HORTICULTURISTS 



HORTICULTURISTS 



1575 



tion. He was also ever on the alert to locate promising 

 specimens of wild fruits of the state, especially grapes, 

 raspberries, wild crabs and persimmons. The orchards 

 which he planted still contain (1914) a large collec- 

 tion of these wild fruits, which were in process of 

 amelioration at the time of his death. Among his 

 special contributions to the list of varieties originated in 

 the state may be mentioned the Miller persimmon, 

 Evans peach, Evans raspberry and Evans crab, the 

 latter being a large-fruited form of the native crab 

 Pyrus ioensis. It was largely through his assistance 

 and advice that an extensive experiment in breeding 

 apples was inaugurated at the South Missouri Fruit 

 Experiment Station in the nineties. As a result of this 

 work hundreds of varieties, crosses between leading 

 commercial sorts, were originated with the hope that 

 some might combine the more desirable character- 

 istics of both parents. This work is now being con- 

 ducted by Colonel Evans' oldest son, who is dissemina- 

 ting these new sorts, many of which have much promise 

 in the state. The writings of Colonel Evans consist 

 largely of horticultural papers which have appeared 

 during the past fifty years in the Reports of the Mis- 

 souri State Horticultural Society. j Q WRITTEN. 



Fessenden, Thomas Green, editor and author, 

 1771-1837, founded "The New England Farmer" at 

 Boston in 1822, and edited it until his death. The 

 present "New England Farmer" is not the lineal suc- 

 cessor of Fessenden's paper. Fessenden is chiefly noted 

 as a satirical poet, and he was more of a literary man 

 than a gardener. He was born at Walpole, New Hamp- 

 shire, was graduated at Dartmouth College in 1796, 

 and studied law. He went to England in 1803, and 

 there published his humorous poem, the "Terrible 

 Tractoration." He settled in Boston about 1804. In 

 addition to "The New England Farmer," he edited the 

 short-lived "Horticultural Register," and "The Silk 

 Manual." He wrote "The Complete Farmer and Rural 

 Economist," "The New American Gardener," and 

 "The American Kitchen Gardener," three books of a 

 cyclopedic nature designed to cover the fields of agri- 

 culture, horticulture and vegetable-gardening respec- 

 tively. They adhered very closely to the contempora- 

 neous English type of horticultural writing. These 

 books appear to have passed through many editions, 

 but they were little altered from issue to issue. They 

 often seem to lack the enthusiasm of direct contact 

 with growing plants. Fessenden's time was one of gen- 

 eral farming, and the viewpoint of gardening was 

 mostly that of the home or amateur. He lived before 

 the days of specialized farming on a large scale, and 

 of commercial horticulture and floriculture. During the 

 greater part of his editorship of "The New England 

 Farmer" there was but one other important American 

 agricultural paper, "The American Farmer," which was 

 published at Baltimore, beginning 1819. The most 

 important contemporaneous American writings on 

 horticulture of a cyclopedic nature were "The American 

 Gardener's Calendar," by Bernard M'Mahon, Phila- 

 delphia, 1806, and "The American Gardener" of John 

 Gardiner and David Hepburn, Georgetown, District 

 of Columbia, 1804. For a copy of "The Country 

 Lovers," Fessenden's once famous song to the tune of 

 Yankee Doodle, together with Hawthorne's pen-pic- 

 ture of the man, and an account of his interesting life, 

 see Duyckinck, "Cyclopedia of American Literature," 

 595-599. WILHELM MILLER. 



Fuller, Andrew S. (Fig. 1879), horticultural writer, 

 was born in Utica, New York, on August 3, 1828, and died 

 May 4, 1896, at his home at Ridgewood, New Jersey. At 

 the age of eighteen he went to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 

 where he worked at the carpenter's trade, and became 

 particularly skilful in the construction of greenhouses, 

 and built a small one for himself on a city lot. Here he 

 brought together a varied collection of plants, the care 



of which founded the nucleus of his later attainments 

 and renown as a horticulturist. In 1855, he moved to 

 Flushing, Long Island, when William R. Prince offered 

 Mr. Fuller the management of his greenhouses. But 

 his ambition did not allow him to remain long in the 

 employ of others, and in 1857 he removed to Brooklyn, 

 and engaged in grape and small-fruit culture, which 

 were then in their infancy. Here he gave particular 

 attention to the improvement of the strawberry by 

 cross-fertilization and selection of the best of the many 

 thousands of seedlings raised by him. The most 

 famous of these were Brooklyn Scarlet, Monitor and 

 Colonel Ellsworth, the first of which was generally 

 recognized as the highest-flavored strawberry in exist- 

 ence at the time, although too soft for market. The 

 entire stock of 300,000 plants was purchased by the 

 "New York Tribune," which sent them out as pre- 

 miums to its subscrib- 

 ers, in consequence of 

 which they have been 

 widely known as the 

 "Tribune strawber- 

 ries." It was during 

 this period that Fuller 

 wrote his first book, 

 the "Strawberry Cul- 

 turist." Realizing the 

 necessity of having 

 more ground for experi- 

 mentation, and in order 

 to escape the noise and 

 turmoil of the city, he 

 bought a large piece 

 of land near Ridge- 

 wood, New Jersey. 

 This, when he moved 

 on it, early in the six- 

 ties, was little more 

 than a barren waste, 

 but it developed into one of the most charming homes 

 and interesting and instructive garden spots in the 

 country. Almost every species and variety of orna- 

 mental trees and shrubs hardy in the locality were 

 represented, and his collection of small-fruits was the 

 most complete in the country. Immediately after the 

 publication of the "Strawberry Culturist," he began 

 working on the "Grape Culturist." This was followed 

 by the "Small Fruit Culturist," "Practical Forestry," 

 "Propagation of Plants," and the "Nut Culturist." 

 The last of them he was fond of calling his "monument," 

 as he did not intend to write another book, and so fate 

 decided that it should be. He died a few days after 

 he had finished his manuscript, and never saw the 

 completed book, of which he was perhaps more proud 

 than of any other of his works, yet in the history of 

 horticultural literature his "Small Fruit Culturist" 

 will, no doubt, occupy the foremost rank. It was more 

 instrumental in the development and building up of 

 the great industry to which it is devoted than any book 

 written before or after, and in any land. It was trans- 

 lated into German and published in Weimar in 1868. 

 His books contain but a small part of his writings. His 

 editorial and other contributions to the "American 

 Agriculturist," to "The Rural New-Yorker," of which 

 he was part owner for a time, the "New York Sun," 

 of which he was agricultural editor for twenty-six 

 years, "American Gardening" and other periodicals 

 would fill hundreds of volumes. He was also editor of 

 the "Record of Horticulture," 1866 and 1867. While 

 Mr. Fuller was principally known as a horticulturist, 

 there was hardly a branch of natural science to which he 

 had not devoted more or less attention. His entomo- 

 logical collection, especially that of colepptera, was one 

 of the most complete in the country; his mineralogical 

 and archeological collections contained many rare speci- 

 mens, and his horticultural library was one of the best 



1879. Andrew S. Fuller. 



