ILLINOIS HORTICULTURE. 



readers may have done, I had formed no correct idea of the man. T had been told that 

 he was a " hobby man," — "a visionary theorist," and all that sort of thing — and per- 

 haps some of your readers may have thought the same, for he never hides his opinions; 

 and their singular boldness, if not originalty, and his forcible manner of stathig them, 

 have startled his brethren, the school-men, and they are, consequently, more inclined to 

 fear than to love him, though he has really made an hundred friends to one enemy; and if 

 they would only read him right, and " the signs of the times" too, they would see in 

 him as great a friaud to relgious institutions, and polite letters, as to practical and scienti- 

 fic education. 



J. B. Turner is a thoughtful man, but no " visionary" — an innovator — but no "level- 

 er." He is not even an enthusiast — but an earnest scholar — a learned and pious theo- 

 logian — strict in his example, and yet liberal in his views; and the most earnest and un- 

 selfish man I ever knew, in his desire to give the producing classes a libei'al education, 

 suited to their wants, and to the practical requirements of their several vocations. 



I wish his detractors knew him as he is. I wish your readers could see his little place, 

 and his manangement of it. His implements and machines, most of them of his own inven- 

 tion or improvement, and the manner in which he uses them — and how much he makes of, 

 and how much he makes /rom, a few acres. They would then see that he is just the sort 

 of a man to write for the Horticulturist, and the man to evolve and develop great prac- 

 tical thoughts, and to sustain them. 



Jacksonville is the city, par excellence, of public edifices, and the great state charities. 

 It is the classical town, and with many, the show town of Illinois; and it is a most love- 

 ly spot — though here, as elsewhere — 



" God made the country — man made the town " 

 The country is rich and beautiful, beyond the power of words to describe. The red drift, 

 or diluvial soil, is astonishingly deep and productive, twenty successive crops of Indian 

 corn, (60 to 80 bushels to the acre,) having been taken from the same field, witJiout ma- 

 nure. 



The face of the country is not broken, nor is it rolling, but just sufficintly sloping for 

 easy culture, with an occasional elevation to break the vastness of a prairie view, which 

 too often stretches away beyond sight, unrelieved hy hills or trees. 



Here, however, are some "mounds," and a plenty of timber, bordering the still streams, 

 and clothing the range of elevated land which encircles the town, in the richest and most 

 graceful dress imaginable. 



We have no picturesque spots to speak of, and few trees of the picturesque type, though 

 no country can surpass ours in the graceful school of trees, and in the gentle curves and 

 swelling outline of much of our prairie land — its vastness and sameness being at once its 

 principal beauty and defect. But about Jacksonville there is nothing like monotony — the 

 landscape is varied, and the variety of trees and their forms, and the changing face of the 

 general surface, are enough to prevent any idea of sameness. 



Maples, Elms, and six noble sorts of Oak, make up the great mass of trees, and yet 

 there are so many others, especially of the smaller sorts, that a prairie " island," or a 

 " timber" border, resembles the show grounds of some old nurseries East, with specimens 

 of nearly every beautiful and graceful deciduous shrub and tree. 



But enough of the country — except the Hedges, and not much of them. There are 

 hundreds of miles of new Madura, or Osage Orange hedges, through the whole of this 

 al Illinois region — and yet, I saw but one that would turn stock of all kinds, and 

 ad grown up too rapidly, and not thick enough at bottom for future use. Prof. T. 



