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 Improved machinery and apparatus have not superseded knowledge, and there are thousands of small gardens where many of these detailed operations may still be practised with economy and advantage.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."

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