January 20, 1881. ] 
TO OUR READERS. 
Never since the Journal was established have we received so many letters of approval as during 
the year that has just closed, and our first duty is to thank the writers of them for their pleasant 
expressions. A great number of these were consequent on the enlargement of our pages—a change 
that has proved as welcome to our readers as it has been satisfactory to ourselves. The volume to 
which the accompanying Index refers contains a hundred pages more than the one preceding it. 
Every subject connected with the garden has been treated by competent writers. Nearly every 
county in England has contributed to the volume ; Ireland, Scotland, and Wales are worthily repre¬ 
sented, while correspondents from the continent of Europe, America, India, and the Colonies have 
shared in its completion. 
We rejoice in a wide, rich, and sympathetic constituency—in writers as skilful as they are ready to 
impart information; in readers appreciative; in questioners anxious for information, and in assistants 
who can answer them usefully. 
The opening year is cheerful to us, and the more so that we can record, without any special effort 
having been made on our part, an unexpected influx of new subscribers. We can only account for this 
in one way—that those who have benefited by their weekly fare have desired that others should benefit 
also, and have thus brought the Journal to the notice of their friends. 
This friendly generous spirit is much valued by us. The best return we can make is to strive to be 
even more useful—more ready, if possible, to aid those in difficulty, to employ the means at our disposal 
to render gardens and other home adjuncts more profitable and enjoyable than they have been before. 
How far we shall succeed in our aim and object depends greatly on our friends. In them we trust, 
and our thirty-three-years experience of readers and writers inspires us with confidence that we shall not 
trust in vain, and that their aid and our efforts will not be fruitless. 
