66 QUERIES AND ANSWERS. 



is all wrong. Why? Because the egg plant, the tomato, the bean, the 

 corn, are fruits. How many persons have ever taken the trouble to think 

 over the difference between a culinary vegetable and a culinary fruit? 

 What is that difference ? It is a difference of origin of development. A 

 culinary vegetable is properly the result of abnormal development of 

 vegetable tissue, as in the enlarged leaves of the cabbage or the thick 

 roots of the beet or carrot, while a culinary fruit, as also all fruit, is a 

 growth following and resulting from inflorescence, as after the flower 

 comes upon thp same stem the egg plant, pepper, tomato, cucumber, 

 watermelon, pumpkin. All these are fruits just as much as the apple, 

 pear or grape. Some people might say fruits only grow on hard-wooded 

 plants, as on trees and bushes, but not so, as a pea is a fruit, an ear of corn 

 is a fruit. Nevertheless, these distinctions do not make tliem any easier 

 or harder to produce, do not make them more or less profitable. 



What is 375. Q. What is agriculture ? 



Agricuitare? A. Agriculture refers to the tillage of the earth over broad fields, as for 

 the raising of cereals, grass or tubers. Gardening, on the other hand, 

 refers to the culture of small inclosed areas. This application of the lat- 

 ter term was quite correct originally, but it is now common for mere 

 vegetable gardens to equal the area of ordinary grain and grass farms, 

 requiring in their cultivation a degree of general intelligence, technical 

 skill, and an amount of activity, implements and labor exceeding that 

 expended upon large farms. 



■What is 376. Q. What is gardening ? 



Gardening? j^ Gardening again differs from farming in the range of varieties culti- 

 vated. The farmer may devote his acres to those crops to which the land 

 is adapted, but the gardener is expected to grow the entire list of vegeta- 

 bles, without reference to the composition of the soil. Such cultivation, 

 to be successful, must be to some extent scientific. The cultivator must 

 possess a knowledge of the facts and principles which underlie his art or 

 he will certainly fail. Gardening, whicli formerly was described as agri- 

 culture upon circumscribed areas, has ever shared with the latter the 

 esteem of mankind. Twenty-four hundred years ago Socrates said, "It 

 is the source of health, strength, plenty, riches and honest pleasure ;" 

 and a poetic English writer said, " It is amid its scenes and pursuits that 

 life flows pure, the heart more calmly beats." 



Market 377. Q. How does market gardening differ from private family gar- 



Gardeuing. dcning ? 



A. It is done on a larger scale. Market gardening on a large scale may 

 be termed commercial gardening, as the operator must, to a certain extent, 

 be a merchant, fully alive to the import of fluctuating prices and quick 

 to change his point of shipment or his consignee. 



Market 378. Q. Is market gardening overdone ? 



Gardening. A. With tlie seven millions of people of Philadelphia, New York, Bos- 

 ton, St. Louis and Chicago, and the many millions more in other cities 

 and towns which look to these great distributing markets for supplies, 



