HISTORY, IMPROVEMENT, AND NOMENCLATURE. 21 



writings and active influence, a great impetus to rural cul- 

 ture. The great Brompton Nursery of Loudon and Wise, 

 during the early part of the eighteenth century, dissemina- 

 ted vast quantities of fruit trees over the kingdom. Miller 

 published his Gardeners' Dictionary in 1724 ; Forsyth his 

 Treatise on Fruit Trees in 1791. The London Horticultu- 

 ral Society was instituted early in the present century, and 

 in connexion with the earlier investigations of its president, 

 Thomas Andrew Knight, and the later and unwearied labors 

 of Robert Thompson, it has poured a flood of light on the 

 science of cultivation, and on the "nomenclature of fruits. 



The Dutch made early advancement in the cultivation of 

 fruit, and at the close of the sixteenth century, they were 

 familiar with the principal kinds of fruit now cultivated, 

 except" the pine apple, which was newly introduced into 

 Belgium and England about that time. The French made 

 a nearly similar progress. Quintinge, during the reign of 

 Louis XIV., or during the latter part of the 17th century, 

 did much for the art by his writings and labors, and de- 

 veloped an excellent system of pruning, which has sin^e 

 proved of the highest importance in the cultivation of wall 

 and espalier trees. 



In the United States, the art, and the materials for its 

 practice, have been mostly derived from England, and to a 

 considerable extent from France and Germany. Many of 

 the best European varieties have proved to be fine fruits 

 here, but a larger portion do not appear well fitted to our 

 climate ; and most of our richest varieties of apples and 

 peaches are of American origin. 



The gradual progress of pomology is indicated in part by 

 the increasing number of varieties successively named or 

 described by the various authors for the past few centuries. 

 Apples " of all sorts " are mentioned by Tusser ; Parkinson 

 enumerates sixty-seven ; Hartlib, in 1650, alluded to one 

 cultivator who possessed two hundred, and believed there 

 were not less than five hundred ; Ray, in 1668, says there 

 were seventy-eight cultivated in the London nurseries ; For- 

 syth, in 1806, describes a hundred and ninety-six kinds ; 

 George Lindley, in 1831, minutely and accurately described 

 two hundred and fourteen ; while the Fruit Catalogue of 

 the London Horticultural Society gives a list of fourteen 



