TO OUR READERS. 
If our eloquence were proportionate to our gratitude this address would exceed any of 
its sixteen predecessors. Never during any period of our career has our success been 
so great as during the last six months—success in the abundance and variety of our 
information and illustrations—success in the amount of our circulation—and success 
in the influx of advertisements. Such results command gratitude, and it flows warmly 
from the bottom of our hearts to the point of our pen. 
Such success bids us pause and dwell upon its causes; and, referring only to 
sublunary means, we believe it to be the unwearied effort to be useful, and the genial 
spirit of kindness which actuate every head, and heart, and hand, aiding and en¬ 
riching our pages with their outpourings. “ You Cottage Gardeners,” writes a lady 
from the banks of the Tees, “seem a brotherhood of Samaritans, aiding both plants 
and their cultivators,” and no greater praise do we covet; but one gentleman from 
Stoke-upon-Trent gives us credit for helping also to fill his exchequer, for he says, “ I 
can say this much for your paper—I have received numerous applications for eggs, 
and all from my advertisement in its pages.” 
» 
Of one fact -we are well aware, and it never fails to be appreciated by the British 
reader: every contributor to our columns is a searcher after truth, writing as if here¬ 
after he would have to account for what he has written, as well as for what he has 
thought and done, and as if anxious, in all he writes, to give only trustworthy informa¬ 
tion. Such, and such only, are our “ brotherhood,” and we feel assured that this will 
be accepted by our readers as an earnest that it will be our endeavour to make our 
future even more than worthy of our past. Gardening is making giant strides, but we 
have no fear that we shall not be able to keep pace with the movement which w T e 
have aided to accelerate. Time hath not yet thinned too far the locks of our old 
contributors, and every week brings us fresh and vigorous aid, so that when another 
volume closes we hope to be able to say truthfully with honest old Fitzherbert, 
“ Thus endeth this ryghte profytahle boke of husbandry.” 
