As the season for renewing subscriptions is approaching the publisher expresses a hope that the friends of the work will kindly endeavor to send another subscription with their own. The lovers of intellectual gardening are scattered, and none of the usual methods of advertising for circulation are practicable unless the annual subscription price were greatly increased. In all the long years since the magazine was started it has relied solely on the good will of its friends and the efforts of its agents for increased subscribers and for contributions to its pages. Its great success on this mutual principle may be considered one of the marvels of the age. There are always a few newcomers into the charming walks of gardening who do not know there is a Gardeners' Monthly. Those who employ gardeners could make no handsomer Christmas present than a year's subscription to the magazine.

The plan of giving with our December number a first-class portrait of some eminent living horticultural author as a frontispiece to the volume has proved popular, and adds to the permanent value of the magazine. We have arranged to have for our next the likeness of one of our well-known horticultural editors, and which we are sure no lover of American gardening will care to miss.