16 



THE GARDENER. 



With the elements of llotany^ at least, any man 

 presuming to call himself a gardener must be ac- 

 quainted, else he will make great mistakes in answering 

 the demands which may be made upon him for seeds and 

 plants, and will not know how to distinguish certain va- 

 rieties in forming his own collections. It is not very dif- 

 ficult to acquire at least such practical acquaintance with 

 botany, as will enable one to know, that in the gene- 

 rality of plants, every flower consists of an external 

 formation called the calyx, which with some exceptions 

 is green in colour, and more or less divided, such di- 

 visions being called sepals ; the corolla, in general 

 the most conspicuous and beautiful part, is seen next 

 to the calyx, and is either entire, or composed of seve- 

 ral, sometimes a vast number of leaves, chilled petals ; 

 next within these are situated the stamens ; and the 

 pistils occupy the central part. Moreover, that the 

 stamens are the male parts of the flower and the pistils 

 the female ; the latter being connected at their base 

 with the receptacle containing the seeds. In the 

 greater number of plants, every flower contains both 

 these male and female parts ; whilst there are cases in 

 which they occur only in difi*erent flowers or even on dif- 

 ferent plants, A knowledge of these and of all the other 

 beautiful arrangements for the multiplication of plants 

 by seed, may be easily acquired by a little attention. 



Without some knowledge of this science, the gar- 

 dener will be incapable of conducting his business in 

 a perfect manner, and will not even know why some 

 plants are propagated by the bulbs and not by the 

 seed, and why some flowers are fertile and others bar- 

 ren, and how the hybrid productions arise. 



The late Mr. Loudon, who had a most extensive 

 acquaintance with gardeners, gave it as the result of 

 his experience, that there is scarcely a science or an 

 art which some master gardener of his acquaintance 

 had not of his own accord taken up and studied from 

 books, so as to obtain a respectable degree of know- 



