THE GENERAL AS WELL AS MINUTE INSTRUCTIONS FOR LAYING OUT OR ERECTING EACH AND EVERY OF THE ABOVE DEPARTMENTS ACCORDING TO MODERN TASTE AND THE MOST APPROVED PLANS; THE ORNAMENTAL PLANTING OF PLEASURE-GROUNDS, IN THE ANCIENT AND MODERN STYLE, THE CULTIVATION OF THORN QUICKS AND OTHER PLANTS CATALOGUES OF KITCHEN-GARDEN PLANTS AND HERBS; AROMATIC, POT, AND SWEET HERBS; MEDICINAL PLANTS; AND THE MOST IMPORTANT GRASSES, ETC., USED IN RURAL Eleventh Edition, Greatly Enlarged, Improved, and Illustrated. 18.7 Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT AND CO., in the Office of the Clerk of the District Court of the United States in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. PREFACE TO THE ELEVENTH EDITION. M'MAHON'S GARDENING is by far the most comprehensive, complete, and best work that has been written for America. The advantages of minute detail will be found to consist in teaching how to perform many important operations, which those having gardens should understand the rationale of, whether they practise them all or not. Improved machinery and apparatus have not superseded knowledge, and there are thousands of small gardens where many of these detailed operations may still be practised with economy and advantage. The work has undergone great improvements in this edition, having been carefully read by one of our best practical gardeners, and in important particulars brought up to the knowledge of the day. The newer vegetables are carefully noted, and a very few passages that are not now relevant have been expunged, such as the long description of the mode of cultivation of madder, and substances that time has exploded in American gardens. Wood-cuts have been inserted to add interest to the work, and altogether the publishers present the volume with confidence to the amateur and the practical gardener, as one which will bear careful study. They have also procured a brief memoir of the author, that so valuable a man's name "may not perish from among the people." |