8 PREFACE. 



the woman, it was time he was turned out of Eden. All 

 the best things of the garden suggest refinement and cour- 

 tesy. Nature might have contented herself with producing 

 seeds only, but she accompanies the prosaic action with 

 fragrant flowers and delicious fruit. It would be well to 

 remember this in the ordinary courtesies of life. 



Moreover, since the fruit-garden and farm do not develop 

 in a straightforward, matter-of-fact way, why should I write 

 about them after the formal and terse fashion of a manual 

 or scientific treatise ? The most productive varieties of fruit 

 blossom and have some foliage which may not be very 

 beautiful, any more than the departures from practical prose 

 in this book are interesting ; but, as a leafless plant or bush, 

 laden with fruit, would appear gaunt and naked, so, to the 

 writer, a book about them without any attempt at foliage 

 and flowers would seem unnatural. The modem chronicler 

 has transformed history into a fascinating story. Even sci- 

 ence is now taught through the charms of fiction. Shall 

 this department of knowledge, so generally useful, be left 

 only to technical prose ? Why should we not have a class 

 of books as practical as the gardens, fields, and crops, con- 

 cerning which they are written, and at the same time having 

 much of the light, shade, color, and life of the out-of-door 

 world ? I merely claim that I have made an attempt in the 

 right direction, but, like an unskilful artist, may have so 

 confused my lights, shades, and mixed my colors so badly, 

 that my pictures resemble a strawberry-bed in which the 

 weeds have the better of the fruit. 



Liberal outlines of this work appeared in "Scribner's 

 Magazine," but the larger scope afforded by the book has 

 enabled me to treat many subjects for which there was no 



