^) AMEEICAN HOETICULTUEE. 



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If tlie Englisli would read our agricultural and horticultural journals as we do 

 tlieirs, they would know us much better than they do through the medium of profes- 

 sional tourists ; but not one Englishman in a thousand knows that we have such 

 journals, and the few who do are innocent of deeming them worthy of perusal. A 

 very short time ago, one of the most intelligent horticulturists in England, who, for 

 twenty years or more, has had extensive and intimate business relations with this 

 country, remarked in a letter to us, that he thought it was time we had a weekly 

 paper in this country devoted to agriculture and horticulture ! It is a good many 

 years since this idea was practically entertained here. 



In the February number of BlachwooiVs Magazine^ \fe find a long, well written 

 notice of McIntosh's ^'^ Book of the Garden,'''' in which the following passage occurs. 

 We are sorry to have to criticise an article which has afibrdcd us so much real plea- 

 sure as this has, but it is necessary to our present purpose : 



"The pre-requisite elements necessary to originate and clierish a love of the horticultural 

 art may, perhaps, be stated to consist in the possession of some measure of wealth and of 

 leisure, in iutellectural culture and refinement of taste and feeling, in a moderately bad cli- 

 mate, and a tolerably sterile soil. The two last elements we enjoy in Scotland in very 

 considerable perfection, and hence the high character of Scotch gardeners. The versatili- 

 ties of our northern sky make them vigilant, alert, provident, and inventive. In sunny 

 Italy, boon nature with liberal hand threw into the lap of every gatherer the choicest fruits 

 and flowers, and the old Eomans had few incentives to study the resources of the horticiTl- 

 tural art. Roman horticulture, obedient to the suggestions of a southern clime, chiefly 

 displayed itself in cool grottos, and irriguous fountains, and umbrageous walks shaded by 

 the tall cypress, and the sweet-scented bay. In America they may have the wealth, but 



apparently not the 



"Eetired leisure, 

 That in trim gardens takes liis pleasure." 



Their pursuit of the ' all-mighty dollar ' is too passionate and intense to admit of interrup- 

 tion from the recreations of horticulture. A feverish and absorbing worldliness can find 

 no pleasure in the tranquil delights of a garden. Our cousins across the wave seem scarcely 

 to have reached that state of intellectual culture and repose that must apparently precede 

 the refinements of horticulture. In America the apples are excellent, and that best of aU 

 apples, the Neictown Pippin, will not thrive out of it ; but there the apple grows all but 

 spontaneously. Horticulture, hoAvever, is making progress in the United States, of which, 

 perhaps, the best evidence is the existence of a periodical devoted to the subject and pub- 

 lished in Boston, and the someAvhat cimous fact that the Kabnias and Ehododendi'ons origi- 

 nally imported into Britain from America, and improved by culture, are at this moment 

 undergoing a second transportation from our nurseries to the land of their nativity. Their 

 denization in Britain ought to invigorate their constitutions. And yet, having breathed the 

 air of England, it is possible that their lungs may repel the atmosphere Avhere slavery reigns, 

 and that at the sad sight they may sicken and die." 



Now is it not astonishing, that one who WTites so intelligent of the garden, and is 

 so thoroughly mibued with a love of it as this Blackwood reviewer evidently is, should 

 mar his beautiful essay by such a narrow, illiberal allusion to American horticulture ! (S. 

 Why could he not have rather passed America by unnoticed ? Was it too good an y> 



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