The secrets of gardening, known to our forefathers, annihilate all claim in Sir Joseph Paxton to the commonest consideration. They taught how to get the blue roses by manuring with indigo, or green roses by digging verdigris about the roots. They taught the whole art of perfuming fruit, by steeping the seeds of the future tree in oil of spike, or rose-water and musk. If, say our ancestors, you would have peaches, plums, or cherries without any stone, you have only, when the tree is a twig, to pick out all the pith before you set it. To get your filbert-trees to bear you fruit all kernel, you have only to crack a nut, and sow the kernel only, covered with a little wool. And very much more marvellous, in the annals of gardening, is the receipt for getting peach-trees that bear fruit covered with inscriptions: "When you have eaten the peach, steep the stone two or three days in water, and open it gently, and _take the kernal out of it(!)_ and write something within the shell with an iron graver, what you please, yet not too deep, then wrap it in paper and set it; whatever you write in the shell you shall find written in the fruit." Such shrewd things mingled with the more ordinary knowledge of our ancestors upon affairs of gardening. It will be seen that for many of these "facts" there was a "reason" close at hand. Our forefathers were wise enough to know that every thing required properly accounting for. Thus, for example, in "the secrets of metals:" "Some report that a candle lighted of man's fat, and brought to the place where the treasures are hid, will discover them with the noise; and when it is near them it will go out. If this be true, it ariseth from sympathy; for fat is made of blood, and blood is the seat of the soul and spirits, and both these are held by the desire of silver and gold, so long as a man lives; and therefore they trouble the blood; so here is sympathy."