Our National Gardens 



directed, and which Has near one of the entrance- 

 gates, he fancied he had seen everything, and 

 naturally came away with the idea that the great 

 national garden of which he had heard so much 

 was very small and very ugly. A guide of some 

 sort is necessary. If the stranger can go under 

 the guidance of one who knows the garden well, 

 that will be the best ; if he has no one who can 

 personally conduct him, he may buy one of the 

 guide-books on sale at the gates, and with some 

 little trouble he may choose for himself the parts 

 that he most wishes to see. But almost every 

 visitor will have a different object in view ; and if 

 I was asked to conduct a friend I should not take 

 him to the parts which I most liked myself, but 

 should find out what branch of botany or garden- 

 ing he most wished to study. If, for instance, he 

 wished to know something of the scientific arrange- 

 ment of plants I should take him to the strictly 

 Botanic Garden, where plants are arranged accord- 

 ing to their families in long narrow beds, each 

 bed representing a particular family, and contain- 

 ing good typical plants of the families ; but I 

 should not take any but a scientific student there, 

 for the garden is necessarily stiff and ugly. If he 

 wished to know something of the plants used in 

 medicine or commerce — something of the economic 

 uses of plants or their commercial products — I 

 should take him to the Economic House, in which 

 are grown, but in a very limited space, many of the 

 plants that are most useful to mankind, such as 

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