Jamiaiy 18, 1873. ] JOUKNAL OP HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE, GARDENER. 



TO OUE HEADERS. 



" It is most uureasouable that you ask me to write our usual Preface. I have not had a clay's fallow 

 before for six months, so now I am off for a fallowing, and I mean to have it. 



" I have been to see some Pig-orcharding close to the cottage where honest and moderate John 

 Selden was born, and in that cottage is the warning carved by his own hand and knife — ' Thief, 

 avauut !" 



" Now, in the preface you might introduce that when wtirning some of our contemporaries, foreign 

 and domestic, not to continue copying from our pages without acknowledging whence they obtained 

 the riches. 



" Looking from my lodging window I see a neighbour, trowel in hand, stirring a bit of parterre 

 which a tablecloth would cover, and he reminds me of little Dr. Jowitt, of Oxford memory, of whom 

 it was written — 



' Dr. Jowitt a little garden made, 

 And round it placed a little palisade. 

 A little garden taketh little wit to sliow it, 

 And little wit had little Dr. Jowitt.' 



You might give that as clinging to ' gardening under difficulties.' 



"Tell our readers, also, that we have long since felt that we Editors are types of Christian 

 Charity, for we bear all things, hope all things, and endure all things, suffer long, and are kind — put 

 an emphasis on the last word. Who but we would have returned gentle answers to the man who 

 abused us for not naming forty-five plants he sent without paying the carriage ; and the old dame who 

 said we are ' totally unfit to be Editors,' because we did not specially state that she had a Bantam 

 commended at the Fuddly-cum-Pipes Show ? Tell thenl, in addition, that we trust they will duly 

 appreciate our new type, superior paper, and other liberalities. 



" To our correspondents and staff-contributors say something courteous ; slide in that some of 

 them have written for us for twenty -four years, and yet are as vigorous as those- stalwart cliaps who 

 have been ' of ours ' only for as many months. The old chaps will like that. 



" Then you must say something very civil to ' our readers.' Don't say anything about Happy 

 New Years, that's ' stale and unprofitable.' Perhaps you may embody it all in the Spanish greeting, 

 ' May your shadows never be less.' 



" "We have never said anything to advertisers, so be civil to them ; quote Cowley's lines — 



What shall I do to be for ever known. 

 And make the distant all my own ? ' 



" Eeply by an inuendo." 



The Editor who received the above from bis Co-Editor ventures to print it without a comment or 

 addition. 



