“Proprietors should not attempt to raise seedlings, but purchase them from professional nurserymen, and place them in a succession nursery of their own. A proprietor may, in general, purchase seedlings much cheaper than he can raise them; while the case {332} is just the reverse with regard to plants of a greater age. In raising seedlings, much skill and attention is requisite, which the professional man can always command at a much more reasonable rate than the proprietor. In the treatment of plants after they are removed from the seed-bed, the rent of the ground is the chief source of expense, as any common gardener will be able to manage them.” “A general, and a very gross error, in purchasing plants, is to consider those as best which are the largest in proportion to their age. This absurd principle of selection makes those nurseries most frequented by customers which least deserve to be so, such, namely, as are situated in the richest soils, surrounded by the closest shelter, and stimulated by the greatest quantities of manure. It is necessary, no doubt, that plants should be of a size to suit them to the situations for which they are intended; but if they have attained this size sooner than the due time by being forced, they are in the worst state imaginable for growing in a barren moor, or on the bleak side of a mountain.” “Plants are often much injured, though raised sufficiently hardy in other respects, by being too much crowded in the nursery line.”—“The surest method that I know of enabling those who have little {333} experience, to ascertain whether plants, in the seed-bed, are too much crowded or not, is to compare such as grow on the verge of the alley with those in the interior. If the girt of the latter be equal, or nearly so, to that of the former, the plants have sufficient room.”—“When plants have stood for several years in nursery lines, if they are too much crowded, many of their lower branches will be sickly or withered, or the stems will be entirely devoid of branches, excepting within a few inches of the top. This is a mark so plain that no one can mistake.