330 
THE FLORIST. 
could not establish amongst themselves a small circulation of periodicals; 
for the sum of one penny a week each they might obtain the Cottage 
Gardener , the Florist , the Midland Florist , &c., and by each member 
keeping them only a few days they would be quite new enough for 
their purpose. I throw out this hint from a conviction of the usefulness 
of these publications, and the benefit that I have myself derived from 
them; they might form the subject of their conversations at their 
meetings, and they moreover keep us from imagining ourselves to be 
such very great people. We read and see there, that our productions 
in which we have so prided ourselves are far outdone by our neighbours, 
and anything that tends to make us feel that our own little town is not 
the world , or we ourselves “the people of England,” must be good, 
and I need not say this is a danger into which the inhabitants of a 
small country town are apt to fall. 
But as practice without theory is undesirable, so, on the other hand, 
theory without practice is equally so. I have used the comparisons of 
a doctor and a pilot; they will still hold good here ; we feel that however 
much the former may know of the theory of his profession, however 
carefully he may read and keep himself up to the mark in all the 
medical literature of the day, yet that if he be a man who has few 
patients, meets with but few cases, we are not willing to put ourselves 
in his hands; hence it is that we are ready to consult those in London 
who have dealt specially with the disease under which we labour. 
Suppose it to be a case of ophthalmia; we at once say, an oculist in 
London sees his thousands of cases in the year, and treats them, while 
the most extensive practitioner in the country can only see very few 
in the same course of time. A man may have studied all the science of 
navigation, be acquainted with all the laws that influence it, but if he 
have never held a helm himself, never directed the course of a vessel, 
we feel that he is not the man to entrust ourselves to. And so here 
again ; we like to have to do with men who have specially studied and 
practised one particular branch. Hence it is that our pilots here are not 
men who have navigated ships in all parts of the world, but who are 
thoroughly acquainted with the channel from Dungeness to the river. 
So in the same way, then, with gardening; mere theorists are very bad 
gardeners. A man to cultivate his taste for it must endeavour to 
obtain a piece of ground, and there carry out all that he has learned, 
and if he wish really to succeed in any one particular branch, he must 
set himself to that. Hence it is that you hear of one nurseryman 
celebrated as a Rose grower, another for his bedding plants, another for 
his bulbs, while others are vegetable producers, and you are sure of 
getting the best seeds from them. They have each studied the 
particular branch for which they have become famous. I do not, how¬ 
ever, desire to impress upon you that you can only grow one kind of 
flower or vegetable, but that if you wish to enjoy a garden you must 
not be mere theorists, who have read all about it, or mere saunterers, 
who care nothing at all for your garden, but work at it, take care of 
the things yourselves, acquaint yourselves with their method of growth, 
their habits, diseases, &c., and then if you have ever need to call in the 
assistance of a gardener, it will simply be to tell him to follow out your 
wishes. 
