50 THE PARKS AND GARDENS OP PARIS. [Chap. III. 



the richest and best collection of alpine plants existing is to he 

 found in the garden which is also the most beautifully arranged 

 for their reception. So, again, some of the most lovely collections 

 of Ferns ever got together are arranged in a manner in which one 

 can enjoy to the fullest their beauty and variety. Many other 

 instances could be given. 



The botanist should have no more to do with the cultivation or 

 arrangement of the living plants than the gardener has with the 

 herbarium. Progress is sure some day to break up this unnatural 

 subjection of the garden to the botanist, and the sooner the better. 

 The botanist has his collections, and the wide earth in which to 

 gather them. His is a beautiful and vast science, but it is wholly 

 apart from horticulture. 



It is assumed by the ordinary type of the grammarian of 

 " science " that he is a " scientific man " — the horticulturist or 

 agriculturist not even being thought worthy of the name. 

 Few will be inclined to dispute the usefulness of the classifiers, 

 or that they are in their degree men of science ; but when, if 

 their position be named in the same breath with that of the 

 horticulturist, they bristle up with disdain, people are led to put 

 the question to themselves — Is the mere finder of names for 

 things a more important person than he who modifies, combines, 

 and improves those things so as to make them more useful and 

 more beautiful? In literature, for instance, is the higher place 

 to be given to grammarians, rhetoricians, and lexicon-makers ? 

 Even the adventurous explorer who brings us, at the risk of his 

 life, beautiful things from distant parts of the world is often 

 excluded from his hard-earned honour by narrow considerations 

 of this kind. But really high-minded and able men in any 

 branch of human knowledge are more liberal and just. 



One of the first things done by our greatest thinkers, in 

 clearing the ground for the study of the highest philosophical 

 problems, is to prove the identity in kind of the ordinary and 

 the " scientific " methods of observation, and the oneness, so to 

 speak, of " theory " and " practice." It may be urged by the 

 botanist that his knowledge is capable of more accurate demon- 

 stration than the gardener's ; but this is not the case, except as 

 regards descriptions of plants. Such a book, for example, as 

 Lindley's ' Theory of Horticulture ' would be called a scientific 



