In the January number of the Horticulturut, you give your readers a chapter on gardeners and experimental gardens. Much as has been said upon this subject by editors, amateurs, as well as the profession, the first thing to be considered is this: Who are foreign gardeners? The answer is, they are men of foreign birth, educated to the profession before they emigrate to this country. These are truly foreign gardeners. Then the question arises, have all the men in this country calling themselves gardeners, been educated as such abroad? No; not one-half of them. I must therefore assert, that they are not foreign, but American gardeners; this is my argument. Your readers may judge whether I am correct or not. Suppose a young man emigrate to this country, bringing no trade or profession with him, and, after some time, he become a landscape or portrait painter, or excels in any of the fine arts, do we acknowledge him as a foreign artist? The American press will speak of him in terms of praise as an American artist, and justly so, I think. A foreign land gave him birth, and America gave him a profession; therefore, he is an American artist.

Now, if this is just and true with the artist, it must be just and true with the gardener; and, I must say, I think the great majority of gardeners in this country are of American growth. Every good gardener in this country, I am sure, would do all in his power to bring about a better state of things, and would hail with delight horticultural colleges, or experimental gardens, and give his mite for the support of them. Now, as it respects native American gardeners, educated at an Horticultural College or Experimental Garden, which amounts to. the same thing, I much question whether one-half of the boys brought up to the profession would stick to it in after life. The complaint has been, in this country, that the foreign gardener has not been educated to suit the times; therefore, there would be produced a better class of educated men than the present state of horticulture can boast of. Now, we will suppose a boy, of fourteen years of age, enters one of the above institutions, and remains a student until he has passed his minority; what is the course of his studies during the seven years (we will suppose the place thoroughly established, where every branch of the profession can be taught), bearing in mind that this boy has a moderate English education before he enters the establishment? The first thing taught him in the establishment is manual labor; his hours of vacation from labor would be something like the following: -

The first problems of geometry and land surveying, agricultural chemistry, botany, vegetable physiology, mineralogy, rural architecture, and landscape gardening; at least a slight knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages, that is, if he wished to become a good botanist. These are a few items that are to be stowed away in the memory of a good, practical gardener. Without going into farther details on this subject, we will suppose a young man, at the age of twenty-one, with a knowledge of all these things, we should call him a tolerably well-informed young man; the next thing is, he offers himself to a nurseryman to work for a dollar per day, or he goes as head gardener to a gentleman; what are his wages? From 26 to 35 dollars per month. Who are his associates in said family? , Ostlers, cow-boys, and the servant-girls of the house; he is, in fact, a serving gardener, and is looked upon as one of the servants of the establishment, and this is what he gets after seven years of hard labor, and harder study.

Will a young and enterprising native American stand it? I think not.

Now, take this same young man, and give him the same amount of education, the same time to study in any of the higher professions, which will take no longer, and, in met, no better education. As soon as his minority is passed, he comes oat an acknowledged gentleman, most probably gets into the best society, and associates with educated men. Mark the difference. Some time since, a writer in some horticultural paper, stated that he never knew a foreign gardener to bring up his sons to the business. I think I have stated the reason he does not: too many years of labor and study for too little pay.

Some of your readers may say, if this is so, how is it that Great Britain has such good gardeners? The answer is nearly this: all the gardeners in that country are self-educated men; they commenced the profession with little or no learning; when they were oast upon the world (as Sam Weller says), to play at leap-frog with its troubles, they Jumped the first back that presented itselt Gardening in England offers employment to tens of thousands of men; there you may find every kind of gardeners, from Sir Joseph Paxton to the gentleman that has no objection to milk the cows, and tend the garden. Philip Miller, the first great gardener we have any account of was born in obscurity. Loudon says he raised himself to a degree of eminence never before equalled in the character of a gardener. He was born in 1692; he maintained a correspondence with the most eminent botanists of the continent of Europe. Amongst his correspondents was Linnsms, who said of his Dictionary: Nan trot Lexicon Hortulanorum sed Botanicorttm; and by other foreigners he was emphatically styled, Hortulanorum Princeps. So it is, at the present time, with the great majority of British gardeners; they are self-educated and self-made. In Great Britain, every avenue of labor is closely filled with manual as well as mental labor, and, therefore, every employer in any branch of business, has a great variety to choose from; hence it is they have good gardeners.

