AUTHOR OF THE ENCYCLOPEDIAS OF GARDENING AND OF AGRICULTURE, AND LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, REES, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMAN, PATERNOSTER-ROW. PREFACE. THE HE contents of this Eighth Volume of the Gardener's Magazine show that the work continues to answer the purposes for which it was commenced, viz. those of collecting scattered fragments of information on the various departments of gardening on which it treats; giving an account of the progress which the art is making in various parts of the world, and more especially in Britain; and bringing minds into collision, which, probably, would not otherwise have known of each other's existence. The grand characteristics of the present times are union and cooperation for general improvement. Those engaged in arts and occupations which admit of their congregating together in towns feel no difficulty in assembling, and communicating their different discoveries and wants: hence the advantages which are daily resulting from scientific societies and mechanics' institutions. The gardener and the farmer, however, have but slender opportunities of improving themselves, or benefiting others, by attendance at such associations; and must necessarily be, in a great measure, precluded from the advantages which result from belonging to them. The principal medium of communication of all such persons is, therefore, the press; and the probability is, that, with the progress of human improvement, every description of rural art or trade (if not all arts and trades whatever) will have its own particular Newspaper or Magazine. The idea has been already suggested in the Scotsman newspaper, and in the New Monthly Magazine. It is in consequence of the want of personal intercourse, or the means of communication through the press, that the country population are, in intelligence and enterprise, comparatively behind those whose pursuits admit of their residing in towns; and, of all classes of country residents, agricultural labourers are generally the most deficient in moral and intellectual improvement. The cause is, that no other class is so completely isolated from the rest of society. Till lately, this has been, to a considerable degree, also the case with gardeners: and 201263 |