
          Early Hort. Lit.3

SCOPE OF MATERIAL

From a detached point of view this list seems badly balanced . It is deficient in
some respects and overweighted in others. There is a great preponderance of English
books, a great many French and probably about as large a proportion of Italian works.
But the Dutch titles are few, and those in German occupy less space than one might expect.
As a large number of the latter are defective, and many of the books are not located,
it may be that our sources for the German literature of the subject were inadequate 
(1), or that the field was not thoroughly explored.

Furthermore, the disproportion between the literature in English and the other
languages may be due to the fact that the German books included, for instance, are for
the more part genuinely horticultural, while a large number of the English titles, and
many Italian and French ones, are purely literary works.

The primary aim of this list was not to supplement the manuals of English literature,
but to collect information about really horticultural works of which little or
nothing had previously been known. Most of the essays and poems on gardening belong
to a special body of literature, important in its own way, but with practically no relation
to methods of gardening or the knowledge and culture of plants and fruits. (2)
Bacon and Walpole, Mason, Rapin and Delille, all are found in numerous large libraries
and some small ones, together with more data than we can give for them; and it would
seem reasonable to either omit such writings from this list, or give them a more condensed
treatment.

1. Our sources for titles of German works have probably been as ample and dependable
as those for books in other languages, but we have had no large actual collections of
German literature to check with, such as those of the British Museum and Bibliotheque
Nationale. I have never found an adequate source for Dutch works. We have carefully
searched the library catalog of the Landbouwhoogeschool at Wageningen, Netherlands,
which has many valuable books, but does not seem specially strong on early Dutch ones.

2. This does not, of course, apply to the simple and honest information and precepts
of some writings in verse, like the "Hortulus" of Walafrid Strabo, and the ’’Hundredth
good Pointes cf Husbandrie” of Thomas Tusser. But even in case of some "didactic” poems
that have run into scores or hundreds of editions, it might be expedient to treat
them in a condensed fashion, taking pains to specially bring out the critical editions
that appeal to both scholars and horticulturists.
        