148 
THE FLORIST’S JOURNAL. 
the demand which it occasions are over. After this the plant gets 
into more hands, the price is reduced ; while it is just as beautiful 
and as valuable in itself as ever, it is brought within the reach of 
a much greater number of persons. 
In consequence of this progress, amateurs of these classes, 
whether they keep gardeners, or cultivate plants for their own 
amusement, are enabled to obtain a constant succession of novel¬ 
ties ; and if they have the proper feeling of the subject, this pos¬ 
session gives them a degree of pleasure, of which men of grosser 
or more vulgar minds can have no idea. It is here that the 
philosophy of floriculture becomes not only eminently valuable, 
but absolutely necessary. The seller of a plant, however new or 
curious that plant may be, cannot be expected to give a lecture 
on the mode of cultivating every plant which he sells ; and though 
he had time and inclination, his customers would not, generally 
speaking, be disposed to listen to him. They purchase the plant, 
carry it home, and leave what they are to do with it for matter 
of future inquiry. 
It is here that the kind of knowledge, some scraps of which we 
have endeavoured from time to time to lay before our readers, 
becomes so essentially necessary. Amateurs and gentlemen’s 
gardeners are the parties to whom we specially address ourselves, 
though we may add that this knowledge is indispensable to every 
young gardener, who wishes to become worthy of the profession 
he has chosen. 
An amateur, for instance, goes to a first-class nursery, sees a 
plant there which has the double advantage of being fine in its 
habit of growth and beautiful in its flowers, and of none of his 
rival amateurs—among which rivalship is usually a very kindly 
matter—having a plant of the same genus or species in his collec¬ 
tion. He makes his purchase, returns home, places the plant 
where he expects it will show best, and all his family and friends 
come in their turn to admire the new and innocent beauty. All 
is well for a time; but ignorance of the natural circumstances of 
the plant has led to the placing of it in an unfavourable situation; 
it is ruined by excessive kindness, and in the end it dies, and in 
dying gets a bad name, as being a plant very ungrateful for the 
care bestowed upon it. Much in the same w T ay, but far worse, 
it fares with the gentleman’s gardener. The master brings home 
plants for the greenhouse, the dry-stove, the moist-stove, or the 
