dequately artistic sound. But
as the significance of the one term has been gradually specialized,
so the other has gradually come to denote a mere grower of plants.
"Landscape gardener" was a title first used by the artists of
the eighteenth century to mark the new tendency which they
represented--the search for "natural" as opposed to "formal" beauty;
and it seemed to them to need an apology as savoring, perhaps, of
grandiloquence or conceit. But as taste declined in England it was
assumed by men who had not the slightest right, judged either by their
aims or by their results, to be considered artists; and to-day it is
fallen into such disesteem that it is often replaced by "landscape
architect." This title has French usage to support it and is in many
respects a good one. But its correlative--"landscape architecture"--is
unsatisfactory; and so, on the other hand, is "landscape artist,"
though "landscape art" is an excellent generic term. Perhaps the best
we can do is to keep to "landscape gardener," and try to remember that
it ought always to mean an artist and an artist only.

_M. G. van Rensselaer._

Floriculture in the United States.

At the beginning of the present century, it is not probable that there
were 100 florists in the United States, and their combined green-house
structures could not have exceeded 50,000 square feet of glass. There
are now more than 10,000 florists distributed through every State and
Territory in the Union and estimating 5,000 square feet of glass to
each, the total area would be 50,000,000 feet, or about 1,000 acres
of green-houses. The value of the bare structures, with heating
apparatus, at 60 cents per square foot would be $30,000,000, while the
stock of plants grown in them would not be less than twice that sum.
The present rate of growth in the business is about 25% per annum,
which proves that it is keeping well abreast of our most flourishing
industries.

The business, too, is conducted by a better class of men. No longer
than thirty years ago it was rare to find any other than a foreigner
engaged in commercial floriculture. These men had usually been private
gardeners, who were mostly uneducated, and without business habits.
But to-day, the men of this calling compare favorably in intelligence
and business capacity with any mercantile class.

Floriculture has attained such importance that it has taken its place
as a regular branch of study in some of our agricultur