23 



The simple cup of an unsightly weed has been trans- 

 formed into the most delicate of the favorites of the 

 garden. Austere fruits have been compelled to 

 adopt delicious flavors. The emigrants of the 

 equator, the tropics, and the circles, have been nat- 

 uralized inmates of bower, of border, and of green- 

 house. The reformers of the vegetable kingdom 

 have pushed their innovations to the very verge of 

 revolution. The queenly Rose, who for ages has 

 reigned over the realm of the beautiful with the un- 

 disputed sovereignty of loveliness, may soon be 

 compelled to divide the empire of the year with her 

 rising rival, the Dahlia. The Poppy, which spreads 

 its gorgeous flowers over the territory of one of the 

 proprietors of Cambridge, may be enabled to add 

 the fragrance of a perfumed breath to the splendor 

 of its brilliant coloring. The broad good humored 

 disk of the sunflower, which the Duke of Saxe 

 Wiemar wrongly supposed was the principal orna- 

 ment of the garden scenery of Worcester,' may yet 

 turn to the light a globe of yellow leaves as com- 

 pact as the circling florets of the Snowball. 



The soil of New England is sterile when compar- 

 ed with the exuberant fertility of regions blessed 

 with higher external advantages. The harvest wind 

 does not here roll to the green margin of the field 

 so heavy waves of grain as those which it heaves 

 on the plains of the west. The productiveness of 

 our territory is derived from the hardy industry 



(1) This great error of the German traveller, is contained in the following passage, 

 extracted from his description of Worcester, in 1825 ; 



'• The gardens we passed had rather a wild appearance. They cultivate kitchen 

 vegetables, a few water mellons, and fruit : we saw no flowers excepting the sun- 

 flower." Travels. Philadelphia, 1828, vol. \, page 53. 



