JOURNAL 0¥ HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



[ January 13, 1863. 



that intelligence alone will not become as many desire it to 

 be — a test of fitness and suitability on which employers may 

 depend. 



So much has of late years been said on the education of 

 gardeners — so many are the sarcasms levelled at us because we 

 do not know this, or are ignorant of that, that really it is high 

 time not to attempt to draw the winds out of the sails of know- 

 ledge, but quietly to inquire whether these sails are distended 

 with the breezes of Common Sense, or the sweet zephyrs of 

 Romance. When knowledge in such circumstances is looked 

 upon, not only as a power which will ever bring its own reward 

 of pure and elevated pleasure, but is also regarded in its utili- 

 tarian aspects, Common Sense comes in and asks, What temporal 

 benefits, what increase of comfort, what social respectability are 

 to be gained by this increased intelligence ? Are we to go to 

 the afflicting details that come before the Committee of the 

 " Benevolent," or to the still more harrowing details that come 

 so often before respectable nurserymen, and those gardeners 

 somewhat comfortable in their position, for a too true answer to 

 the inquiry? As an act of honesty, I would wish to strip 

 gardening as a trade of much of that mere feeling of romantic 

 interest which lingers around it, and advise young men to look 

 at it in its stern realities. 



Through that feeling of romance, and the statements so fre- 

 quently made as to the necessity of a first-rate education, many 

 weE-educated youths enter upon gardening with the full confi- 

 dence that they will gain some of the few prizes that are to 

 be obtained. And so no doubt they would if they waited for 

 them, and combined their extra intelligence with attention to 

 practical details, as some of our best men will tell you, but 

 with the addition that they saw, when too late, they might 

 have taken their education to a better market. I know myself 

 estimable young men, who, when the romance of the affair was 

 gone, and when they calculated the smallness of the returns in 

 wages they were likely to receive even if successful, have entered 

 upon a fresh employment after being several years at gardening. 

 I have also met with many other highly-educated youths who 

 would have made a good show at an examination table, and 

 yet did not succeed extra well as gardeners, merely because 

 they trusted too much to their intelligence, and considered 

 attention to practical details a secondary matter. Of course 

 there is no absolute er natural necessity for this, quite the 

 reverse ; but that the circumstances too often exist admits not 

 of a doubt. • 



Unpleasantness, too, is often the result. A gardener will 

 often speak highly of the general conduct and the polished edu- 

 .. cation of a youth, and yet own that, for attention to a specific 

 charge, or performing the common operations of gardening, he is 

 not so much to be depended on as a common garden labourer. 

 Misconceptions are thus too apt to exist, the polished young 

 gardener imagining that his chief duty is to observe and note 

 as much as he can, with as little soiling of his fingers as 

 possible ; and the worthy, old-faBhioned gardener, considering 

 that he would neither be honeBt to the young man himself, nor 

 yet faithful to his own employer if he did not insist on good 

 workmanship and attention, and those who take such highly- 

 educated youths as apprentices or improvers, would do them an 

 act of kindness by giving them a good spell at first among the 

 stokeholes and dungheaps. If they could not stand that with- 

 out wincing, the sooner they entered upon a more congenial 

 employment the better. 



Upon the whole, then, unless there is a particular inclination 

 in that direction, a thorough resolution to make nothing of 

 difficulties, to pay attention to all mmutije, combined with the 

 resolve, as matters now are, to be satisfied with very small remu- 

 neration for their talents, I would advise highly-educated youths 

 to take their talents to a better-paying market than gardening. 

 And I do this the more, not because valuiug intelligence less as 

 the great means of improvement, but because the field would 

 then be more open for improving the position of those in 

 a humbler class of society, and who had received only the 

 elements of a common education, but who resolved that no 

 want of attention to minutise, no want of self-denial and earnest 

 attention to study and self-culture, should unfit them for holding 

 a good position in their profession, and a higher position in 

 society than their fathers did. With but few exceptions, from 

 such a class the most successful, the most contented, and, so far 

 as knowledge was brought to bear on professional subjects, the 

 most intelligent gardeners have come. 



