Retrospective Criticism. 381 



may suit that moist climate, and be there praised for lack of better, do not 

 succeed at all in our dry and hot climate. In asseveration, I need but to 

 appeal to your own pages for years back, where will be found announced 

 nearly all the above-named varieties with high encomiums, but which have, 

 one by one, taken their flight from your columns, and from your garden 

 also, as your experience decided upon their worthlessness. It is utterly 

 false that I have ever uttered conflicting opinions, but, like yourself and oth- 

 ers, I have, on importing new varieties, attached to them the European de- 

 scriptions, presuming them to be true, but, as soon as I have discovered 

 they were not so, I have done — what no one else has done, — I have pub- 

 lished the names of the worthless in a " Rejected List." Even yourself, 

 in your May number, p. 219, have " condemned with faint praise" the Ab- 

 erdeen Beehive, by declaring you could " see nothing, so far, of its superi- 

 ority over other kinds; it is not large ; and its whole merit, if it have any, 

 must consist in its productiveness.^^ I therefore ask of all impartial readers 

 if I was not acting most justly to the public, when I cautioned them against 

 another probable failure, based on all previous experience, and spurned the 

 idea of profiting by the republication of another European laudation, to be 

 followed, in all probability, by a future refutation. 



In regard to the Montevideo Pine, it has been ignorantly denominated 

 Turner's Pine, and your correspondent, with equal ignorance, states that 

 it originated in England. It is true that I have formed a distinct class of 

 its new varieties, and for the very especial reason, (of which your corres- 

 pondent seems equally ignorant,) that it is a distinct species. It occupies a 

 very erroneous position in the catalogue of the London Horticultural So- 

 ciety ; and I am not one of those who are willing to swallow any errors 

 simply because they have originated on the other side of the Atlantic, and 

 especially not, when they attach to American productions, as in the present 

 case. If the fruit is of " second quality" in the humid climate of Eng- 

 land, that matters not with me, when, in exercising ordinary intelligence, 

 I find its natural climate, (Buenos Ayres,) to assimilate, in its dry and 

 powerful summer heat, to our own. My commendation (p. 282,) refers 

 only to the " new seedling varieties which are perfectly hardy, but, by a 

 despicable subterfuge, your correspondent makes me refer only to the 

 original variety, and then goes on to state that it (the original Montevideo 

 Pine) " winter-kills, &c." But what will you think when I tell you, that he 

 has never cultivated the Montevideo Pine, and never seen one of its varieties, 

 and that all he says is the result of ignorance and malevolence ! That 

 writer has not entered my grounds for several years, but Messrs. Hunts- 

 man and Scott, secretaries of the Long Island Horticultural Society, are 

 well acquainted therewith, and I appeal to them whether all my remarks, 

 both oral and written, are not stated with candor, and also as to the usual 

 want of it by the writer I am responding to ; and, still further, as to the 

 fact, that there does not exist in this town any extensive collection of the 

 rarest varieties but my own. I have devoted many years of unceasing zeal 

 to the subject, and at a large expense, and every premium of our Horticul- 

 tural Society was this year awarded me. I have given, two years ago, my 



