404 
IMPROVEMENTS IN GARDENING. 
circulated by one of the most respectable seedsmen in London, enume¬ 
rates thirty-four varieties of the common garden pea, exclusive of held 
varieties. Of common beans there are twelve sorts; and of kidney- 
beans, runners, and dwarfs, there are twenty-two varieties. Of broc¬ 
coli there are nineteen kinds, five of which are the Cape varieties—all 
rarities to an old gardener, but certainly the most valuable acquisition 
to the kitchen-garden which has been made during the last century. 
Then, instead of six or seven sorts of cabbage, we have now above a 
score ; seven sorts of carrot; four of cauliflower; eight kinds of celery; 
twenty-eight of lettuce ; fourteen different varieties of onion ; sixteen 
kinds of turnip; and of potatoes innumerable. 
That our seed catalogues are too voluminous, may be true, and that 
a greater variety may be had in the seed-shops than ever were seen in 
a garden, is probable ; but out of such numbers a good assortment may 
easily be selected for any one establishment, as it but rarely happens 
that every variety is wanted in the same place. 
Besides many new varieties, we have a few new genera admitted, or 
proposed for admission, into the kitchen-garden. Love apples, vege¬ 
table marrow, and New-Zealand spinach, have been cultivated for 
several years; and the quinoa and oxalis crenata are following their 
compatriot, the potato, from the wilds of South America. Ginger is 
now successfully cultivated in hotbeds for preserving; and there are 
several other things of minor importance which extend the business and 
increase the products of the kitchen-garden far above what was common 
sixty years ago. 
When we turn to the fruit department of gardening, we are no less 
pleased with the advances which have been made in the practical 
management of fruit-bearing herbs, and shrubs, and trees, than we are 
astonished at the vast accession of new sorts. While one writer describes 
scores of grapes, and peaches, and nectarines, another nominates hun¬ 
dreds of apples, and pears, and gooseberries. If one gives a list of 
twenty-five excellent melons, another gives a minute description of forty- 
nine distinct varieties of the pine apple. In short, our fruit catalogues 
form a good-sized octavo volume; and the numbers are not more asto¬ 
nishingly great, than is their excellence and perfection when brought 
to table: and it is no vain boast to assert, that as fine grapes and pines, 
plums, cherries, and early pears and apples are produced in Britain as 
in any other part of the world. As to smaller fruit, even the indefati¬ 
gable Dutch gardeners do not excel us; for even the changeableness of 
our insular climate is subdued by the affluence of our patrons, and the 
eminent skill of our brethren. 
Our superiority as fruit-growers arises mainly from the excellent./- 
