438 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



one season being about thirty pounds. What more certain or 

 sensible way of benefitting the public and improving an estate 

 can there be than to plant a few hundred or thousand sugar 

 maples ? 



When we compare the cultivated fields and gardens of Massa- 

 chusetts with our native flora, we can hardly fail to be impressed 

 with the fact that her natural productions are chiefly rocks, ice 

 and timber. Not a plant grows wild within her limits which is 

 capable, even if cultivated, of furnishing any considerable amount 

 of food, so that only a few wandering savages could subsist within 

 her borders, except for the plants which have been introduced 

 from other regions. Our cereals, vegetables, fruits and flowers, 

 and our principal fodder crops, are almost every one exotics, 

 while the great mass of our staple productions remains the same 

 from year to year ; yet every intelligent person knows that new 

 species and varieties of useful and ornamental plants are being 

 constantly brought into notice and cultivation. With the excep- 

 tion of a few varieties, like the Concord grape, originated here, 

 this work has hitherto been done for us mainly by botanists and 

 horticulturists under the patronage of European governments and 

 societies, many of whom maintain constantly both experimental 

 gardeners at home and intelligent collectors searching for desir- 

 able rarities in various parts of the world. There are also a few 

 enterprising dealers in plants who now employ travelling botan- 

 ists, whose discoveries enable them to bring out novelties to 

 attract attention of the public to their establishments and to keep 

 up the interest in fioricultural pursuits among their amateur cus- 

 tomers. Extraordinary facilities for this work have been enjoyed 

 in England, in consequence of the great number of her colonies in 

 all quarters of the globe, and the general attention given to such 

 matters in a country so abounding in persons of wealth aud 

 culture. David Douglas, a botanist in the service of the Royal 

 Horticultural Society, sent to England more than fifty new hardy 

 trees and shrubs, and one hundred and fifty new herbaceous 

 plants, from our Pacific coast. He was finally killed by a wild 

 bull while collecting at the Sandwich Islands, being then only 

 thirty-six years of age. It is worthy of mention that more than 

 half the botanical collectors who have been sent abroad during 

 the present century have fallen in the field through sickness, 

 accident or violence. The amount of valuable labor performed by 

 some of the gentlemen who have gone from Europe to act as 



