408. There are horticultural societies and professorships of rural economy in many of the universities; one or two gardeners' magazines and almanacks of gardening; and some eminent vegetable physiologists are Germans. The Prussian Gardening Society, for the number and rank of its members, and the value of its published Transactions, ranks with the Horticultural Society of London; and as a scientific body, having an institution for instructing young gardeners in the sciences on which their art is founded, it ranks before it and every other society. The Pomological Society at Altenburg is also an institution which has rendered important services to the culture of fruits. There are, besides, in Germany many societies, independently of those which combine agriculture with gardening, to all of which the art is much indebted. Even in Hungary, it appears (Bright's Travels), a Georgicon, or college of rural economy, has been established by Count Festetiz at Keszthely, in which gardening, including the culture and management of woods and copses, forms a distinct professorship. The science of France may be, and we believe is, greater than that of Germany in this art, but it is accumulated in the capital; whereas here it emanates from a great number of points distributed over the country, and is consequently rendered more available by practical men. The minds of the gardeners of France are, from general ignorance, less fitted to receive instruction than those of Germany; their personal habits admit of less time for reading; and their climate and soil require less artificial agency. The German gardener is generally a thinking steady person; the climate, in most places, requires his vigilant attention to culture, and his travels have enlarged his views. Hence he becomes a more scientific artisan than the Frenchman, and is in more general demand in other countries. All the best gardens in Poland, Russia, and Italy are under the care of Germans.
