PREFACE. 



I HAVE thought that, upon a subject so accordant with my tastes 

 as is Horticulture, I might prepare a work adapted to our climate 

 and useful to the public. The repeated inquiries made of me, as a 

 Bookseller, for a practical treatise on the subject, and these in- 

 quiries growing more frequent with the manifest growth of the 

 gardening spirit among us, led to the undertaking. Yet, written, 

 as it has been, in the intervals of trade and subjected to its constant 

 interruptions — now advancing but a line at once, again a page or 

 an article — suspended totally for nearly two years, then hastily, 

 finished, looked over, and printed under circumstances that ren- 

 dered the author's revision of the proof impossible — many defecte 

 of style, and errers of the press, are' manifest. These, if the work 

 contain the information sought, practical men will readily 6xcuse 

 in a first edition. 



To claim much originality in a modern work on Gardening, 

 would display in its author great ignorance or great presumption. 

 If it did not contain much that is 'found in other horticultural 

 works, it would be very defective. Gardening is as old as Adam, 

 and what we know to-day of its principles and operations has bee* 

 accumulated, little by little — the result of thousands of experi- 

 ments and centuries of observation and practice. Hence, from the 

 gardening literature of our language, has been selected, for this 

 work, those modes of culture which considerable experience ^nd 



