Premising that a certain amount of education is necessary before any trade can be learned, it does not follow that a sound theoretical education is either necessary or of primary importance to a young gardener. The thing of first importance to him is useful knowledge - i.e.; knowledge bearing immediately and directly upon his own business. But education and knowledge are two distinct ideas, hence there is often a vast amount of educating, yet little knowledge. The former is a mode - the art of imparting instruction; it must have an actor and an object. Knowledge is power - an intellectual substance - therefore it may exist alone; but this power, to be useful, must be practical: it may be ornamental, but if not exercised it is useless. It follows, then, that speculative knowledge is useless in learning the trade of gardening, for it is practical business; the man must therefore exercise his hands. Further, knowledge, to be useful, must have a primary object; hence the first object in imparting knowledge is to prepare the lad for the relation in life he is fitted or designed to occupy.

But theoretical knowledge will never fit a man for being a gardener; for, speculate as we please, the true definition of gardening is dress, and keep - two practical ideas; hence, as there is no connection between the ideal and the practical, there can be no connection between gardening and science. Therefore a knowledge of science cannot be of primary importance to a young gardener. But knowledge ought to have a final object. The ultimate end, then, of all knowledge is to fit us for the higher and nobler employments hereafter. "Sed hic laboris, hie dificilis;" this, of course, includes moral and religious knowledge - it is secular which concerns us at present. The question of education is interminable as the minds, the countries, and ages connected with it. To measure or bridge it, then, seems impossible \ perhaps some of its dangerous reefs might be buoyed. In the popular language of the day, the common systems of grinding and cramming appear to be doomed. The idea of grinding is, constant application to one branch of learning - such as Latin or Greek, without the remotest chance of either being useful in after-life. The idea of cramming is, quantity - the amount of knowledge imparted, the books devoured. Experience has proved both to be errors.

It is to be feared that, in training for the gardener's business, we are not free from those errors, when, as was said before, we distract the minds of young men with speculative knowledge before they have learned the first principles of the practical - further, in hunting after anything and everything but the right thing; for it is the amount digested, not collected (to use a medical expression), that makes the chyle of a practical life. Again, the ideas, a finished education, a trade learned, are both of them errors - in fact, each is a contradiction; for all that can be done in either is simply to put men in the way of acquiring knowledge. The citadel of ignorance lies intrenched in our own minds, therefore it must be stormed by self-exertion. Hence our motto ever ought to be, Progressive Development.

In the realisable paper of "W." he seems to think that he has caught the type of the ideal and of the practical, and by some species of metamorphosis would like to change those forms into a new body. He may well say with Ovid, "Di cseptis, Adspirate meis;" yes, and add with him, by way of parenthesis, For it is by you such things are effected. He will excuse me, then, when I say that I have no object but the elucidation of truth in a friendly spirit. In my opinion, then, both types are failures. The first is the wrong man in the right place; for, as lie said, he had many advantages, and was in the best situations. The second type is the right man in the wrong place; for truly in his case we see the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties: work, work, work night and day among pots and pans - a mill-horse life; and yet it is said he was woefully deficient in scientific lore. How could he be otherwise? Is it, or any learning, acquired by intuition 1 To mention any learning in such circumstances is but a sham. As well try to teach the last-mentioned quadruped dialectics. To use the words of "W.," how far a change of circumstances, situations, and training might have benefited both men, it is not for me to say.

But while I believe, and have attempted to prove, that theoretical training is neither useful nor of primary importance to a young gardener, I hold as firmly, on the other hand, that ignorance is a depravation, and the want of systematic training an anomaly; for no man, as the old adage says, was ever born with a trade in his mouth. Therefore instinct, intuition, have as little to do in this case as science could have to do in the other.

As, then, we utterly disclaim all power to make, and, I fear, to transform, we must take the raw material (as "W." calls it) just as we find it. And if by ordinary means and common appliances we cannot turn out the superfine, perhaps we may get the home-spun - both are useful; and, owing to market prices, there is as likely to be a glut of the former as the latter: be this as it may, we must be regulated by the laws of supply and demand. But to drop metaphor. If three years' apprenticeship does not fit a young man to acquit himself among his fellow-workmen, there is a fault somewhere. Either the master is unfit to teach, or neglects his duty to his apprentice; or the apprentice is unfit to receive, or neglects the instruction given. But if the master be fit, and does not neglect his duty, then the fault is not his; therefore it must be the apprentice that is in fault. He ought to try something else. A man may fail in one branch of knowledge, and excel in another. Drummond would never have been a gardener, because the plainest directions appeared to go in at one ear and out at the other. But he mastered the science of botany, and left his name in living characters upon its pages.

A. W.

[We are highly pleased to find that this important subject, the education of young gardeners, is attracting the attention it deserves. When our correspondents have given us their views, we shall have much pleasure in giving our own ideas of the matter, founded as they are on rather extensive experience - Laving passed some three hundred young gardeners through our hands, some of them highly educated, others not able to spell many of the commonest English words. - Ed].