The Garden under Snow 



frost they still find plenty of employment and 

 pleasant work in reading of their favourites ; and 

 the best gardeners are the greatest readers, for 

 Sir Thomas Browne's saying holds good with 

 gardening and botany as much as in other pur- 

 suits, " They do most by books, who could do 

 much without them." 



And the gardener has no lack of choice. Mr 

 Baydon Jackson in 1881 put the number of 

 botanical works then existing at over eight 

 thousand ; since that time the number has been 

 much increased ; and as several of the works are 

 in many volumes there must be certainly over ten 

 thousand volumes now to choose from. Many of 

 these are sumptuous books of great price, such as 

 Sibthorp's Flora Grceca, which is said to have cost 

 ii^ 1 0,000 ; and some are of excessive rarity, such 

 as Rudbeck's beautiful Campi Elysii, of which 

 only one perfect copy is known, now in the 

 Sherardian Library at Oxford. Such books can 

 seldom be seen out of public libraries ; but we 

 have many such libraries in England, and there 

 are probably few better botanical libraries than 

 can be seen any day at Kew, or at the South 

 Kensington Natural History Museum, or at the 

 British Museum, or in the Lindley Library, in 

 charge of the Horticultural Society. But the 

 gardener wants books of his own, that he can 

 study by his own fireside, in the long winter 

 evenings, or when all outside work is stopped by 

 frost and snow. He will be fortunate if among 



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