MONTHLY 



JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



VOL. I. 



JUNE, 1846. 



NO. 12. 



BRIEF SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

 JOHN CLAUDIUS LOUDON. 



In giving a Portrait, with some particulars of 

 the life and writings, of the late John Claudius 

 Loudon — taken from the Journal of the High- 

 land Agricultural Society — we are aware that 

 we lay ourselves liable to the imputation of 

 giving too much of foreign impress and char- 

 acter to a work designed for American agri- 

 culturists. But, again, we take justification 

 and comfort in the belief that every reader 

 of reflection will say to himself, " What care 

 I to what country the subject of a memoir be- 

 longs, if the man whose worth it commemorates 

 was highly distinguished for useful talents and 

 such exemplary virtues as every gentleman who 

 lives in the country and gives his time to its 

 pleasures and pursuits, should aim to possess for 

 himself and to cultivate in his sons ? Give me, 

 says such a reader, for the emulation and bene- 

 fit of the rising generation, the particulars of the 

 lives and fortunes, not of your successful politi- 

 cal partisans and heroes, great or small, but of 

 that more truly noble and useful order of men, of 

 whatever clime or country, who, like Loudox, 

 have evinced, even in the dawn of their career, 

 an auspicious fondness for the arts of cultivating 

 the earth, and a taste for its floral and horticul- 

 tural embellishment; and whose maturer labors 

 in tlie closet and the field have all tended to en- 

 lighten the practice and multiply the fruits of 

 peaceful industry ! 



In treating of Experimental Agriculture, and 

 in recommending particular staples, implements 

 or processes, every man of common sense knows 

 that the Editor of a journal dedicated to these 

 purposes, must have regard to circumstances. 

 It needs no ghost from the grave to tell us that, 

 in drawing upon English, or French, or Ger- 

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man, or other foreign works, for discoveries that 

 may be useful in the practice of American hus- 

 bandrj', constant reference must be had to dif- 

 ference in the climate, in the price of labor, in 

 the condition of the landholder, in the habits of 

 the people, and the tastes and means of the con- 

 sumers. Thus, for example, every one knows, 

 as to climate, that ours is not adapted to a profit- 

 able culture of the pine-apple, or the banana — 

 and hence we do not draw upon English horti- 

 cultural works that abound in dissertations on 

 the growth of " pines," as they call them ; yet 

 there such dissertations are not out of place, be- 

 cause there reference is had again to the condi- 

 tion and means of an opulent aristocracy, who, 

 while thousands of their countrymen languish 

 and perish for want of their " daily bread," 

 which neither labor nor prayers in or out of 

 church can procure, load their own tables with 

 exotics, the pampered and luxurious fruits of an 

 artificial climate. Even the turnip of England, 

 in that country the subject of so much labor and 

 the theme of so much disquisition — which is said 

 even to constitute their meat and their manure — 

 attracts less and would less reward attention in 

 this country, because we are deficient in the 

 moisture that is indispensable to the uniform 

 production of heavy and remunerating crops. — 

 All this, we repeat, every tyro must know ; and. 

 in the conduct of the jounial committed to our 

 care, we have failed not, and shall not fail, to 

 bear these obvious considerations in mind. But 

 does it follow that we should read with less in- 

 terest, or exhibit the less earnestly, the lives of 

 such men as Loudon, whose thoughts and la- 

 bors were employed in a manner to diffuse 

 throughout the world a knowledge of the prin- 



