26 
GARDENS AND THEIR MEANING 
brand-new problem ? And can gardening give us practice that 
will make us more successful in doing it ? Granted that it 
can, let us first ask, What is the method of approach ? A sort 
of preliminary skirmishing discloses, in any new undertak- 
ing, so much that we never dreamed of at the beginning, 
— and how little any one person really knows, after all ! The 
horizon widens every minute, delightfully but oh ! so incon- 
veniently. We find ourselves launched upon a pond that 
has suddenly widened out into a sea. The great pulsating 
world of action gives everywhere the same answer to our 
question : Investigate ; study first what others have success- 
fully done, and try to find out what direction improvements 
are taking. Any great project of scientific or commercial 
importance, for instance, illustrates this on a huge scale. 
Inquiry into enterprises of this sort shows that men are dis- 
patched east and west to get in touch with the very latest 
aspects of the question. Dashing ahead without a notion of 
what older countries have already adopted, or perhaps, have 
tried and long ago discarded, is a trait that in the past, per- 
haps not altogether unfairly, has been said to belong to 
Americans. 
Dashing ahead has, in truth, never been a fault of agri- 
culturists. And yet if investigation and general enlargement 
of views are important for any body of workers, they are su- 
premely necessary for the farmer. It is so easy to be swamped 
by details and to settle down into the " good old ways.” One 
does not need to look twice to see how agriculture, led by 
science, is advancing by leaps and bounds away from the 
region of guesswork to that of solid fact. Never before have 
the scientific and the practical gone hand in hand as intimately 
as they do to-day. The future holds out rich promise to those 
who will fraternally unite to get the best production combined 
with the most effective distribution. The ambitious gardener 
