46 THE HORTICULTURE OF 



or twenty years ago, and under which Whitefield 

 preached in 1740, when he was not allowed to enter 

 any pulpit in Cambridge. Only one of this row 

 survives. 1 



Cambridge has been renowned for the culture of 

 fruits, especially of the pear and plum, as the exhibi- 

 tions of the last fifty years have shown. Here were 

 the experimental grounds and nurseries of Samuel 

 Pond, Henry Vandine, and numerous gardens of fruit 

 trees. 



Cambridge has possessed the most extensive nurseries 

 and plant-houses of any place in New England. Here 

 Mr. P. B. Hovey, with his brother, Charles M. Hovey, 

 established more than forty years ago, upon a piece of 

 wild woodland, the famous nursery of Hovey & Co., for 

 the sale of trees and plants, and here under the super- 

 vision and direction of the latter gentleman, associated 

 with their sons in the profession, he has supervised 

 and carried on the raising and testing of fruits, the 

 raising of seeds, and the hybridization and acquisition of 

 plants which have given him and his brother a renowned 

 reputation as horticulturists both at home and in foreign 

 lands. Mr. Hovey's love of nature and his ambitious 

 and enterprising disposition have inspired him to prove 

 under his own personal inspection every thing in the 

 way of horticulture that seemed desirable. In the 

 department of Pomology there have been fruited and 

 proved on these grounds more than fifteen hundred 

 varieties of fiuits, and from them there have been ex- 

 hibited on a single occasion three hundred varieties of 

 pears. Here were raised by the crossing of the straw- 

 berry the Boston Pine and Hovey's Seedling strawberry, 

 the last named being still, after almost fifty years of 

 trial, one of our finest varieties in cultivation. 



1 Letter of Mrs. Isabella James. 



