On Improvement in Horticulture. 423 



garden culture of fruits and esculent vegetables has hardly yet 

 commenced in many districts of our valley, while in other dis- 

 tricts the culture is but imperfectly understood — the relative mer- 

 its of different varieties are not appreciated, and their value, in 

 promoting the health, economy and comforts of a family, unknov/n 

 or disregarded. Few of the fine varieties of fruit, or of the oth- 

 er choice products of the garden, are seen in passing through our 

 country. Yet twenty years has done much to improve our hor- 

 ticulture; and we have abundant reason to anticipate far greater 

 improvements in the twenty years to come. 

 ^ How few of our garden products, which are now considered, 

 at least in imagination, indispensable to our wants, are the natural 

 products of our country. Hardly one in twenty is indigenous in 

 our soil. Our fathers have been collecting them, and we have 

 been collecting them, through the lapse of centuries; and yet, 

 bow comparatively small is our stock, com.pared with what Prov- 

 idence has provided for the wants and comforts of man. We 

 are strangers to many, very many, that grow naturally in our own 

 country. And as to varieties, nature and art are every year multi- 

 plying them, under the same laws that multiply the breeds of our 

 domestic animals, and that are diversifying the human countenance. 

 Did our gardens contain only the plants that are indigenous to our 

 country, the supply would indeed be scanty. But horticulture 

 has laid almost every clime, and every country, under contribu- 

 tion, to administer to our wants, and to gratify our senses. Most of 

 our grains, and a large portion of our fruits, and esculent roots, de- 

 rive their origin from other countries. The greatest part of them 

 came to us from Great Britain and Holland, which received them 

 from Italy, Italy from Greece, and Greece from Asia. Rye and 

 Avheat are indigenous in Siberia and Little Tartary; rice is the 

 natural product of Ethiopia; buckwheat, of Asia; kidney beans, 

 of the East Indies^ ^he beet and onion, of Spain and Portugal. 

 Peas came from the south of Europe, artichokes from Brazil, 

 peppers and cucumbers from India; the egg plant from Africa; 

 the tomato from South America; the pumpkin from Astracan; 

 the ruta-baga from Sweden; the cauliflower from Cyprus; and 

 the asparagus from Asia. Our fruits originated in countries equal- 

 ly remote from each other. Without pretending to decide upon 

 the disputed questions, whether all the cultivated apples originat- 

 ed from the wild crab, or whether any of our good varieties ex- 

 isted here when our shores were first visited by Europeans, I can 

 say this much, that we have esteemed varieties of this fruit now 

 under culture, which originated on the banks of the Po and of 

 the Danube, of the Rhine and the Oder, of the Seine and the 

 Thames, and on the shores of the Baltic and Caspian. The 

 peach came from Persia, the plum from Syria; the cherry from 

 Pontus; the quince from Austria; the almond from Barbary and 



