament the 

 absence of not a little that is old. Of the flowers which I loved 

 in the year of grace 1784, two or three are gone. Some of my 

 favourite pears, too, and apples are either lost, or have fallen 

 away from their original beauty and flavour so much that I 

 cannot distinguish them, either on the tree or in the basket. 

 All this you will, perhaps, impute to my taste being changed, 

 and my teeth being less sharp in these my latter days than 

 former!}', and perhaps there is something in the surmise. 



I have no wish to say a single sharp word regarding the 

 gardeners — I love the old word ■ — of these present times : they 

 are clever and ingenious men ; they have persuaded the flowers 

 of New Holland, and the fruit trees of the tropics, that London 

 is their native latitude ; nay. Watts and Arkwright have scarcely 

 wrought greater wonders among cockboats and cottons than 

 they have achieved among the plants. Indeed, I am not sure 

 but that the steam-engine and spinning-jenny should be ranked 

 among the " many inventions " which man has found out to his 

 own harm, and which Scripture commends not, though it 

 refrains from reprobating them ; while, on the other hand, those 



