710 Summary View of the Progress of Gardening, 



by municipal or county taxes. A very trifling tax on the house- 

 keepers of the metropolis would support four botanic gardens 

 in the suburbs, of from fifty to a hundred acres each, which 

 might afford recreation and instruction to the whole of the in- 

 habitants. Let us hope that some wealthy individual will form 

 a garden of this kind, and then present it to government, to the 

 whole metropolis (which ought to have a government of its 

 own), or even to the city of London alone, on condition of this 

 garden being always kept up in proper order, and of its being 

 open to the public. 



Provincial, Botanical, and Horticultural Societies continue to 

 effect good, by stimulating gardeners to improved modes of 

 culture; by encouraging cottagers to make the most of their 

 gardens; and, what we value most of all, by bringing the rich 

 more into contact with the poor. We cannot help thinking 

 that we already see the good effects of this in the more hu- 

 mane and kind manner in which country gentlemen speak to 

 their out-door servants, and especially to gardeners, and coun- 

 try labourers and their families, than what they used to do 

 thirty years ago. It was then very common, when a gentle- 

 man was showing a stranger round his estate, to open the 

 door of a cottage or of a small farm-house, without knocking 

 or giving any previous signal ; but this piece of thoughtless 

 rudeness or heartless conduct is, we believe, comparatively rare 

 at present among educated men of wealth ; and certainly, at no 

 period within our remembrance, have the female branches of a 

 country gentleman's family been so attentive to the poor in 

 their neighbourhood. But it is not merely the rich employers 

 that have profited by coming in contact with their poorer bre- 

 thren ; the latter also have received a degree of polish and of 

 manner that cannot fail to raise them in their own estimation, 

 as well as in that of their employers. On glancing over our 

 article on the Provincial Societies (p. 674.), it will be seen how 

 much real good has been effected for the cottager in a variety of 

 instances ; and for the residents in towns who rent small por- 

 tions of ground in the suburbs, in the case of a horticultural 

 show at Falkirk (p. 691.). 



The Science of Gardening has received no marked accession in 

 the course of the year, but the general views which we took in 

 our summary for 1838, of the scientific results of the effect of 

 the previous winter, have been confirmed and extended by Dr. 

 Lindley, in an elaborate and ably reasoned paper in the Horti- 

 cultural Transactions, of which an abstract will be found in this 

 volume, p. 574. to 578. The most material fact to be added to 

 what we had previously stated is, that the ground in the Hor- 

 ticultural Society's garden was never, during the whole winter, 

 frozen to the depth of a foot, even while the temperature of the 



