106 



A TALK WITH FLORA AND POMONA. 



any in Mr. Paxton's Magazine. She held 

 a bouquet in her hand, composed of sweet- 

 scented camellias, and violets as dark as 

 sapphire, which she said her gardener had 

 brought from the new planet Neptune ; 

 and unique and fragrant blossoms continu- 

 ally dropped from her robe, as she walked 

 about, or raised her arms in gestures grace- 

 ful as the swinging of a garland wooed by 

 the west Avind. 



After some stammering on our own part, 

 about the honor conferred on an humble 

 mortal like ourselves — rare visits of the 

 goddesses to earth, etc., they, understand- 

 ing, probably, what Mr. Beecher calls our 

 " amiable fondness for the Hudson," oblig- 

 ingly put us at our ease, by paying us some 

 compliments on the scenery of the High- 

 lands, as seen at that moment from our gar- 

 den seat, comparing the broad river, radiant 

 Avith the chaste light of the moon, to some 

 favorite lake owned by the immortals, of 

 whose name, we are sorry to say, we are 

 at this moment entirely oblivious. 



Our readers will not, of course, expect 

 us to repeat all that passed during this en- 

 chanting interview. But, as we are obliged 

 to own that the visit was not altogether on 

 our own behalf, or rather that the turn of 

 the discourse held by our immortal guests 

 showed that it was chiefly intended to be 

 laid before the readers of the Horticultu- 

 rist, we lose no time in putting the latter 

 en Tapport. 



Pomona opened the discourse by a few 

 graceful remarks, touching the gratifica- 

 tion it gave them that the moderns, down 

 to the present generation, had piously re- 

 cognized her guardian rights and those 

 of her sister Flora, even while those 

 of many of the other Olympians, such as 

 Jupiter, Pan, Vulcan, and the like, Avere 

 nearly forgotten. The Avonderful fondness 

 for fruits and floAvers, growing up in the 



Avestern world, had, she declared, not escap- 

 ed her eye, and it received her warmest 

 approbation. She said something that we do 

 not quite remember, in the style of that 

 good old phrase, of " making the Avilderness 

 blossom like the rose," and declared that 

 Flora intended to festoon every cottage in 

 America Avith double Michigan roses. Wis- 

 tarias, and SAveet-scented vines. For her 

 own part, she said, her people Avere busy 

 enough in their invisible superintendence 

 of the orchard planting now going on at such 

 a gigantic rate in America, especially in the 

 Western Slates. Such Avas the fever in 

 some of those districts, to get large planta- 

 tions of fruit, that she could not, for the 

 life of her, induce men to pause long 

 enough to select their ground or the proper 

 sorts of fruit to be planted. As a last re- 

 sort, to keep them a little in check, she was 

 obliged, against her better feelings, to al- 

 low the blight to cut off part of an orchard 

 noAV and then. OtherAvise the Avhole coun- 

 try would be filled up Avith poor miserable 

 odds and ends from Europe- — " Beurr^s and 

 Bergamots, with more sound in their French 

 names, than flaA^or under their skins." 



These last words, we confess, startled us 

 so much, that Ave opened our eyes rather 

 AAadely, and called upon the name of Dr. 

 Van Mons, the great Belgian — spoke of the 

 gratitude of the pomological Avorld, etc. To 

 our surprise, Pomona declared that she had 

 her doubts about the Belgian professor — she 

 said he Avas a very crotchetty man, and al- 

 though he had devoted his life to her service, 

 yet he had such strange whims and caprices 

 about improving fruits by a regular system 

 of degeneration or running them out, that 

 she could make nothing of him. " Depend 

 upon it," she said, " many of his sorts are 

 Avorthless, — most of them have sickly con- 

 stitutions, and," she added, Avith some em- 

 phasis, snapping her fingers as she spoke. 



