of Horticulture in the United States. 3 



home but in every country, connected with England, in either 

 hemisphere. Collectors have been sent out on exploring expe- 

 ditions, experiments have been made, grafts, seeds and cuttings 

 of valuable or new plants distributed, and scientific discoveries 

 and improvements in culture published — all of which have been 

 attended by the most beneficial results. 



Horticulture in the United States, it will readily be perceived, 

 has had to contend with many obstacles. Sepai-ated from the 

 old world by a wide ocean, it was for a long time with difficulty 

 that any of the rarer and finer vegetable productions of the 

 eastern continent could be brought out by emigrants. The in- 

 troduction of any thing farther than mere culinary vegetables for 

 the kitchen garden, and a few fruits for the orchard, was there- 

 fore necessarily slow. With but httle superfluous individual 

 wealth, and without any assistance or examples from a govern- 

 ment, which, struggling into existence, could only find resources 

 to encourage the useful and not the agreeable, whatever has been 

 done has been effected by private means, and to gratify private 

 taste. This, however, at the present time, is so much as to 

 afford cause of the highest gratification, and gives reason to hope 

 for the fulfilment of every reasonable anticipation for the future. 



Philadelphia has long claimed, and, in some respects, per- 

 haps, still merits to be considered, the first city in point of hor- 

 ticulture in the United States. This is owing in some degree to 

 the earlv settlement of the to\\'n, but in a great measure to its 

 having been, at an early period, the residence of a few devoted 

 botanists and amateurs, whose zeal infused a corresponding taste 

 among their fellow-citizens. First among these, and, indeed, 

 deserving to be placed first among the botanists and horticultu- 

 rists of America, stood John Bartram. Filled with the love of 

 nature and science, this naturalist explored, almost at the peril 

 of his hfe, the swamps, the mountains, the borders of the lakes, 

 and, in short, every part of North America, where he thought 

 a beautiful plant or a new forest tree might be discovered. 

 The fruits of these expeditions were brought home and 

 planted in his garden, established more than one hundred years 

 ago on the banks of the Schuylkill, in which are at this moment 

 growing some of the finest specimens of American trees to be 

 found in the world. Bartram's devotion to these pursuits be- 

 coming known abroad, his correspondence extended itself to the 

 most distinguished savans of Europe. Linnaeus, Collinson, Gro- 

 novius, Fothergill, Hans Sloane, and many otliers, were con- 

 stantly in the habit of receiving from him the productions of the 

 new world, and sending him the rarities of the old in exchange: 

 and thousands of the finest trees in the parks of Europe have 

 been reared from seeds sent from Bartram's Botanic Garden. 

 At Hamilton's seat, the Woodlands, near Philadelphia, the first 



