212 THE FARMER AT HOME. 



HORTICULTURE. In its more limited application this is the 

 culture of the kitchen garden and orchard. As such, the chief differ- 

 ence between horticulture and agriculture is, that in the former art 

 the culture is performed by manual labor in a comparatively limited 

 space, called a garden ; while in the other it is performed jointly by 

 human and animal labor in fields, or in an extensive tract of ground 

 called a farm. In its more extended and popular sense, horticulture 

 not only means the cultivation of esculent vegetables and fruits, but 

 the management of ornamental plants and the formation of rural 

 scenery, for the purposes of utility and embellishment. It is difficult 

 to imagine any occupation more conducive to the promotion of good 

 taste and susceptibility to moral sentiment, than that of the well edu- 

 cated horticulturist. Nature is spread before him in full beauty ; it 

 is from her teachings that he constantly receives instruction ; and 

 thus, while he is storing his own mind with the idea of all that is 

 beautiful and lovely, he has the every-day consciousness of laboring 

 for the wants and for the pleasure of his fellow-creatures. Those 

 who inculcate a taste for horticulture are public benefactors, and The 

 Horticulturist of Downing should be in every farmer's family. 



HOTBED. In Gardening, a name given to a sort of bed con- 

 structed for the purpose of producing artificial heat, and the raising 

 of different sorts of culinary and other vegetables and plants. It is 

 chiefly by the aid of these beds, also, that various tender plants, flow- 

 ers, and fruits, are raised in perfection, which, without such artificial 

 heat, could not possibly be produced or continued in this climate. By 

 this means, likewise, vast numbers of seeds, which would otherwise 

 remain years in the earth, and some never grow at all, are made to 

 generate, form plants, continue their growth, and produce their flow- 

 ers and fruits as in their native soils. And the cuttings and slips of 

 many sorts of trees and shrubs, which would otherwise remain inac- 

 tive and perish, are also made soon to emit root-fibres and shoots, and 

 become plants in due time. 



By this means, too, many valuable esculent plants, that succeed 

 in the full ground at one time of the year or the other, are brought to 

 perfection much sooner than they could otherwise be obtained, as the 

 cucumber, asparagus, peas, beans, kidney-beans, radishes, carrots, 

 strawberries, and various salad herbs, and f other plants, which grow 

 in the open ground of the garden departments. And annual flower- 

 ing plants, as well as those of the herbaceous and shrubby kinds, are 

 also brought to more early perfection and flowering by them. They 

 are therefore of great use in the practice of gardening in numerous 

 cases of forcing early productions. 



HOUSES. Houses in our own country are of almost every possi- 

 ble imaginative device, from the cheapest log cabin to the most stately 

 and enduring mansion. In the country, however, there has generally 

 been manifested a lamentable want of taste and regard to comfort. 



