Now, in order to promote the application of our selected names as much as lies in our power, we make the following; proposals to nurserymen, and the curators of public gardens: - To adopt our nomenclature for their hardy trees and shrubs. To print a catalogue of them with Arb. Brit. as an authority to each name, and to include no name in the catalogue for which they have not a living plant. To label the plants as in nurseries and botanic gardens, either with names or numbers printed on proper labels; and, if numbers, to place the same numbers before the names in the printed catalogue. To agree that no additional names shall be introduced into any sub sequent edition of the catalogue, so long as we live, without our sanction; or without applying for it, and waiting, for a period not longer than a fort night, for an answer. These conditions being agreed to in writing, we make offer, in all such cases, to examine the living plants or dried specimens, state what we consider to be their names, and prepare a proper, catalogue, and superintend its printing (provided the printing be done at Mr. Spottiswoode's press, as being the most accurate in London for the spelling and accentuation of botanical names). Once in the course of every year, in July, August, or September, such additional species and varieties as may be procured by the nurserymen who accept this offer will be examined by us, and the names received with them confirmed, or the proper ones given or ascertained. The same services, on the same conditions, are offered to nurserymen and curators of botanic gardens or public collections, in every part of Great Britain and Ireland, who will send us dried specimens, in general not less than a foot or two in length, gathered during August or September, and carefully packed, addressed to the care of Messrs. Longman and Co., carriage paid. We do not bind ourselves to comply with these conditions after the middle of October next, except as respecting the additions to the catalogues of the nurserymen who may have adopted our names. We make this condition, because, after the middle of October, the greater part of the leaves will have dropped from the trees. We offer these services gratuitously to commercial men and public bodies: but the possessors of private collections are too numerous for us to undertake the task for them; or, if we do so, it will be at our usual rate of a guinea an hour, or five guineas a day of eight hours, which has been our professional charge for the last thirty years, as indicated in detail in our Advertising Sheet for January, 1839. We wish it particularly to be observed, that we will not undertake the naming of public or commercial collections of any kind, unless the parties will, immediately after our supplying the proper names, have labels of iron, wood, or brick, with number or names, placed against the plants; and, if numbers are preferred to names, then we require that the same numbers be given along with the names in the catalogue to be printed, as a safeguard to the public, as well as, in the case of nurserymen, to facilitate the ordering of plants. If it can be shown that any part of the above proposal is unreasonable, we shall be glad to listen to what may be considered reason. Such nurserymen as comply with the above conditions will have their names, and an account of their collections, conspicuously recorded in this Magezine, and they will be strongly and exclusively recommended by us to purchasers of hardy trees and shrubs. We have been induced to make the above offer from having recently seen the confused state of the nomenclature in different public gardens and nurseries; in short, in every public and private collection in the country that we know of, without any exception whatever; and from a wish to follow up the intention of our Arboretum Britannicum, as expressed in the preface to that work. We hope, at least, that one or two public nurseries will accept our proposal, in order that we may be able to recommend them strongly, and with all our heart. Our grand wish is, to effect that for hardy trees and shrubs which the Horticultural Society has so admirably done for hardy fruits, viz. the introduction of the same nomenclature in all nurseries and collections, and the diffusion everywhere of all the kinds which it is desirable to cultivate. Bayswater, August, 1839.
