LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 469 



cemetery at Mount Auburn should ultimately offer an 

 example of landscape or picturesque gardening. But 

 when the connection of the Society with Mount Auburn 

 was severed, little could be done directly for the ad- 

 vancement of gardening as a fine art, except by the 

 offer of prizes for the best application of taste and skill 

 in laying out grounds. The inducements offered by the 

 Society were afterwards enlarged by the donation, from 

 a gentleman whose own grounds form one of the best 

 examples of landscape gardening to be found in the 

 United States, of a fund for the dissemination of a more 

 refined taste for elegant rural improvement. Thus the 

 purpose of the Society has been fulfilled, not only in 

 Mount Auburn and other cemeteries, but in the private 

 grounds of many members of the Society and others, 

 which, as the finest specimens of art, with their beauti- 

 ful lawns, and rare trees, shrubs, and other plants, so 

 disposed as to produce the best effects, present the 

 strongest attractions either to residents here or to visit- 

 ors from abroad. 



The Society has sought the promotion of horticulture 

 by diffusing information on the subject through its pub- 

 lications, and by collecting a horticultural library, of 

 both which we have fully spoken in a previous chapter. 

 But it may also claim no small influence in creating a 

 horticultural literature suited to the peculiar circum- 

 stances of our country, where formerly only European 

 works could be found. Previously to the formation of 

 the Society there was not a horticultural journal in the 

 United States; but a few years after two were estab- 

 lished in the city of Boston, one of which was con- 

 tinued for thirty-four years. These, with the books 

 written by the members, and the articles prepared by 



