SECTION I. 



373 



whether the gardener's opinion or mine prevailed with the good-natured 

 owner ; but the probability is that the place will remain in statu quo, 

 and the badness of both soil and climate be deplored or reprobated for 

 another generation. 



Note II. Page 5. 



So general is the feeling among the best-infoi-med classes respecting 

 the want of intelligence on the important subject of Wood, that I believe 

 a proposal for the establishment of an Arboricultural Society in 

 Scotland, if properly made, would be as ardently gone into as it would 

 be universally approved. It is astonishing to think that, up to the 

 present time, no such society should any where exist in the United 

 Kingdoms. The importance and the uses of wood are so great and 

 manifold, and its improvement of such paramount interest to the empire 

 in general, and to individual districts in particular, that there are really 

 few objects which are calculated to unite so many sufifrages in their 

 favour. 



In respect to the beneficial results which the labours of such a society 

 would produce, they are generally but very imperfectly hinted at in the 

 text. Perhaps one of the most remarkable is the change that would 

 take place in the character, education, and acquirements of our nursery- 

 men, by far the most influential agents in the melioration of our future 

 woods ; because it is upon them that we must depend for the nature of 

 the materials. Should such a society be soon established, I should yet 

 hope to see nurserymen come forth as they ought to do — able botanists, 

 intelligent agriculturists and gardeners, vegetable physiologists of res- 

 pectable information, and, in a word, men of general science. 



Probably the truth is, that reformation, if it be begun in earnest, 

 must begin elsewhere. Were the class of persons first mentioned in this 

 enumeration in the text (namely, " well-informed landholders") by 

 any means to rise up, the two others would follow as a necessary con- 

 sequence. Let us hear one of the most candid and intelligent nursery- 

 men in Scotland on the subject. On my observing to him lately, how 

 much it was to be regretted that there was " no science " to be found 

 among men of his profession, he replied nearly as follows : — 



" Of what use or value, sir," said he, "would science be to us, while 

 nothing of the kind is possessed by our employers ? As nurserymen, 

 seedsmen, or florists, we are mere dealers in the articles we sell, in the 

 same way as the shopkeeper is in sugar, snuffs, or haberdashery goods ; 

 only with this difference respecting us, that we raise or produce the 

 article we sell, whereas the other has to buy or to sell it, after it has 



