PREFACE 



ENGLISH EDITION 



This book is written in the hope of providing the intelligent 

 gardener, and the scientific amateur, correctly, with the ratioiutlia 

 of the more important operations of Horticulture ; in the full 

 persuasion that, if the physiological principles on which such 

 operations, of necessity, depend, were correctly appreciated by 

 the great mass of active-minded persons now engaged in 

 gardening in this country, the grounds of their practice would 

 be settled upon a more satisfactory foundation than can at 

 present be said to exist. It is, I confess, surprising to me, that 

 the real nature of the vital actions of plants, and of the external 

 forces by which they are regulated, should be so frequently misap- 

 prehended even among writers upon Horticulture ; and that ideas 

 relating to such matters, so very incorrect as we frequently find 

 them to be, should obtain among intelligent men, in the present 

 state of what I may be permitted to call horticultural physiology. 

 There must be a great want of sound knowledge of this subject, 

 when we find an author, who has made himself distinguished in 

 the history of English gardening, giving it as his opinion, " that 



