52 INTRODUCTION. 



fifty thousand fruit trees of different kinds in their nursery, which 

 had been established for more than thirty years. 



It would appear, that, notwithstanding the increase of commer- 

 cial nurseries, the neighborhood of Boston was far behind other 

 parts of the country in its ability to furnish the trees and plants 

 needed in a garden, or to supply the market with choice fruit, and 

 that the advance in horticulture was confined mainly to private 

 gardens, but that the latter were not excelled in any part of the 

 country. A private garden at Jamaica Plain, that of John Prince, 

 produced for dessert, in August, 1825, eleven varieties of pears, 

 four each of plums, apples, and grapes, and two of apricots, be- 

 sides oranges, mulberries, and muskmelons. Yet it was thought 

 that there were not at that time more than twenty market-farmers 

 in the vicinity of Boston who gave much attention to fruit as a 

 source of profit. 1 In 1822 Mr. Lowell said, 2 " We are utterly 

 destitute, in New England, of nurseries for fruit trees on an exten- 

 sive scale. We have no cultivators on whom we can call for a 

 supply of the most common plants of the smaller fruits, such as 

 strawberries, gooseberries, raspberries, of the superior kinds ; we 

 have no place to which we can go for plants to ornament our 

 grounds ; we have not a single seedsman who can furnish us with 

 fresh seeds of annual flowers on which we can place a reliance." 

 A year later, he asked, 8 " Shall it be said, that from June to Sep- 

 tember in our scorching summers, a traveller may traverse Massa- 

 chusetts, from Boston to Albany, and not be able to procure a 

 plate of fruit, except wild strawberries, blackberries, and whor- 

 tleberries, unless from the hospitality of private gentlemen? " 



A sketch of the history of horticulture in this country would be 

 incomplete without some mention of the literature of the subject. 

 Here, also, as might be expected, we find agriculture preceding 

 horticulture, the first work, the Essays upon Field-Husbandry, by 

 the Rev. Jared Eliot of Killingworth, Conn., begun in 1747, but 

 barely alluding to fruit culture. Eliot, who was a grandson of 

 the apostle Eliot, introduced the white mulberry into Connecticut, 

 and wrote a treatise on the mulberry tree and silk-worms. The 

 New-England Farmer, or Georgical Dictionar}^ of Dr. Samuel 

 Deane, was published in 1790. The American Gardener, by 



* New England Farmer, Vol. IV. p. 60. 

 Mass. Ag. Repos., Vol. VH. p. 137. 

 Ibid., Vol. VII. p. 320. 



