JOURNAL OF RUKAL ART AND RURAL TASTE. 



€ljB Stglrrtri 51 mr rime ^Mnis, 



^ T is an old and familiar saying that a prophet is not without honor, except in his own 

 ^^ country, and as we were making our way this spring through a dense forest in the 

 state of New-Jersey, we were tempted to apply this saying to things as well as peo- 

 ple. How many grand and stately trees there are in our woodlands, that are never 

 heeded by the arboriculturist in planting his lawns and pleasure-grounds ; how many 

 rich and beautiful shrubs, that might embellish our walks and add variety to our shrub- 

 beries, that are left to wave on the mountain crag, or overhang the steep side of some 

 forest valley ; how many rare and curious flowers that bloom unseen amid the depths 

 of silent woods, or along the margin of wild water-courses. Yes, our hot-houses are 

 full of the heaths of New-Holland and the Cape, our parterres are gay with the Ver- 

 benas and Fuchsias of South America, our pleasure-grounds are studded with the trees 

 of Europe and Northern Asia, while the rarest spectacle in an American country 

 place, is to see above three or four native trees, rarer still to find any but foreign 

 shrubs, and rarest of all, to find any of our native wild flowers. 



Nothing strikes foreign horticulturists and amateurs so much, as this apathy 

 and indifference of Americans, to the beautiful sylvan and floral products of their 

 own country. An enthusiastic collector in Belgium first made us keenly sensible of this 

 condition of our coimtrymen, but Summer, in describing the difiiculty he had in pro- 

 curing from any of his correspondents, here, American seeds or plants — even of well 

 known and tolerably abundant species, by telling us that amateurs and nurserymen who 

 annually import from him every new and rare exotic that the richest collections of 

 Europe possessed, could scarcely be prevailed upon to make a search for native Ame- 

 rican plants, far more beautiful, which grow in the woods not ten miles from their own 

 Some of them were wholly ignorant of such plants, except so far as a 

 with their names in the books may be called an acquaintance. Others 



May 1, 1851. 



No. V. 



