HORTICULTURE 



HORTICULTURE 



759 



is now remembered in the in- 

 teresting genus Hosackia, one 

 of the Leguminoste. A botanic 

 garden was established at 

 Charleston, S. C, about 1804, 

 and one in Maryland about the 

 same time. The Botanic Gar- 

 den at Cambridge, Mass., was 

 begun in 1805, an institution 

 which, together with tbe Pro- 

 fessorship of Natural History 

 at Cambridge, was fouiultr-d 

 largely through the efforts of 

 the Massachusetts Society for 

 Promoting Agriculture. The 

 society subscribed $500 for 

 the purpose, and raised more 

 by subscription. 



Early General Writings. 

 — The progress of Horticul- 

 ture may be traced in the 

 books devoted to the subject. 

 The earliest writings did not 

 separate Horticulture from 

 agriculture. The only work 

 exclusively devoted to agri- 

 cultural matters which ap- 

 peared in America before the 

 Revolution seems to have 

 been the "Essays upon Field- 

 Husbandry," begun in 1748 

 and completed in 1759, by Rev. 

 Jared Eliot, of Killingworth, 

 Conn., grandson of the famous 



apostle Eliot. (See Eliot.) "There are sundry books 

 on husbandry wrote in England," said Eliot, in his pre- 

 face. "Having read all on that subject I could obtain; 

 yet such is the difference of climate and Method of 

 Management between them and us, arising from Causes 

 that must make them always differ, so that those Books 

 are not very Useful to us. Besides this, the Terms of 

 Art made use of are so unknown to us, that a great 

 deal they Write is quite unintelligible to the generality 

 of New-England Readers." 



Justat the close of the Revolution, J. Hector St. John's 

 "Letters from an American Parmer "appeared, although 

 "the troubles that convulsed the American colonies had 

 not broken out when * * »^ some of the * « * 

 'letters were written." For a period of twenty-five years 

 following the close of the war the condition of our agri- 

 culture, and of all American institutions, was minutely 

 unfolded to the world through the writings of many 

 travelers, English and French, who made inquisitive 

 journeys into the new country. Strickland, an English 

 traveler, wrote in 1801 that "land in America affords 

 little pleasure or profit, and appears in a progress of 

 continually affording less. * * * Land in New York, 

 formerly producing 20 bushels to the acre, now produces 

 only 10. * * * Little profit can be found in the 

 present mode of agriculture of this country, and I ap- 

 preheud it to be a fact that it affords a bare subsistence. 

 * * * Decline has pervaded all the states." There is 

 abundant evidence, including a painstaking inquiry 

 made by Washington, to show that agriculture was at a 

 low state at the close of the century. It was in striking 

 contrast to its status a hundred years later, notwith- 

 standing the lugubrious writings of the present time. 



There was early development of the garden desire in 

 the South as well as in the North. In South Carolina 

 appeared the earliest American horticultural book of 

 which we have any record. This book is no longer ex- 

 tant, and it is known to this generation chiefly or wholly 

 from the following page in Ramsay's "History of South 

 Carolina," 1809: "The planters of Carolina have derived 

 so great profits from the cultivation of rice, indigo (see 

 Indigo) and cotton that they have always too much 

 neglected the culture of gardens. The high price of 

 their staple commodities in every period has tempted 

 them to sacrifice convenience to crops of a marketable 

 quality. There are numbers whose neglected gardens 

 neither afford flowers to regale the senses, nor the vege- 

 tables necessary to the comfort of their families, though 

 they annually receive considerable sums in money for 



r 



j 1080. Bartram's house as it was in 1805. Built in 1730-31. 



'■ In the margin is the Petre pear, raised by 1 

 a seedling sent from England in 1760 by Lady Petre. The 

 tree still bears. 



their crops sent to market. To this there have been 

 some illustrious exceptions of persons who cultivated 

 fjardens on a large scale, both for use and pleasure. The 

 first that can be recollected is Mrs. Lamboll. who, before 

 the middle of the eighteenth century, improved the south- 

 west extremity of King street [Cliarlestou], in a garden 

 which was richly stored with tlowers and other curiosi- 

 ties of nature, in addition t<» all the common vegetables 

 for family use. She was followed by Mrs. Logan and 

 Mrs. Hopton, who cultivated extensive gardens in Meet- 

 ing, George and King streets, on lands now covered with 

 houses. The former reduced the knowledge she liad ac- 

 quired by long experience and observation to a regular 

 system, which was published after her death, with the 

 title of 'The Gardener's Kalendar;' and to this day regu- 

 lates the practice of gardens in and near Charlestown." 

 Ramsay records that Mrs. Martha Logan was the daugh- 

 ter of Robert Daniel, one of the last proprietary gover- 

 nors of South Carolina. "Mrs. Logan was a great flo- 

 rist, and uncommonly fond of a garden. She was seventy 

 years old when she wrote her treatise on gardening, and 

 died in 1779. aged 77 years." 



The opening of the nineteenth century may be taken 

 as a convenient starting point for a narrative of the 

 evolution of American Horticulture. At that time Hor- 

 ticulture began to attain some prominence as distinct 

 from general agriculture, and the establishment of 

 peace after the long and depleting war with England 

 had turned the attention of the best citizens afresh to 

 the occupation of the soil. The example of Washington, 

 in returning to the farm after a long and honorable pub- 

 lic career, no doubt exerted great influence. His agri- 

 cultural correspondence was large, and much of it was 

 published at the opening of the century. His correspon- 

 dence with Arthur Young and Sir John Sinclair will be 

 found in volumes published in London in 1800 and 1801, 

 in Alexandria in 1803, and in Washington in 1847. De- 

 tails respecting the management of his plantations com- 

 prise vol. iv. of the Memoirs of the Long Island His- 

 torical Society, 1889. 



It was not until 1790, however, that an indigenous and 

 distinctly agricultural treatise other than Eliot's ap- 

 peared in America. At that time, the Rev. Samuel 

 Deane, vice-president of Bowdoin College, published his 

 "New England Ftirmer, or Georgical Dictionary," a cy- 

 clopedic work of the state of American agriculture. 

 This passed to a second edition in 1797, and to a third in 

 1822. (See Deune.) In 1799 J. B. Bordley published in 

 Philadelphia "Essays and Notes on Husbandry." Other 



