^ THE BOOK OF THE EOYAL^ 



Flower-gardens, shruljberies, and plantations contained little that 

 tad not been in them for a century and more. Marshall, whose 

 book on gardening had passed through five editions by the year 

 1813, has even at the last date few trees among his Ust beyond 

 such as are natives of Europe, or as form the commonest vege- 

 tation of the United States ; and his annual and perennial 

 flowers have long since been confined to Botanic Gardens, with 

 the exception of cockscombs, balsams, some convolvuh, hoUy- 

 hooks, stocks, mignonette, Chinese pinks and a small number of 

 other common species." 



In reality the hardy unprotected garden had been less cared 

 for than the hothouse, its exotic contents having been the chief 

 objects of solicitude. It was to remedy this unsatisfactory state 

 of things that the Horticultm-al Society was founded. 



At the beginning of this century, Mr, Thomas Andrew 

 Knight, a Herefordshire country gentleman, had already become 

 known as a distinguished vegetable physiologist in consequence 

 of various original communications to the Royal Society. His 

 favourite science had grown out of his love for natural history, 

 and especially for those branches of gardening which related 

 to fruit-trees and esculent vegetables. He lived in a perry and 

 cider country, where he found the produce diminishing yearly 

 from neglect and the unskiLfid management of orchard-trees. 

 This seems to have led him to attempt the creation of a Society 

 whose object should be the improvement of Horticulture in 

 aU its branches. Sir Joseph Banks heartily approved of the 

 plan ; and the scope and aim of the Society, as well as the 

 call for it, cannot be better stated than in the address delivered 

 by Mr. Knight to the Society in April, 1805. Speaking of 



