PHILOSOPHY OF FLORICULTURE. 
247 
of farina than it had in the wild or natural state; but that this 
increase has been obtained by shortening the life of the individual 
plant. It is the same in all the Cerealia ; and from the analogy 
of many other vegetables, it may be considered a general 
principle. 
Cultivated trees, also, though they have a more rapid growth, 
and obtain a larger size, are softer in the wood and less durable, 
both as growing trees and as timber, than those which are in a 
state of nature ; and when the natural woods are cut down, and 
artificially planted ones substituted in their stead, the timber is of 
inferior quality, and far more subject to decay and rot. For 
instance, no planted timber is equal to that of the old oaks and 
pines of the British woods and forests ; and if the mahogany of 
Central America and the West India islands, and the teak of India, 
shall be all cut down, no human art will obtain equally good timber 
from the same species : and the same fact holds with regard to 
every kind of tree with which we are acquainted. Common 
forest trees are valuable only for their timber, if we waive the 
consideration of the ornament and shelter which they afford ; but 
when a tree is cultivated for the sake of its fruit, the wood is 
rendered of a nature still more perishable, whether that tree is on 
its own stem or grafted. We have instances of this in the crab 
and the cultivated apple, and also in the sloe and the cultivated plum, 
in which the wild ones are remarkable for the hardness and dura¬ 
bility, and the cultivated for the perishable nature, of their timber. 
In flowers the case is still the same ; and by comparing natural 
and cultivated growth, we find that the analogy holds through the 
whole vegetable kingdom. No superiority of soil or shelter of 
situation can prevent the consequences ; because, though by 
skilful treatment we can force an additional quantity of any kind 
of produce in the plant, we weaken its stamina, and disturb the 
natural balance of its powers, by so doing. Were it possible to 
devise means by which the greater produce could be obtained, and 
the full stamina of the plant kept up, it would be the greatest 
improvement that ever was effected in the art of cultivation, and 
in no department would it be greater than in that of flowers. 
The production of seeds is the grand natural purpose of 
flowering; and in so far as art directs the strength of vegetable 
action to the obtaining of more numerous and finely expanded 
petals, that action is withdrawn from the production of seeds and 
