PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 
3 
Such is the extent of the field which nature offers to the cul¬ 
tivator of flowers; and, in as far as any species may happen to 
have attractions in its natural state so as to draw his attention, 
his art may extend this field almost indefinitely, by the obtaining 
of varieties of every species, and, in many instances, by changing 
entirely the natural appearance of the flower. Thus, for instance, 
the Dahlia, in its native habitat in tropical America, is a very 
simple blossom, with only a single row, or whorl, of petals, or 
flower-leaves ; and yet cultivation, in a far distant country, and 
differing greatly in its climate, its seasons, and all its physical 
circumstances, has so bred the Dahlia, and broken it into varie¬ 
ties, that it is now the most showy of all the autumnal flowers ; 
and, from being at first exceedingly rare, and a nursling of the 
stove, it is now to be met with in every cottage garden, where the 
cottager has taste enough to occupy a portion of his leisure time 
in cultivating flowers. Not only this, but it is found to be one of 
the flowers of most easy growth. It will not, indeed, bear the 
frost, which is the case with most of the flowering-plants of inter- 
tropical America,—even with the Potato, which thrives in the 
coldest districts, and which, had its tubers not been found so 
valuable as an article of food, would, in all probability, have been 
esteemed as a flowering-plant ; and had it been bred for the sake 
of flowers instead of tubers, there is no saying what beauty the 
bloom of it might have acquired. 
As flowers, in the great majority of their species, are children 
of the sun and the free air of heaven, we might be prepared to 
expect the greatest number of them, and those of the most splen¬ 
did natural appearance, in the sunny lands near the equator. 
Observation agrees with this, as taken on the whole ; but, as many 
of the equatorial lands are to great extent seasonal,—that is, 
pelted by rain at one time of the year, and parched by drought at 
another,—the appearance of those lands to a visitor is widely diffe¬ 
rent, according as he comes when the one or the other of these 
characters of season has produced its full effect. If he comes 
when the rains are just over, and the flood which they pour upon 
the level surfaces has newly ebbed away, then the land seems an 
Eden of fertility, glowing with blooms of every colour which 
imagination can picture to itself, and all so vigorous, that the 
progress of their growth seems almost palpable to the wondering 
,and delighted stranger. But if his visit is made when the drought 
