1891.] ESSAYS. 135 



to the present time so full of the results of the industry and 

 civilization of the people. What America had accomplished in 

 less than a century, was fully exhibited in these contrasting 

 gardens. 



Some say carelessly that America has no gardens to be com- 

 pared with those which the Old World has possessed for cen- 

 turies ; but they do not just here allude to our comparative 

 youth in civilization. They forget that America has given 

 them, in all their wonderful beauty, natural gardens which they 

 would gladly be willing to equal. They forget the flowers of 

 Mexico which grow in such richness and profusion, and also 

 that every variety of the edible fruits of Europe grow spon- 

 taneously there ; they forget too that, owing to the fact of 

 there being more than one crop every year, every kind of the 

 garden vegetables known to Europe, can be found in the markets 

 of the capital of Mexico, throughout the year ; they do not 

 remember the magnificent gardens of Montezuma at Chapultepec, 

 nor the famous Dungeness garden with its twelve acres devoted 

 to tropical fruits and flowers which was so unfortunately burned 

 during the civil war, but which is now being reclaimed ; they 

 ignore the roses of California and the indescribable splendor of 

 the wild flowers of Guiana, including the gorgeous Victoria 

 Kegia. 



The extensive gold, silver, copper, coal, diamond and other 

 mines of our great continent. North and South, are brina-ino' 

 to us the capital with which others, like Vanderbilt, will be 

 enabled to la}^ out landscape gardens, and besides these, gardens 

 especially for fruit and flower that shall excel in magnificence 

 the wildest dreams of the Eastern horticulturist. But it is to 

 be remembered, that it is by our industry that we shall collect 

 and cultivate plants, or chisel the marble or granite for their 

 ornamentation. 



It is to the American men of the present century mostly, 

 that we owe those inventions which have made agriculture and 

 horticulture both, a pleasure rather than a drudgery. It took 

 a Robert Fulton to give us a steam-boat, l)y means of which the 

 products of one section of country can be transported easily 



