HORTICULTURE AND DESIGN IN HOUSE SURROUNDINGS. 117 



must be introduced to support them. lu moister climates trees 

 which do not shade a road too darkly will prove best. 



A second source of the demand upon the nurseryman is the 

 desire for table fruits. In spite of adverse climates, black rot and 

 curculio, men will doubtless continue to grow apples, pears, 

 peaches, and berries of ever better sorts and in ever larger quan- 

 tities. In the West experiment must go on for many years, before 

 the kinds best adapted to the various climates can be discovered 

 and proved ; and in the East the limit of improvement is by no 

 means reached. 



A third great source of the demand for plants springs neither 

 from the need of shelter nor the desire for pleasant food, but from 

 the love of plants as beautiful or curious objects. Beginning in 

 this country with the introduction of Lombardy poplars, lilacs, a 

 few roses, and a few perennials, the desire for beautiful or striking 

 plants has grown continuously and prodigiously, encouraging 

 nurserj'men to discover and grow trees, shrubs, and herbs from 

 every temperate climate of the earth, and prompting them, as each 

 new thing becomes in its turn common or well known, to offer 

 some yet more striking novelty, derived perhaps from Asia or 

 Japan, or else developed from a rare form of some old friend. 

 Fine bloom has been most desired ; accordingly sorts which pro- 

 duce striking flowers have been introduced from abroad in great 

 numbers, and these have then been improved by zealous cultivators, 

 until the parent species has come to seem commonplace. Fine 

 flowering perennials are now offered in innumerable varieties, 

 and the number of conspicuously blooming trees and shrubs 

 exceeds one hundred. Remarkable foliage has also been sought 

 out and developed. Fifty or more sorts of cut leafed and colored 

 leafed trees and shrubs appear in the catalogues ; many coniferous 

 evergreens are grown for their colors, and the foliage plants of the 

 herbaceous tribes number hundreds. Uncommon form or habit 

 too has its admirers. The so-called weeping and fastigiate trees 

 now number more than thirty, and some of these add fine bloom 

 and pretty foliage to their more or less graceful or graceless shape. 



I must leave the horticultural journals and the catalogues them- 

 selves to describe, as best the}' may, the marvellous wealth of 

 beautiful forms and colors which a great plant nurserj' now con- 

 tains. Progress in arboriculture and horticulture has become 

 amazingly rapid ; and if just now the growing of the familiar but 



