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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



" Vegetables for Exhibition and Home Consumption." By E. Beckett. 

 8vo., 216 pp. (Simpkin, Marshall & Co., London.) 3s. 6d. 



Few gardeners have made so high a reputation as vegetable growers 

 and exhibitors, none have higher qualifications for the authorship of a 

 book on such subjects than Mr. Edwin Beckett. When a real practical 

 gardener sets down to write a book on some gardening subject with which 

 he is so essentially familiar, it is obvious that what he writes embodies 

 personal experience, hence must have far higher value and reliability than 

 can be found in books compiled by mere chamber authors, who seem to vie 

 with each other in putting into circulation the greatest number of books 

 they well can. If of gardening books there is no end — and it seems to be 

 particularly true — certainly there are, of this somewhat needless outpour, 

 good books and indifferent ones ; and the book now under notice is 

 essentially of the former class, because it embodies descriptions of the 

 very best work by one of the most able and successful of cultivators. 

 For that reason it becomes, on the subject with which it deals, a standard 

 work. A pleasing feature of the text is the simple phraseology in which it 

 is couched, and which is such that even illiterate readers can easily follow. 

 There is no kind of garden vegetable that is not fully referred to. The 

 various kinds are treated of alphabetically, and in each case what the 

 author esteems to be the most desirable varieties are mentioned. In 

 some cases, such as with Peas and Potatos, for instance, there is not that 

 up-to-dateness which might have been looked for ; but in relation to these 

 and some other products, when varieties come and go rapidly, it is rather 

 difficult to publish selections that may have but fleeting popularity. 

 Mr. Beckett lays great stress on the preparation of soil for vegetable 

 crops. It is, when well done, the very foundation of success in after 

 cultivation. Manuring also gets early reference, and even the accumula- 

 tion of all sorts of garden refuse, leaf soil, or vegetable matter, to become 

 ultimately useful manure, has attention. The book is moderately and by 

 no means excessively illustrated. The blocks used, the product of 

 photographs, are at once natural and excellent, but a few illustrations of a 

 fanciful or " faked " kind might very well have been dispensed with. It 

 is only needful to compare the two pictures of Runner Beans to under- 

 stand our meaning. One of the difficulties authors of books of this 

 description have to face is in inviting the use from the trade of 

 catalogue blocks for illustration, finding themselves under the necessity to 

 some extent of mentioning the traders' products specifically, thus giving 

 the impression that the book is written rather for advertising purposes 

 than as a means for disseminating practical information on specific 

 subjects. The constant repetition of the names of certain firms attached 

 to diverse varieties is a blot on any book that is assumed to come from an 

 absolutely independent source. Authors would do well to avoid that 

 difficulty in the future. A very useful feature of the book is the monthly 

 calendar of routine work in the garden, although the introduction to each 

 month and some old weather proverbs will probably raise a smile. Few 

 things have proved to be more fallacious. Finally come in the book some 

 useful notes on insect pests and diseases which affect vegetables, troubles 

 that will come even in the best regulated gardens, but of which high-class 

 c ultivation such as the book advises is, on the whole, the best preventive. 



