Page:Vegetables and their Cultivation.djvu/12

vi FOREWORDS. In preparing the work we Lave endeavoured to cater for all requirements, and especially to give such information as would be useful and interesting to the student, as well as the practical grower. Thus, we have given the botanical name and family of each vegetable, its foreign names, and a brief resume of its history.

Then, in the practical departments, we have dealt fully with laying out a vegetable garden; cropping; general management; pests and diseases; soils and manures; friends of the gardener; and finally have described with sufficient fulness the culture of herbs and vegetables generally grown in British gardens.

Finally, we hope the student, the probationer, and professional gardener, as well as the amateur gardener, including the allotment holder, will find the volume as useful and as interesting to him, as the heavy labour involved in its preparation has been a pleasure and a work of love to ourselves.

Although every care has been bestowed on its preparation, and in passing it through the press, a few errors may have unavoidably crept in, but, in the event of any being discovered, we shall only be too grateful to the reader if he will point them out.

It will, perhaps, not be out of place to mention here that, in case any of our readers should be desiring information on vegetable cultivation for market, they will find very full and up-to-date details thereon in our four Handbooks, "Vegetables for Profit," issued by the Publishers of the present work. T. W. S.

In issuing a Second Edition we have embraced the opportunity of revising the text where necessary, and of generally bringing the information up to date At the same time we have added a short chapter on Intensive or French Gardening. We desire also to heartily thank those readers who have been good enough to point out any errors they have discovered. London, 1910. T. W. S.