268 Landscape Gardening 



These last words, we confess, startled us so much, that 

 we opened our eyes rather widely, and called upon the name 

 of Dr. Van Mons, the great Belgian - - spoke of the grati- 

 tude of the pomological world, etc. To our surprise, Po- 

 mona declared that she had her doubts about the Belgian 

 professor - - she said he was a very crotchety man, and 

 although he had devoted his life to her service, yet he had 

 such strange whims and caprices about improving fruits by 

 a regular system of degeneration or running them out, that 

 she could make nothing of him. "Depend upon it," she 

 said, "many of his sorts are worthless, - - most of them have 

 sickly constitutions, and," she added, with some emphasis, 

 snapping her fingers as she spoke, "I would not give one 

 sound healthy seedling pear, springing up under natural 

 culture in your American soil, for all that Dr. Van Mons 

 ever raised!" [We beg our readers to understand that these 

 were Pomona's words and not ours.] She gave us, after 

 this, very special charge to impress it upon her devotees in 

 the United States, not to be too much smitten with the love 

 of new names, and great collections. It gave her more sat- 

 isfaction to see the orchards and fruit-room of one of her 

 liege subjects teeming with the abundance of the few sorts 

 of real golden merit, than to see whole acres of new varieties 

 that have no other value than that of novelty. She said, 

 too, that it was truly amazing how this passion for collecting 

 fruits - - a genuine monomania - - grew upon a poor mortal, 

 when he was once attacked by it; so that indeed, if he could 

 not add every season at least fifty new sorts from the con- 

 tinent, with some such outlandish names, (which she said 

 she would never recognize), as Beurre bleu d'ete nouveau de 

 Scrowsywowsy, etc., he would positively hang himself in a 

 fit of the blues! 



Pomona further drew our attention in some sly remarks 

 that were half earnest and half satire, to the figure that 

 many of these "Belgian pericarps" cut at those handsome 

 levees, which her votaries among us hold in the shape of 

 the great September exhibitions. She said it was really 

 droll to see, at such shows as those of our two large cities, 



