100 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The Massachusetts Horticultural Society, with a commendable foresight, 

 in its constitution provided its botanical, zoological and chemical professor- 

 ships. The work of Dr. Harris, on "Insects Injurious to Vegetation," is 

 from the pen of one of its officers ; and other papers of a similar character 

 from time to time. In the earlier numbers and volumes of the Massacliu- 

 setts Agricultural Journal, we find the ingenious and carefully-prepared 

 papers of the observing Professor Peck of Cambridge. What knowledge 

 has been obtained as to the history and habits of several of our most de- 

 structive insect foes, has been based upon, and is indebted to, these early 

 observations. Now these were made by personal observations at home, 

 and by personal care. Hence their value ; and only home observations, by 

 our own home naturalists or experimentalists, are of much or any value lo 

 us. We have a natural history of our own. Our plants, our weeds, our 

 cultivated crops, our insects, our birds, our soils or atmospheres, and our 

 winds, are local and peculiar. Scarcely anything is in common ; rocks, 

 peat meadows, sandy plains, loamy soils, waters, and rains and snows are 

 not European or British ; but JYorlh American. Hardly a plant is common 

 to both continents, and even the introduced weeds soon lose their transat- 

 lantic character. Thousands of the minutest forms of vegetable life, such 

 as the fungi, many of which are the pest of the farmer and of the horticul- 

 turist alike, are exclusively American, and many of them are confined to 

 sections only of our country. 



While then, in the wide domain of natural history and in the geological 

 features of a country, there is so much that is peculiar and new, it is not 

 strange or singular that seeds and fruits and varieties of vegetables, such 

 as the field roots and crops and grains and grasses, should be liable to the 

 particular contingencies of local conditions. Those who attempt the fruit 

 culture, know the reasonableness of this remark ; and I shall therefore 

 employ it for an illustration. Many seasons' trial and variety of soil only, 

 have rewarded by the successful result the patience of long-delayed hopes, 

 in some very estimable pear of European or British culture. It is not too 

 much to anticipate the condition of things, when certain sorts of fruits will 

 cease to be tried in our gardens from previous knowledge of the anticipa- 

 tion of failure, based on actual and certain data. If this is true in the 

 pear, why does not the same reasoning hold in the root crops, or in the 

 varieties of gramineous plants ? These observations, however, are not 

 made to deter experiment, for experiment is worth ten times more than any 

 theory. Yet who would care to repeat, (through ignorance though it may 

 be), the folly of sowing the seeds of a boreal climate in a tropical one, 

 whose heat and atmospheric conditions convert its biennial character into 

 the annual growth ? It would not be much better than this, to expect that 

 many plants, valuable abroad, would be valued here for the same proper- 

 ties ; neglecting the particular conditions of the case. Thus observation 

 the most extensive, and some knowledge of the varied aspects under which 

 the vegetation of different agricultural countries is subject, is essential to 

 guard against expenditures of time and money in the distribution or culti- 

 vation of seeds and grains and fruits. 



