PEEFAOE. 



Less than a year ago Messrs. Cassell and Company honoured rae with n 

 request to prepare a concise book on plain, practical gardening. 



Within a month the last sheet of matter was in their hands ; within two 

 a first edition of 3,000 copies was exhausted. Tliis little iour de force in 

 horticultural literature was followed by a shoal of letters asking that tlie 

 new lines adopted in " Pictorial Practical Gardening" should be applied to 

 special subjects, and "PICTORIAL PRACTICAL Feuit Geowin^G" is the 

 first outcome. 



In my first book on gardening I introduced the system first initiated by 

 me in the weekly horticultural paper, The Gardener, of substituting a set 

 of illustrations, grouped in a convenient way and with a sufficiency of 

 explanatory matter, for the long, wearisome, and not very clear articles to 

 which gardening readers had been accustomed. The instantaneous success 

 which followed satisfied me that I had been fortunate enough to meet a real 

 public requirement In the present work I have consequently proceeded on 

 the same lines. 



The Journal of Horticulture described " Pictorial Practical Gardening " 

 as a " marvel of logical arrangement and concentrated knowledge." I have 

 used my best endeavours to make "Piotoeial Pe.actical Feuit Gr'W- 

 JNG " not wholly unworthy of the same high and generous praise. No 

 verbose, prolix, and turgid chapters of instructions will be found in it, 

 but each set of illustrations will be found to be a chapter in itself, at once 

 as simple, concise, and clear as I could make it. 



That large section of the public which buys books on practical gardening 

 does not want fine writing either from me or anybody else ; it wants plain 

 teaching. In this book I have not sought to eclipse any of our great 

 writers ; I have merely tried to give the people what they want. 



Waltbe P. Weight. 



May, 1901. 



