VI 



PREFACE. 



operations themselves. The directions we have given, and 

 the reasons for them are so ample, and so plain, that no lady 

 or gentleman can be at a loss fully to comprehend them, or 

 discern when they are properly acted on. 



Though we have chiefly had in view, in preparing these 

 directions, the villa and town green-house, yet we have treated 

 the subject of management so amply, and given so complete 

 a catalogue of green-house plants, with all that it can be de- 

 sirable to know as to their culture and management, that we 

 have no hesitation in presenting our work as a treatise on 

 green-house culture and management, as complete as the 

 present state of things admits of We have composed it in 

 conformity to the best written authorities, and according to 

 what we have seen in our extensive observation and commu- 

 nications with botanical cultivators and nursery-men in the 

 neighbourhood of London and elsewhere. The work has 

 also had the advantage of revisal by a nursery-man who is 

 extensively engaged in the culture of green-house and hot- 

 house plants at his commercial establishment in the King's 

 Road. This gentleman's chief business is with exotics, and 

 he supplies and manages town green-houses, and executes 

 London contracts for plants in pots, to a considerable extent : 

 he is, therefore, peculiarly fitted for the task he so obligingly 

 undertook at the request of the publisher. To mention his 

 name he considers would look like a partial advertisement. 



There is one advantage which this work possesses over 

 every other of the kind, which, as it may not strike at first 

 sight, we shall here point out. It is the arrangement of all 

 the green-house plants of this country under the natural or- 

 ders of the system of Jussieu. In our Introduction to that 

 part of the work which contains this arrangement, (see 

 Part II. page 229,) the benefits derivable from it are de- 

 tailed, and we are here desirous of directing the reader's 

 particular attention to the importance of grouping plants on 



