PREFACE 



A MAN born in one of the largest gardens, and upon the banks 

 of one of the noblest rivers in America, ought to have a natural 

 right to talk about fruit trees. 



Indeed the subject deserves not a few, but many words. " Fine 

 fruit is the flower of commodities." It is the most perfect union 

 of the useful and the beautiful that the earth knows. Trees 

 full of soft foliage ; blossoms fresh with spring beauty ; and, 

 finally,-fruit, rich, bloom-dusted, melting, and luscious such 

 are the treasures of the orchard and the garden, temptingly offer- 

 ed to every landholder in this bright and sunny, though tempe- 

 rate climate. 



" If a man," says an acute essayist, " should send for me to 

 come a hundred miles to visit him, and should set before me a 

 basket of fine summer fruit, 1 should think there was some pro- 

 portion between the labour and the reward." 



I must add a counterpart to this. He who owns a rood of 

 proper land in this country, and, in the face of all the pomonal 

 riches of the day, only raises crabs and choke-pears, deserves 

 to lose the respect of all sensible men. The olassical antiqua- 

 rian must pardon one for doubting if, amid all the wonderful 

 beauty of the golden age, there was anything to equal our deli- 

 cious modern fruits our honied Seckels, and Beurres, our melt- 

 ing Rareripes. At any rate, the science of modern horticulture 

 has restored almost everything that can be desired to give a para- 

 disiacal richness to our fruit-gardens. Yet there are many in 

 utter ignorance of most of these fruits, who seem to live under 

 some ban of expulsion from all the fair and goodly productions 

 of the garden. 



Happily, the number is every day lessening. America is a 



