development of science. The largest fruit trees the writer ever beheld, colossal pear 

 and venerable apple trees, grow beneath the walls of the City of Chester, Kngland, 

 in what was once a part of the gardens attached to the Convent of St. John of Je- 

 rusalem. At Coutances in Normandy, an ancient archiepiscopal see, surrounded by 

 fj-ev massy walls, covered with the lichens of ages, which line a portion of the prin- 

 cipal street, is an orchard of anticjuated pear and apple trees, which look like deni- 

 zens of a medieval forest. And at Nantes, on the rich alluvion of the yellow Loire, 

 in the grounds of the Madeleines, and on the islands of the Sevre, are heavy cluni])3 

 of large old trees, pear and apple, medlar and chestnuts, many of which probably 

 budded and shed their leaves under the rule of Henri Quatre. 



To descend to a later date — passing the period when Shakspeare planted his 

 mulberry and avenue of limes, to the time when the magnificent gardens of Chats- 

 worth and Trentham were planned and planted by their lordly owners, we find the 

 great English moralist advocating the cause of Pomona and Sylvaj and may we not 

 pardon somewhat of his bearish demeanor and dogmatic aristocracy for the help that 

 he has rendered ? There is a well-known and ludicrous conclu.sion to his first piece 

 of advice upon the subject, but which does not by any means detract from the value 

 of the recommendation. Dr. William Maxwell says, Dr. Johnson "advises me, if 

 possible, to have a good orchard. He knew, he said, a clergyman of small income, 

 who brought up a family very respectably, which he clikjiy fed xcith apjjie dumj)- 

 lings." 



Johnson gave great offence to the Scotch by his animadversions on the want of 

 woodland in that part of Britain, and we know from Lord Hailes and Sir Alexander 

 Dick, that these very strictures were the primum mobile of the extensive system of 

 planting those sterile lands which have been in operation for the last sixty or eighty 

 years. His Fid us Achates, Boswell, tells us in his precise way, under date of 24tli 

 Sept. 1777, " He recommended me to plant a considerable part of a large moorish 

 (moorland ?) farm which I had purchased, and he made several calculations of the 

 expense and profit. * * * * \\q pressed upon me the importance of planting 

 at the first in a very efficient manner, quoting the saying, ' In hello non licet his 

 errare,' and adding, this is equally true in planting." 



It would perhaps be well for the future of Northern Illinois if some more polished 

 Johnson of our own day and generation, would rake down on our farmers and specu- 

 lators in land in a manner to be felt. They have, indeed, recently taken the initia- 

 tive in planting in a degree, on the fence lines, and in front of city lots; but in 

 most instances, the '' subjects," trees I cannot call them, had better have been al- 

 lowed to dwindle out a pinched existence in the swamps from whence they were 

 dug. A poetical imagination on viewing a row of trees of this description, planted 

 in unbroken prairie, in holes eighteen inches in diameter, and well "boot-heeled" 

 in, would, I opine, be strongly reminded of Falstaff's army. Of course not one 

 half of such trees so treated can ever be expected to live, and those which do survive 

 only remain to furnish the idea of a sapling-hospital. 