Now, what has been the case in the States? The reverse of all this. Our avenues of labor are not filled up to the same extent they are there; the consequence is, the garden has gone in search of a gardener, instead of the gardener going in search of the garden, and when this is the case, the majority of the gardens will be decidedly bad. I know that, for the last twenty years, the supply has not equalled the demand, and that has brought into existence a lot of self-styled, but not self-made gardeners.

My object in writing this letter is, first, to vindicate the true foreign gardener, and to prune out the quacks, and the following is a plan, I think, might be adopted. As we have in this country a great number of good horticultural societies, I propose to use them to advantage to the employer and the employed, to wit: -

That every horticultural society shall appoint a committee of four or six of the best practical gardeners belonging thereto; the duty of said committee shall be, to examine any applicant calling himself a practical gardener, wishing to fill a situation as such; and, if said applicant be found competent by the committee, he shall be entitled to a printed certificate, to be filled up by said committee, and signed by them, and the President of the Society. Now, supposing some such thing as this was in operation in this country, every competent gardener would soon become aware of it, and submit to it with pleasure. If such a plan was adopted, and every employer requiring a gardener, if the latter is a stranger, he should exhibit a certificate from the nearest horticultural society. The gardener, on receipt of his certificate, shall pay said society any fee the society may think reasonable. If something like this could be done, the complaints would soon be stopped; if the demand is greater than the supply, don't employ the trash; you can import good, responsible men.

[Mr. Meston has stated the case in an intelligent manner. The real difficulty to be encountered in America, is the supposed fact that other employments afford an apparently higher field of social and pecuniary compensation; but this is only on the surface. In. the first place, in an intellectual point of view, how much higher are the enjoyments of a scientific gardener than those of most mechanical businesses? If a youth fails to profit by such opportunities as our correspondent proposes, he must be, and deserves to be, only a manual laborer; but a really good gardener can always get, after a few years of experience, a nursery of his own. Generally speaking, he succeeds, and becomes an independent, happy member of society, with a far better position than one-half of the doctors and lawyers who have chosen those professions because of their seeming facility to wealth or social circumstances. The members of our Horticultural and Fruit-Growing Societies are as good men, as well informed, and as free to come and go as they list, as the mass of physicians.

They are quite as good companions, at least, as the fashionable dandy, and, in our opinion, much better; they are conscious of being instrumental in forwarding the world's progress; their minds are full of intelligence; their business is a source of perpetual delight; they never lack subjects of thought and contemplation; and they should be the most devout adorers of a supreme first cause, because the evidences of design are always springing up before them. They are, too, obtaining, by their intelligence and probity, an enviable social position, which improves precisely in the proportion that they deserve it. Bertram was a gardener; Dr. Lindley is the son of a broken down gardener; Sir Joseph Faxton was employed all his life in the same capacity, and our correspondent quotes himself, Philip Miller as born in obscurity. Talent and industry, with education such as a smart youth can get in this country, if he chooses to apply himself, are sure of reward. - Ed,]

Gardeners #1

Mr. Editor: I was much pleased with your remarks on Robert Meston's letter, about gardeners; it is the greatest mistake that a young man can make, to suppose that respectability means absence of labor; it is folly to say that the professions of law or medicine are more genteel than gardening, or any other handicraft work. A skilled workman is more independent of charity, and in a more respectable and reliable position in society than the skilled clerk, or the skilled professional man, so far as the mere callings of each are concerned. A late emphatic writer asserts truly, that a larger proportion of the clergymen, doctors, salesmen, tradesmen, merchants, speculators in land, and planters, of his country, are involved in debt, and will never pay their debts, than of the laborer, yeoman farmers, mechanics, and artisans. Sensible and industrious farmers and nurserymen, who have started in life with no capital but a good common school education, and a good farm-boy's skill, and strength for labor, more often spend a happy and grateful old age among children and children's children, of whom they are proud, than men of any other calling.

The idea that a muscular, or handicraft occupation, if directed with the genius and thought it always may and should be, is lower or less fortunate, or less likely to be attended with honor in a free country, than the occupations of transfer, copying and adapting forms and precedents, is a most false and pernicious one. Genius, taste, energy, and dexterity, as well as capital in general knowledge, and culture of mind, are even more valuable, and are at this time more wanted in our market, and are better paid for in the artisan and mechanic, than they are in the tradesman or professional man. As to gardeners, it will not do to say they are under-paid; they receive twice as much as a farm-hand, and, with the education they acquire in their apprenticeship, even if they have not talent above the grade of an ignorant field-laborer, they are sure, with steady habits, to arrive at an enviable and happy social position. As Old Gardener.