AMERICAN HOKTICULTUEE. 



whose "hearts never leap Avhen the first sun's drop shows its welcome face on the 

 green" — who, in short, never see a garden but through some aristocratic enclosure, 

 or over the top of some exclusive, everlastin.g wall of stone, like that which encircles 

 our penitentiaries ! Look at the exhibitions of England, and you will see to what class 

 the privilege of gardening is confined ; the contributions are either from professional 

 cultivators or from the titled nobility. How is it here? The contributors are working 

 people — merchants and mechanics in the humblest walks of life — the large majority 

 being their own gardeners; their productions, the fruit of their own labor, and skill, 

 and taste. 



But horticulture is really making progress in the United States, notwithstanding 

 our "absorbing worldliness" and low state of intellectual culture. The best evi- 

 dence of this progress is the existence of a horticultural journal in Boston, and the 

 importation of Kalmias and Rhododendrons from Britain ! 



What evidence ! Let us give our Scotch friend, who we fear does not see far 

 beyond his own misty hills, some better evidence, or, at least more of it. "Wq have 

 four journals exclusively devoted to horticulture — one in Boston, one in Philadelphia, 

 one in Cincinnati, and one in Rochester. The last has been in existence some seven 

 years or more. But these are not all. AYe dare say that we might enumerate jour- 

 nals by the score, weekly and monthly, from Maine to Louisiana, all of which are 

 devoted to agi-iculture and horticulture combined, aud many of them with a circulation 

 twenty-fold greater than the most popular journal published in the good city of Edin- 

 bui-gh — the modern Athens. How many horticultural societies have we ? Not less 

 than a dozen in the State of New York alone ! — we could not guess at the number 

 in New England and the West — besides our pomological societies, &c., <fec. As 

 to the importation of trees and plants, ask Messrs. Rivers, Skirvixg, Le Roy, 

 and fifty other European nurserymen, and they will reply that Americans not only 

 import Rhododendrons and Kalmias, but fruit trees, and ornamental trees and shrubs, 

 and roses, by the ship-load — absolutely draining the nurseries of Europe to the dregs. 

 The catalogues of nurserymen and florists are ransacked, and every novelty must be 

 had, from the newest Daisy or Hollyhock to the Victoria regia itself. The rare and 

 costly orchids of India, the evergreens of North- West Amei'ica, the Rhododendrons of 

 the Himalaya, the novelties from the "celestial empire;" in fact everything new and 

 wonderful we must have as soon as it is announced. If importing plants be a test of 

 our taste and progress, we are in a very hopeful state. 



The allusion to slavery is far fetched and sadly out of place. Only for the well 

 known propensity that exists on the other side the water to dabble in this matter on 

 all occasions, in season and out of season, in fact never to name x\merica without hint- 

 ing at it, we should be quite at a loss to know why it was introduced here. In the 

 discussion of political subjects, such a thrust would have been excusable ; for, unfortu- 

 nately, there seems to be in politics a something that tends to create and foster a 

 hostile or unfriendly spirit between either nations or parties who represent opposite 

 principles ; but in horticulture, there is everything to promote harmony and to 

 ish whatever there be in human nature that is liberal, open-hearted and magnanim 



