Utility, more than either originality of contents or elegance of phraseology, has been the author's principal object in the following pages. He has endeavoured to gather together in one volume, attainable at a moderate price, an arranged, easily consulted, record of Gardening, as it is. To effect this object, he has obtained aid from the best living authorities, as well as from their published works; but he has not neglected those of other periods, where he has found in them directions upon which the moderns have suggested no improvements. Of all the authorities consulted, none has afforded such abundant information as the Gardeners' Chronicle, of which it is not too much to say that, as it is the best of modern journals devoted to promoting the cultivation of the soil, so, whoever is fortunate enough to possess a complete copy of its five published volumes, has a work of reference from which he will rarely turn away unsatisfied if seeking for information relative to its peculiar subjects.

In every instance, the author has endeavoured to give tribute where due, and if he has erred in this, or in any other particular, he will be highly obliged by correction. Besides the work already quoted, he has been much indebted to Paxton's Botanical Dictionary; Whatei.ey's Landscape Gardening; Glenny's Practical Gardener and Florist; Maund's Botanic Garden; Lindley's Theory of Horticulture; and The United Gardener and Land Steward's Journal. The author does not wish to mislead his readers into the belief that this is a Botanical Dictionary. On the contrary, he has confined his notices to such genera of plants as deserve a place in some department of the garden; and, for the most part, even in enumerating the number of species in each genus, only those have been reckoned that are worthy of cultivation.

It only remains to be explained that, in the monthly calendars, b. intends the beginning, or first half of the month, and e. the end, or its closing half.

The following works have also been freely consulted and quoted: -

Cuthbert Johnson, On Fertilizers.

-----------------------------Farmers' Encylopaedia.

Loudon and Westwood's Kollar on Predatory Insects.

Loudon's Gardeners' Encyclopaedia.

------------- Gardeners' Magazine.

Johnson's Principles of Gardening.

Abercrombie's Gardeners' Dictionary.

Johnson's Gardeners' Almanack.

Transactions of the London Horticultural Society.

Caledonian Horticultural Transactions.

Horticultural Magazine.

Decandolle's Philosophy of Plants.