I allude to these latter ideas, because there is a vast difference 



between the comfort enjoyed by a man who feels he has improved 

 his social position, and that of a man who feels he is falling 

 lower and lower, and has never obtained what he considers his 

 deserts. The youngest, if they have followed me, will be in no 

 danger of considering with a friend of mine, that I am at all 

 opposed to highly-educated gardeners, though I insist so much 

 on attention to trifles. " Is it likely," said he, " that we should 

 have had such instructive writing from Donald Beaton if he had 

 been a stranger . to a classical education?" "Is it likely that 

 your old friend Mr. D. should have taken such few steps from 

 the bothie at S. to the superintendence of a gentleman's large 

 estate, being equally at home in the building of a mansion, and 

 the erection of a conservatory, but for his good education ? '* 

 " But, for the same advantages, i8 it likely we should have been 

 honoured with a Sir Joseph Paxton? " and so on with many of 

 the chiefs in the profession. 



In all such cases I am not so far a-field. The education did 

 something ; the concentrated attention to everything entrusted 

 to their care, the self-denial, and the never-intermitted self- 

 culture, did far more. Mr. Beaton has told us something of his 

 young days in the Highlands, and his troubles in parsing 

 Virgil, &c, and we know something of his never-ceasing self- 

 denial and self-culture in the Lowlands. To such studies, 

 far more than to hie Latin, was he indebted for being able to 

 write the reviews of Herbert's " Amaryllidacese," and become 

 a foremost man ever sinee. The same talents, energies, and self- 

 denial, would have led to Buccess in any field of science and of 

 commerce ; and, in the latter, wealth and position might have 

 been gained had such been objects of ambition. I rather think 

 that Mr. D. did not know much of the classics, but he had received 

 a good sound education — could take plans, draw, and reason- 

 out a problem of Euclid. With such advantages was he con- 

 tented ? No ! never was there a more zealous student. I often 

 regret I was not influenced more by his example in that respect. 

 It is a great mistake in young men to imagine that they must 

 obtain influence and patronage to Bucceed. I do not suppose that 

 Mr. D., even in the common acceptation of the word, solicited 

 such influence, but he secured it from those with whom he came- 

 in contact by his never-ceasing efforts at self-culture, his readi- 

 ness to oblige, his courtesy of manners, and his faithful atten- 

 tion to everything confided to his care. 



Of the younger days of our honoured knight in gardening I 

 know little for certain. There are many current reports in 

 Hertfordshire aB to how he worked and studied. Some time 

 ago I chronicled seeing the bed on which he slept in the bothie 

 at Woodhall. There may be something of popular exaggeration,, 

 but that distinctly points to Sir Joseph as a self-made man — 

 the result chiefly of long-continued self-culture. 



To highly-educated youths who resolve upon gardening, not- 

 withstanding the plain truths I have placed before them, I would 

 Bay, If you wish to be successful consider no attention and no 

 trifles beneath your notice. To the larger class, who think little 

 except of six o'clock, and how they may get away and spend 

 their evenings in what they call pleasure, it would be useless to 

 say one word. To. those from humbler positions, who have 

 mastered merely the simpler elements of education, I would 

 say, Combine strict attention to details, with constant efforts to 

 improve yourselves in intelligence ; and thus, not only widen 

 the sources of pleasure, but secure the ability to retain a good 

 situation when you obtain one. A few simple hints on this self- 

 culture may come before us at a future opportunity. — R. Eish. 



THE KEEPING PKOPERTIES OF PEAKS 

 THIS SEASON. 



Yora correspondent "E. B.," of Deal, in The Jocbnal of 

 Hoktioultubb, page 795, puts a question about the keeping of 

 Pears, and you desire to have information on the subject. If, 

 therefore, you deem the following observations useful I shall 

 feel pleased in having made them. 



The spring of 1862 gave as great a promise of an abundant 

 Pear crop as I ever Baw. My trees, standard and pyramid, were 

 a sheet of bloom, and great were the expectations of pomologists 

 — in fact, I calculated on being able to show two hundred sortB ; 

 but, alas ! the rains began to be over-abundant, and the tempera- 

 ture kept so low, that soon the rosy blossom began to pale and 

 fade and to show the white feather — a sure sign that the root- 

 aotion was not going on as it should have done. The conse- 

 quence was a weakly Bet of fruit, which progressed slowly, until 



