ENGLISH EDITION. XV 



overlooked, and not to be anticipated beforehand, even by the 

 most skilful ; their importance is often unsuspected till an experi- 

 ment has failed, and may not be discovered till after many 

 unsuccessful attempts, during which more mischief may be done 

 by extensive failures than the result is worth when attained. 

 No man understood this better than the late Mr. Knight, the 

 best horticultural physiologist that the world has seen, whose 

 experiments were conducted with a skill and knowledge which 

 few can hope to equal. So fully was he aware of the uncertain 

 issue of experimental investigations in Horticulture, that he 

 thought it necessary, in recommending a new mode of cultivating 

 the Pine-apple, and in objecting to methods at that time commonly 

 in use, to express himself in the following words : — " I beg to 

 be understood that I condemn the machinery only which our 

 gardeners employ, and that I admit most fully their skill in the 

 application of that machinery to be very superior to that which I 

 myself possess. Nor do I mean, in the slightest degree, to 

 censure them for not having invented better machinery, for it is 

 their duty to put in practice that which they have learned ; and, 

 having to expend the capital of others, they ought to be cautious 

 in trying extensive experiments, of which the results must 

 necessarily be uncertain ; and, I believe, a very able and experi- 

 enced gardener, after having been the inventor of the most 

 perfect machinery, might, in very many instances, have lost both 

 bis character and his place before he had made himself 

 acquainted with it, and consequently become able to regulate 

 its powers." 



