318 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
September 
subject being the guidance and explanations afforded 
to the gardener in tlie practice of bis art by chemistry, 
vegetable physiology, and other sciences. 
If any one asks what those sciences have done for 
gardening, we point to the discoveries of the late Mr. 
Knight. The opinion of that most scienced horti¬ 
culturist is also recorded in a letter from him now in 
our possession,—the words should be engraved over 
the gateway of every garden: “ Physiological know¬ 
ledge CAN ALONE NOW DIRECT THE GARDENER TO IM¬ 
PROVEMENT, FOR HE POSSESSES ALL THAT MERE PRAC¬ 
TICE is likely to give.” Science, it is true, can 
never supersede the necessity for a practical acquaint¬ 
ance with the operations of the spade, the knife, and 
the hoe, but it is their best guide—a pilot needed 
even by tlie most experienced; and let it be remem¬ 
bered that to botanists we owe nearly the whole of 
our flowers, as well as our knowledge of their habits; 
and that to information drawn from their discoveiies 
we are indebted for the majority of our numerous 
varieties of fruits and culinary vegetables, as well as 
for a knowledge of their anatomy and functions. 
Botany also affords the best nomenclature for our 
plants; and thus to it we are indebted for an enlight¬ 
ened practice, and a language universally intelligible. 
But for another science, chemistry, the true nature 
of soils, of manures, of the food and functions of 
plants, would be unknown to us, and many of our 
simplest garden operations would be inexplicable. 
The growth of horticultural science has been slow; 
for, although its dawn was in the Elizabethan age, 
yet it never afforded any distinct light to gardening 
until the beginning of the present century. 
It is undoubtedly true that in much earlier ages 
there were surmises born of inquiring minds that 
are startlingly in accordance with the results afforded 
by modern vegetable chemistry and physiology; but 
they were no more than surmises—fortunate guesses 
that, among many totally erroneous, happened to sa¬ 
vour of truth. Thus, Pythagoras forbade the use of 
beans as food, because he thought that they and hu¬ 
man flesh were created from the same substances, and 
modern research has rendered it certain that that 
pulse has among its constituents more animo-vege- 
table matter than most other seeds. Empedocles 
maintained that plants are sexual; that they possess 
life and sensation; and that he remembered when he 
was a plant himself, previously to being Empedocles. 
Theophrastus and Pliny wrote more voluminously 
on plants, but not with more knowledge of their 
physiology; and little or no improved progress is 
really visible until the sixteenth century was well 
advanced; for this branch of science was no bright 
exception from the darkness enveloping all human 
knowledge during the middle ages, and it was not 
until that period in which Bacon lived that the hu¬ 
man mind threw off the trammels of the school-men, 
and, instead of arguing as to what must be, proceeded 
to examine and search out what is. The Reforma- 
mation, the spirit of the age, was then not confined 
to religion. By delivering the human mind from 
thraldom, and teaching man to search all things, but 
to retain only that which is good because true, it 
gave an impetus to improvement, which no tyrant 
opposition has ever since been enabled to check. 
Such men as Bacon, Peiresc, Evelyn, Grew, and 
Malpighi arose. Bacon was the first to teach aloud 
that man can discover truth in no way but by ob¬ 
serving and imitating the operations of nature; that 
truth is bom of fact, not of speculation; and that 
systems of knowledge are to be founded not upon an¬ 
cient authority, not upon metaphysical theories, but 
upon experiments and observations in the world 
around us. Peiresc was a munificent man of letters, 
whose house, whose advice, and whose purse were 
opened to the students of every art and science. 
His library was stored with the literature of every 
age, and his' garden with exotics from every clime, 
from whence he delighted to spread them over Europe. 
Grew in England, and Malpighi in Italy, devoted 
themselves to the anatomical examination of plants, 
and these were followed by Linmeus, Gsertner, and 
others, who, trusting only to the dissecting knife 
and the microscope, soon precipitated into ruins all 
the fanciful fabrics of the Aristotelians, or guessers 
at truth. They were the founders of that science of 
vegetable physiology, which, enlarged and carried 
into practice by the late Mr. Knight and his followers, 
has advanced horticulture to a degree of improve¬ 
ment undreamed of by their immediate predecessor, 
Heresbach, when he informed the world that, if the 
powder of rams’ horns is sown, and well watered, 
“ it will come to be good asparagus.” 
The researches of Hales, upon the circulatory power 
of the sap-vessels; of Bonnet, upon the functions of 
the leaves; and of Du Hamel, Priestley, Ingenliousz, 
Sennebier, Saussure, and others, upon the action of 
light, and the nature of the gases developed during 
the respiration of plants; imparted still more useful 
knowledge to the gardener, and rendered his art still 
less empirical. The same philosophers directed their 
attention also to the food of plants imbibed by their 
roots, and to the examination of their various secre¬ 
tions; but here they were joined by another band of 
nature’s students, and no one conversant with the 
philosophy of plant-culture but will remember the 
debt he owes to Yauquelin, Lavoisier, Johns, Davy, 
Lindley, and Liebig. 
We shall endeavour to concentrate and arrange the 
results of the researches of the above-named disci¬ 
ples of nature, adding such rays, derived from lesser- 
lights, as aid to render the whole more luminous, and 
such links of experiments and observations from 
similar sources as make the work more connected 
than it would be without their aid. 
A few gardeners may still exist who venture to 
