:2/.4i:S! 



WHAT IS CULTIVATION? 117 



If not, there must be an end to human progress before its object is accomplished. 

 Civilization and refinement must proclaim their work finished before their grand ulti- 

 matum is realized. Taste must be satisfied to leave her work undone. The sons of 

 earth must conclude that deformity is pleasant to the eye and improving to the mind, 

 and that the Eden created for man was not the paradise suited to his ambition, but 

 scenes lower, prospects more dim, and enjoyments less attractive, are more congenial 

 to the aspirations of his mind, than those whichi his Creator, in love and kindness 

 provided for him. 



I have further sayings to utter, on streets and street trees, of which the above are 

 but introductory. A wrong and wasteful taste has prevailed on this subject — a taste 

 which had no reference to circumstances. We have yet a great deal to do to get the 

 world right in rural matters. Patience and perseverance under a constant train of 

 discouragements can alone effect the object. Let us go forward in all the strength a 

 righteous cause can give, and though we have frequent discouragements, we shall 

 triumph at last. 



WHAT IS CULTIVATION? 



BY WM. W. VALE, M. D., FLUSHING. 



We like to see a garden ivell laid out and cultivated. There is something in the 

 contemplation of its design, the harmony of its parts, and the neatness and skill with 

 which it is kept up, that affords a peculiar kind of gratification' to every true lover of 

 the beautiful in art or nature. But all gardens are not well cultivated. Some have no 

 design, and are but a heterogeneous aggregate of an absurd and preposterous fiincy, — 

 expensive it may be, but nothing more. No one portion of them is in keeping Avith 

 another, though every walk and bed is scrupulously clean — this is the gardener's 

 pride, and he '■ lays himself out on it " with perfect composure ; for his knowledge of 

 what a garden ought to be, " hatb this extent, no more." Again we see design, and 

 a certain harmony in every department, but the whole lacks that great essential, taste — 

 the combination of all the elements embraced in location and surface, developed with 

 sound and discriminative judgment. A flat surface and straight lines in the walks, 

 the trees, the shrubbery, form the ultimatum of many gardeners' ambition, and they 

 will take infinite pains to destroy every natural beauty, in order to accomplish this 

 most undesirable and monotonous object. 



But we did not set out to* speak so much of tasteful designs, and the laying out of 

 gardens, as of their being well cultivated. The divisions of them may be round or 

 square, or oval, or of any shape or size, the surface flat or undulating, the soil poor 

 or rich, sandy or loamy, the advantages of location and aspect good or bad, yet the 

 question comes at last, is the garden cultivated with skill, and according to the best 

 lights of scientific horticulture ? What is cultivation ? To the man of science there 

 is but one answer to this question ; with the superficial and illiterate there are many, 

 and scarcely any two of these shall agree in their definition. One man removes the 



