HOETICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



liMliillM 



lias been effected in so incredibly sbort a time, effected notwith- 

 standing the difficulties to which you have aUuded, and which 

 appeared at times almost to forbid hope of success. 



" That which, last year, was still a vague conception, is, 

 to-day, a reality : and, I trust, wUl be accepted as a valuable 

 attempt, at least, to re-unite the Science and Art of Gardening 

 to the sister Arts of Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting. 



" This union existed in the best periods of Art, when the 

 same feeling pervaded and the same principles regulated them 

 aD. ; and if the misuse and misapj^hcation of these principles 

 in later times have forced again upon us the simple study 

 and imitation of nature, individual arts have suffered by theii' 

 disjunction, and the time seems now arrived when they may 

 once more combine, without the danger of being cramped by 

 pedantic and arbitrary rules of taste. 



"The Commissioners of 1851, whose mission it is to 

 encourage the arts and sciences, as applied to productive 

 industry, gladly welcome your Society as one of the first of those 

 bodies, devoted to the promotion of special branches of these 

 arts and sciences, that has avaOed itself of the enlarged means 

 of development offered by the Commissioners on their estate. 

 They are glad to find in your present success, and in the 

 generous support of the public, the confirmation of then- behef 

 that in securiag space on winch, in unison with each other, 

 and with a systematic interchange of mutual assistance, separate 

 societies and departments might attain to a degree of usefulness 

 which their present confinement and isolation must materially 

 lessen, the Commissioners had correctly appreciated the great 

 want of the day, and the requirements of the public, for whose 



