b THE HORTICULTURE OF 



and gardens were considered as among the most desir- 

 able acquisitions of landholders. Among the earliest 

 of which we have notes were the orchard of Blackstone, 

 the nurseries of Gov. Endicott at Salem, the orchard and 

 vineyard of Gov. Winthrop, and one hundred and fifty 

 years later the orchards described by Paul Dudley in 

 Roxbury, the orchards and nurseries of John Hancock 

 on or near the site of the present State House, and of 

 Judge John Lowell, who died in 1802, at Koxbury, 

 and who is supposed to have built one of the first 

 greenhouses in this part of the country. The Judge 

 was father of John Lowell, the distinguished agricul- 

 turist and pomologist, of whom we shall speak here- 

 after. 



The colonial legislature granted to John Winthrop, 

 then Governor of the colony, a section of land in our 

 harbor known as Conant's Island, but afterwards as 

 Governor's Island, on condition that he should plant 

 thereon a vineyard, and should pay as rent therefor a 

 hogshead of wine. Whether this vineyard was planted 

 or not we have no means of ascertaining, but the con- 

 tract was afterwards altered to make the rent two 

 bushels of apples a year, one for the Governor and one 

 for the General Court. 



What the intermediate progress of horticulture in our 

 vicinity may have been after the time when Endicott 

 planted his pear tree at Salem, and Winthrop his orchard 

 on Conant's Island, we can not positively determine. 

 But we find in the " Philosophical Transactions, London, 

 1734," a paper communicated to the Royal Society 

 by Hon. Paul Dudley, of Roxbury, Chief Justice of Mas- 

 sachusetts, entitled " Some Observations on the Plants 

 of New England, with Remarkable Instances of the 

 Power of Vegetation," which gives us an account of the 



