216 



SCIENCE OF GARDENING. 



Part II. 



tlie occasional luxuriance of plants accidentally placed in favorable circumstances, and 

 man adopts it, and impro^dng on it, produces cabbages and turnips of half a cwt. ; apples 

 of one pound and a half ; and cabbage-roses of fovir inches in diameter ; productions 

 •which may in some respects be considered as diseased. 



1012. To increase the number, irnprove the quality, and increase the magnitude of parti- 

 cular parts of vegetables. It is necessary, in this case, to remove such parts of the vegeta- 

 ble as arc not wanted, as the blooms of bulbous or tuberous rooted plants, vi'hen the bulbs 

 are to be increased, and the contrary ; the water-shoots and leaf-buds of fruit-trees ; the 

 flower-stems of tobacco ; the male flowers and barren runners of the cucumis tribe, &c. 

 Hence the important operations of pruning, ringing, cutting off large roots, and other 

 practices for improving fruits and throwing trees into a bearing state. At first sight these 

 practices do not appear to be copied from nature ; but, independently of accidents by fire, 

 already mentioned, which both prune and manure, and of fruit-bearing trees, say thorns 

 or oaks, partially blo%\-ri out by the roots, or washed out of the soil by torrents, which 

 .always bear better afterwards, why may not the necessity that man was under, in a pri- 

 mitive state of society, of cutting or breaking off branches of trees, to form huts, fences, 

 or fires, and the consequent vigorous shoots produced from the parts where the amputa- 

 tion took place, or the larger fruit on that part of the tree which remained, have given the 

 first idea of pruning, cutting off roots, &c. It may be said that this is not nature but art ; 

 but man, though an improving animal, is still in a state of nature, and all his practices, 

 in every stage of civilisation, are as natural to him as those of the other animals are to 

 til em. Cottages and palaces are as much natural objects as the nests of birds, or the 

 burrows of quadrupeds ; and all tlie laws and institutions by which social man is guided 

 in his morals and politics, are no more artificial than the instinct which -congregates sheep 

 and cattle in flocks and herds, and guides them in their choice of pasturage and shelter. 



1013. To form new varieties of vegetables, as well as of flowers and useful plants of 

 every description, it is necessary to take advantage of their sexual differences, and to 

 operate in a manner analogous to crossing the breed in animals. Hence the origin of 

 new sorts of fruits. Even this practice is but an imitation of what takes place in nature 

 by the agency of bees and other insects, and the wind ; all the difference is, that man ope- 

 rates with a particular end in \'iew, and selects individuals possessing the particular 

 properties ^^-llich he wishes to perpetuate or improve. New varieties, or rather subvarieties," 

 are formed by altering tlie habits of plants; by dwarfing through want of nourishment; 

 variegating by arenarious soils ; gi'sing or rather continuing peculiar habits when 

 formed by nature, as in propagating from monstrosities — fasciculi of shoots, weeping 

 shoots, shoots Avith peculiar leaves, flowers, fruit, &c. 



1 014. To propagate and preserve from degeneracy approved varieties of vegetables, it is in 

 general necessary to have recourse to the different modes of propagating by extension, 

 'riius choice apples and tree fruits are preserved and multiplied by grafting ; others, as the 

 pine-apple by cuttings or suckers ; choice carnations by layers, potatoes by cuttings of the 

 tubers, &c. But approved varieties of annuals are in general multiplied and preserved by 

 selecting seed from tlie finest specimens and paying particular attention to supply suitable 

 culture. Tliis part of culture is the farthest removed from nature ; yet there are not- 

 witlistanding examples of the fortuitous graft ; of accidental layers ; of leaves,, or de- 

 tached portions, forming natural cuttings, (as of the cardamine hirsuta,) dropping and 

 taking root. 



1015. The preservation of vegetables for future use is effected by destroj-ing or render- 

 ing dormant the principle of life, and by warding off, as far as practicable, the progress 

 of cheinical decomposition. Hence some vegetables are dried, and either their herbs, or 

 roots, or fruits ; others are placed beyond the reach of the active principles of vegetation, 

 heat, and moisture, as seeds, cuttings, scions, roots, and fruits ; and some are, in addi- 

 tion, even excluded from air, or placed in very low temperatures. The origin of these 

 practices are all obvious imitations of what accidentally takes place in nature, from the 

 withered grassy tressock to the hedgehog's mnter store ; and hence the origin of herb, 

 seed, fruit, and root rooms and cellars, and packing plants and seeds for sending to a 

 distance. 



1016. The whole of gardening, as an art of culture, is but a varied developement of the 

 above fundamental practices, all founded in nature, and for the most part rationally and sa- % 

 tisfactorily explained on chemical and physiological principles. Hence the great necessity 

 of the study of botany to the cultivator, not in the hmited sense in which the term is often 

 taken as including mere nomenclature and classification, but in that extended signification 

 in which we have here endeavored, proportionately to our limited space, to present the 

 study of the vegetable kingdom. Tliose who would enter more minutely into the subject 

 will have recourse to the excellent work of Keith, from whom we have quoted at such 

 length ; to Sir J. E. Smith's Introduction ; and to the elementary works of Willdenow 

 &nd De Candolle. 



