156 



GENESEE FARMER. 



Oct. 184^ 



HOR TICUL TURAL DEPJIR TMEJS^T. 



Br p. BARRT. 



J'or The Genesee Farmer. 



Mr. Editor : — Have the goodness to give me a 

 email space in your valuable paper, that I may en- 

 deavor to soothe my kind friend Mr. Barry, who after 

 having given his unqualified praise to my recent 

 volume on Fruit Trees, has suddenly been seized 

 with the war fever, and most unaccountably opened 

 his largest Paixham gun upon it. 



In the first place, I regret to have outraged his 

 feelings by the title of my work — •' The Fruits and 

 Fruit Trees of America." Mr. B. thinks it unfair 

 that the work describes not only native fruits, but, 

 also (as indeed the title page explains,) "all the fi- 

 nest varieties of fruit, native and foreign, cultivated 

 in this country." 



Now it is certainly something quite new, this com- 

 plaint that a work contains too much information — 

 more than the reader is led to expect from the title. 

 I congratulate myself if the work in question truly 

 has this great merit. 



But I believe the only objection to the title is not 

 a valid one in ar.y sense. By the '•' Fruits of Ameri- 

 ca," I do not understand merely our native fruits : 

 but all fruits that are cultivated.naturalized and adopt- 

 ed into th's countn,'. He falls into the same error 

 as some of the enlightened inhabitants of Europe, 

 who still think that true ^'Imericans are all Indians, 

 or at least have a copper skin. Ah I as Mr. B. is 

 well aware, it is a motley collection, from all 

 countries that makes the American people. 



Again, the example of previous writers most en- 

 tirely sustains me. Lindley's "British Fruits" — is 

 it a work on the native fruits of Britain ? By no 

 means. There are not half a dozen British varieties 

 in it. Its three \olume8 of beautiful plates and de- 

 scription are occupied almost entirely with the 

 Fruits that originated in Flanders, France, and Ger- 

 mnay, but cultivated in British England. In like 

 manner, Loudon's great work, the "Arboretine 

 Brittanicum, or trees and shrubs of Britain," contains 

 every hardy or half hardy tree of the four quarters of 

 the globe, that has been introduced into England, 

 or Ireland. So too Poiteau's " Pomologie Franca- 

 ise," is not, as Mr, B. would suppose, the fruits of 

 France — the native fruits merely, but all the fine 

 fnuts introduced into, and cultivated in France. In- 

 deed this is so well understood by authors and the 

 public, that I am surprised that any person could 

 suppose it possible that my volume of 600 pages, 

 could be occupied by our native fruits only. Our 

 native fruits worthy of cultivation (and which so far 

 as it lay in my power, I have fully done justice to,) 

 would have occupied but a few pages, and the work, 

 had it ended with them, would have been by no 

 means what the public demanded at this moment. 

 In its title therefore I am certainly sustained by the 

 established customs of previous writers, and the 

 facts themselves. The work treats of the fruits 

 and fruit trees of America. 



I might have overstepped the limits of the title 

 had I added largely celebrated fruits, not yet intro- 

 duced here. But this I was careful not to do. 



But my great offense in this work your critic con- 

 siders to be in the following bold and arrogant lines 

 with which the preface commences. 



" A man born in one of the largest gardens, and 

 upon the banks of one of the largest rivers in Amer- 

 ica, ought to have a natural right to talk about fruit 

 trees." 



Mr. Barry kindly misunderstands my meaning, 

 and delicately hints his opinion of the sentence in 

 the following manner. " A man to prattle about 

 rights of birth now-a-days, acts, in our opinion, a sil- 

 ly figure." 



I am really deeply mortified that I should cut such 

 a "silly figure" in the eyes of Mr. Barry. In some 

 future work I may hope to obtain his commendation 

 by expressions of profound humility and ignorance 

 of the subject of which I am about to treat. But in 

 the meantime I am bound to think that some portion 

 of the public does not share with him entirely in this 

 opinion, at least I have been presumptions enough 

 to gather this notion from numberless letters of 

 thanks for the volume from strangers in all parts of 

 the countr}', and from the fact that the work in 

 question, has in little more than two months gone 

 through three editions, and that corrections are now 

 making for a fourth. 



I frankly confess that I supposed in writing the 

 passages above quoted, that thousands of cultivators 

 to whom I am, and may always be personally un- 

 known, would be glad to know that I had not un- 

 dertaken without any previous preparation, to 

 write upon a subject, which more than any other in 

 the circle of gardening requires practical knowledge 

 and long investigation. I supposed that such persons 

 would like, to know what right an author had to ask 

 their time and money for a thick volume on such a 

 subject. Not what civil or political right, but what 

 right by position, natural advantages, and long devo- 

 tion to the subject. It certainly does not appear 

 quite self evident to me that a man born, and living 

 always in the deserts of Zahara, would have quite so 

 good a natural right to write a description of the 

 northern Spy apple as Mr. Barry who is a nurserj*- 

 man, and lives near the original tree. At least I 

 think his readers might incline to think Mr. B's ad- 

 vantageous position had given him certain righti5 to 

 occupy the ear of the public on this topic, which they 

 might feel inclined to deny to the Arab. But I may 

 be wrong here, and I confess that though I was 

 born in America, and have always lived in a garden, 

 I may yet be taught by more intelligent foreigners 

 who have settled on our side, that I have no shadow 

 of right to talk about the fruits and fruit trees grow- 

 ing in our own country. 



No one can be more sensible, Mr. Editor, of the 

 defects of the volume on fruit trees than I am. — 

 The subject is one full of difficulties, and it was not 

 undertaken without diffidence, or pursued without 

 great labor. 



The unusual patronage which it has already re- 

 ceived from the public, I am sincerely grateful for, 

 and I trust by the kindness of our horticulturists, 

 and constant and repeated investigations of my own, 

 to render it in future editions far more complete 

 than it at first appeared. But you will allow me to 

 express my regret that the editor of your horticultu- 

 ral department should dislike its title, or deplore my 

 bad taste in telling my readers candidly, at the outset, 

 that I was born a gardener, and claim to know a 

 little more of the nature and practice of gardening 



