INTRODUCTION. 



SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF HORTICULTURE IN THE 

 UNITED STATES UP TO THE YEAR 1829. 



THE history of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society may be 

 appropriately introduced by a sketch of the commencement and 

 progress of horticulture in this country, and especially in Massa- 

 chusetts, previously to the formation of the Society. Though the 

 primary object of the first settlers of the State was freedom in the 

 enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, their attention was, like 

 that of all other colonists, turned to the cultivation of the soil 

 as a means of subsistence. They brought with them a share of 

 that love of gardening which they had in their former home, and 

 we find them, from the very first, engaged in the growth, not 

 only of the grains which afford the staff of life, but of fruits and 

 vegetables, which, to a certain extent, are regarded as luxuries ; 

 and one or two notices show that the cultivation of flowers was 

 not wholly neglected. 



The report brought by the explorers sent out by the Pilgrims on 

 the 16th of November, 1620, that they found "divers fair Indian 

 baskets, filled with corn, some whereof was in ears, fair and good, 

 of divers colors, which seemed to them a very goodly sight, having 

 seen none before, of which rarities they took some to carry to their 

 friends on shipboard, like as the Israelites' spies brought from 

 Eshcol some of the good fruits of the land," 1 is in the spirit of 

 men who not only rejoiced in finding the means of subsistence, but 

 loved the culture of the ground. 



' The scattered notices in the early writers show the Pilgrims as 

 glad to learn of the aborigines the method of manuring and plant- 

 ing their fields of Indian corn. " Squanto showed them how to set, 



1 Morton's New England's Memorial, p. 40, ed. 1828. 



