Ebook The Journal of Horticulture, Cottage Gardener, Country Gentleman, Bee-Keeper and Poultry Chronicle

But with the thought of the increased brain-work in England comes also the thought of the increased need of wholesome recreation. England is further and further receding from the merrie England of olden time, which meant to a great degree holiday-making — May-pole dancing, Christmas and Twelfth-night romping, and keeping all the many holidays of the old calendar. Now it is work ing England, and he who provides a wholesome recreation for his fellows in this brain-exhausting age is a public benefactor. But nothing gives such a change and benefit to men, to those, especially in populous cities pent, as a glimpse of Nature. A recent writer in the Saturday Review says well In the way of recreation one view of Hampstead Heath is worth whole volumes of tropical travel: and a linnet in a Surrey hedge gives a fresher idea of Nature's charms than all the stuffed specimens in the zoological department of the British Museum. But no object to pursue daily and constantly equals horticul ture for providing wholesome recreation, and, let me add, for promoting good temper. Wonderfully fascinating is it. Deny a garden yet he who loves one will not be beaten. Thus we all remember Picciola, or the Prison Flower, and he who watched it with intense delight as it un folded itself from its first pair of leaves to its full ?owering. Then there is Dickens's story of the boy, crippled and bed ridden, who was devoted to his plant in the broken jug in. The window yes, and what comfort it gave him.