Publications. "The Theory and Practice of Horticulture."
Though many aspects of Lindley's work must perforce be treated of in briefest form no sketch could have the slenderest value which did not take into account his chief works, The Theory and Practice of Horticulture, The Vegetable Kingdom, and the Botanical Register; nor from a survey no matter how brief may reference to his contributions to our knowledge of orchids be omitted.
The value of Lindley's great work on The Theory and Practice of Horticulture may be best gauged by the fact that as a statement of horticultural principles it is the best book extant. Though the botanist of the present day finds on perusing this work that physiological knowledge in 1840 was in a singularly crude state, and may rejoice at the rapid progress of discovery since the time when Lindley's book was written, yet the fact remains that few, if any, men at the present day could make a better statement of the physiological principles underlying practical horticulture than that presented by John Lindley.
Indeed it is a strange fact, and one worthy of the attention of our physiologists, that the gardeners are still endeavouring to puzzle out for themselves the reasons for their practices unaided by the physiologists. An interesting illustration of this assertion may be found in recent issues of the Gardeners' Chronicle containing correspondence from many of the leading growers on the principles underlying the cultivation of the vine. No physiological Philip has come as yet to their assistance! Lindley's book had at once a great vogue on the Continent and was translated into most European languages—Russian included; but it was not till its title was changed from The Theory ... to The Theory and Practice ... of Horticulture that his incorrigible fellow-countrymen, as shy of theory as a fox-glove is of chalk, consented to buy it to any considerable extent.
It was doubtless due not only to Lindley's general services to horticulture but also to the special service which he rendered to that science by the publication of this work that led Lord Wrottesley, President of the Royal Society, to say, when presenting Lindley with the Royal Medal, that "he had raised horticulture from the condition of an empirical art to that of a developed science."