GARDEN LITERATURE. 



107 



attached many adventitious works of far less originality and 

 merit, often mere echoes of better things. Again, a very slight 

 study of early garden books themselves shows that the earlier 

 printers and publishers were adepts at printing new and more 

 attractive title pages for what are now called "remainders," or 

 unsold stock, and also proves that they could lend or borrow 

 blocks, and even pirate their woodcuts from older continental 

 books in quite an up-to-date manner. 



I have said that a good gardening book appears about every 

 ten years, but the really great gardening books are much more 

 rare. Thus after Gerarde's u " Herbal " (1597), and Parkinson's 

 " Paradisus " (1629), there was no really great work until Miller's 

 " Dictionary " appeared a century or more later (1731), and it is 

 another century before Loudon's encyclopaedias of gardening 

 and plants (1827, &c.) and Lindley's " Vegetable Kingdom," &c. 

 appeared. Modern horticultural literature really dates from the 

 beginning of our present century, the great authors being Loudon, 

 Lindley, T. A. Knight, and Dean Herbert ; and upon all of them 

 the influence of the newly-established Koyal Horticultural Society 

 of 1804 was both great and beneficial. 



Periodicals. 



I need scarcely say that gardening owes a great deal to its perio- 

 dical and pictorial literature. First comes the " Botanical Maga- 

 zine," started by W. Curtis in 1787, and still published. Next we 

 have " The Botanical Register," 1815 to 1847 (33 vols.). Loddiges' 

 " Botanical Cabinet " was begun in 1818, and ended in 1824 

 (20 vols.). Harrison's " Floral Cabinet "(in two series) began 

 1833, and ended in 1846 (17 vols.). Paxton's " Magazine of 

 Botany," began in 1834, and ended 1849 (16 vols.). At 

 Birmingham Messrs. Knowles and Westcott started the " Bir- 

 mingham Botanical Garden and Midland Floral Magazine" in 

 1836 to 1837 (1 vol.), and this was succeeded by the "Floral 

 Cabinet," begun in 1837 and ended in 1840 (3 vols.). Other 

 periodicals issued with coloured plates were " The Florist and 

 Pomologist " and " The Floral Magazine." 



Amongst modern periodicals there are some of pre-eminent 

 value. Veitch's "Manual of Orchidaceous Plants," part X. of which, 

 at page 154, contains a good and full bibliography; "William's 

 " Orchid Album," and last, but finer than all in its superb plates, 



