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collecting and disseminating seeds, plants, models of 

 implements, and information on all subjects, connect- 

 ed with the theory and practice of gardening. 



Numerous esculent vegetables, delicious fruits, 

 superb flowers, ornamental shrubs and trees, cereal, 

 vulnerary, and medicinal plants, and others subservient 

 to the arts, manufactures, and public economy, both 

 exotic and indigenous, are either unknown to us, or 

 but partially cultivated. Several varieties, which 

 have been obtained from the equatorial regions, and 

 confined to the shelter and warmth of green-houses, 

 stoves and conservatories, have been found to bear 

 the severities of a boreal winter, even when first 

 exposed, or have been gradually acclimated ; and 

 many are annually detected, in every quarter of the 

 globe, which deservedly merit naturalization ; and 

 still, what numbers are " born to blush unseen, and 

 waste their fragrance on the desert air !" 



Most of our common fruits, flowers, and oleraceous 

 vegetables were collected by the Greeks and Romans 

 from Egypt, Asia, and other distant climes, and suc- 

 cessively extending over Western Europe, finally 

 reached this country. But so gradual was their 

 progress, " it was not till the reign of Henry VIII. 

 that any salads, carrots, turnips, cabbages, or other 

 edible roots were produced in England. The little 

 of these vegetables that was used, was imported from 

 Holland." Fuller observes, that " Gardening was 

 first brought into England, for profit, about the com- 

 mencement of the seventeenth century, before which 

 we fetched most of our cherries from Holland, apples 

 from France, and hardly had a mess of rath-ripe peas. 



