Last year our publisher gave the Index free to the subscriber, instead of infringing on the usual thirty-two pages of reading matter. We have before us a letter from " An Old Compiler," in praise of that Index, and showing the difference between a mere "contents " and our very full index. We should be glad to insert the whole compliment, if we had room, but must be satisfied with the following extract:

"My purpose, partly, in this writing was to acknowledge the service the Gardeners' Monthly does its readers - and writers, too - by furnishing an annual index that makes the work completely, exhaustively, immediately accessible through its whole series. I am afraid it does not get all the credit it deserves from the majority of its readers for this supplementary labor. I have all the volumes from the first, and bound up to the twenty-fourth, inclusive. I ask my fellow subscribers to examine and test these indices, if they have heretofore accepted them indifferently, confident their verdict will be that they vastly enhance the value of the subscription. I do not find the Monthly making any flourish of trumpets - blow - over this accommodation. From its rarity it must be considered gratuitous, and I am therefore moved to acknowledge my own indebtedness. From experience with the Monthly up to the last volume I confidently look for another complete index in the approaching December number, unless you have gone and done the unlikely thing this year, of hiring my special aversion, Mr. Contents, in a sudden access of economy."