26 GARDENS AND THEIR MEANING 



brand-new problem ? And can gardening give us practice that 

 will make us more successful in doing it ? Granted that it 

 'can, let us first ask, What is the method of approach ? A sort 

 of preliminary skirmishing discloses, in any new undertak- 

 ing, so much that we never dreamed of at the beginning, 

 — and how little any one person really knows, after all ! The 

 horizon widens every minute, delightfully but oh ! so incon- 

 veniently. We find ourselves launched upon a pond that 

 has suddenly widened out into a sea. The great pulsating 

 world of action gives everywhere the same answer to our 

 question : Investigate ; study first what others have success- 

 fully done, and try to find out what direction improvements 

 are taking. Any great project of scientific or commercial 

 importance, for instance, illustrates this on a huge scale. 

 Inquiry into enterprises of this sort shows that men are dis- 

 patched east and west to get in touch with the very latest 

 aspects of the question. Dashing ahead without a notion of 

 what older countries have already adopted, or perhaps have 

 tried and long ago discarded, is a trait that in the past, per- 

 haps not altogether unfairly, has been said to belong to 

 Americans. 



Dashing ahead has, in truth, never been a fault of agri- 

 culturists. And yet if investigation and general enlargement 

 of views are important for any body of workers, they are su- 

 premely necessary for the farmer. It is so easy to be swamped 

 by details and to settle down into the " good old ways." One 

 does not need to look twice to see how agriculture, led by 

 science, is advancing by leaps and bounds away from the 

 region of guesswork to that of solid fact. Never before have 

 the scientific and the practical gone hand in hand as intimately 

 as they do to-day. The future holds out rich promise to those 

 who will fraternally unite to get the best production combined 

 with the most effective distribution. The ambitious gardener 



