A GLIMPSE AT THE GARDENS OF RIO. 



We may be expected to say a word or two here respecting the result of the last five 

 years on pomology in the United States. The facts are so well known that it seems 

 hardl}' necessai*y. There has never been a period on either side of the Atlantic, when 

 so much attention has been paid to fruit and fruit culture. The rapid increase of nur- 

 series, the enormous sales of fruit trees, the publication and dissemination of work 

 after work upon fruits and fruit culture, abundantly prove this assertion. The pomolo- 

 gical congress which held its third session last year in Cincinnati, and which meets 

 again this autumn in Philadelphia, has done much, and will do more towards general- 

 ising our pomological knowledge for the country generally. During the last ten years 

 almost every fine fruit known in Europe has been introduced, and most of them have 

 been proved in this country. The result, on the whole, has been below the expec- 

 tation ; a few very fine sorts admirably adapted to the country ; a great number of 

 indifferent quality ; many absolutely worthless. This, naturally, makes pomolo- 

 gists and fruit growers less anxious about the novelties of the nurseries abroad — 

 and more desirous of originating first rate varieties at home. The best lesson learn- 

 ed from the discussions in the Pomological Congress — where the experience of the 

 most practical fruit growers of the country is brought out — is, that for every state, 

 or every distinct district of country, there must be found or produced its improved in- 

 digenous varieties of fruit — varieties born on the soil, inured to the climate, and there- 

 fore best adapted to that given locality. So that after gathering a few kernels of wheat 

 out of bushels of chaff, American horticulturists feci, at the present moment, as if the 

 best promise of future excellence, either in fruits or practical skill, lay in applying all 

 our knowledge and power to the study of our own soil and climate, and in helping 

 nature to perform the problem of successful cultivation, by hints drawn from the facts 

 iminediately around us. 



A GLIMPSE AT THE GARDENS OF RIO. 



BY W. J. H., LOCK-HAVEN, PA. 



Dear Horticulturist — Allow a new but gratified subscriber to encumber a few pages 

 of your incomparable monthly, in endeavoring to describe some of the beauties of a 

 tropical climate, as seen during a recent voyage round the world. 



Brazil is beyond doubt the loveliest country on this continent, and I think can scarcely 

 be surpassed by any other in the world. Rio de Janeiro, with a motley population of two 

 hundred thousand, boasts, and justly too, of her public and private gardens, but it is of 

 the former we are about to Avrite. They are called the Imperial and the Botanical Gar- 

 dens, and are greatly resorted to by the citizens, who are real lovers of nature; and a 

 stranger is told here, as they are by the Italians " who has not seen Rome, (i.e. in Rio 

 the gardens) has seen nothing." They are indeed well worth a visit, and I shall never 

 forget the impression they made on me when I saw them for the first time, having just 

 left our snow-clad country, and our friends shivering in a March wind, to be thus sud 

 denly translated to this earthly paradise. 



Having selected a carriage, from the hundreds congregated about the palace, the dr 



