530 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



brow and clear, penetrating eye are full of plans for the increase of cotton-mills 

 and American manufactured goods, of better qualitj'-, and lower price, than John 

 Bull can possibly send into our market. 



About four miles south of Boston is the town of Dorchester— one of those 

 agreeable rural suburbs of Boston, which the sturdy city, now full of robust 

 health, is fast overtaking and swallowing up with its vast commercial appetite. 

 In a part of this town is situated a rural residence — well known as Hawthorn 

 Grove. If we enter the gates of this simple and unpretending place, about 

 sunrise or sunset, we shall find there not only grounds which are a complete 

 museum of Horticulture, full of every known variety of fruit-tree ; orchards well 

 planted ; and long, fruitful alleys : but, also, the same merchant we saw in the 

 inner counting room in Pearl-street. The same? yes ! the same to the common 

 observer, doubtless ; that is to say, the gentleman whose portrait illustrates this 

 number of The Farmers' Librart ; but not now the busy, engrossed merchant — 

 only the zealous, enthusiastic Horticulturist — the President of the Massachusetts 

 Horticultural Society — the experienced pomologist — the importer of, and anxious 

 seeker after all new fruits and plants ; in short, Marshall P. Wilder — the 

 subject of the present notice. 



We are not about to write the life of Col. Wilder. We hope it may be many 

 long years, filledf like the present, with usefulness, before he needs a biogra- 

 pher. It is our more agreeable task, at the present moment, to glance hastily 

 upon the field of labors in which his name has become a public one, and in 

 which it is especially interesting to the readers of this journal— as a horticul- 

 turist. 

 /' It is sufficient, then, to say that Col. Wilder is a native of New-Hampshire, 



the Granite State, which boasts, not without reason, that ''men are the fairest 

 product of her soil." He was born in the town of Rindge, N. H., in September, 

 1798, where his devotion to his garden and to mercantile life awakened along 

 with each other. For more than twenty years he has been one of the most indus- 

 trious and successful merchants of Boston, and for sixteen years he has employed 

 every moment oi forced leisure — leisure borrowed, not from business, but from 

 the ordinary relaxations of the business man, in carrying out his favorite study 

 of Horticulture. 



In a city most conspicuous among all American cities for its horticultural 

 amateurs. Col. Wilder has long been known as one of the most zealous and the 

 most active devotees of this science. For eight years past he has been annually 

 elected President of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society— first of all institu- 

 tions of the kind in the Union for its large activity, intelligence, and usefulness. 

 During his administration, the number of Members and the funds of the Society 

 have been greatly increased, its new Hall erected, at a cost of $40,000, and a 

 very richly illustrated series of its Transactions commenced. 



But this is to us, and to the country at large, not the most important and val- 

 uable view of his great services as a scientific cultivator of the soil. There 

 are, perhaps, many men's grounds more attractive, or more captivating to the 

 novice, than those of the President of the Horticultural Society. But we think 

 we may safely say that no garden in America, either public or private, has been 

 more fruitful in good experiences for the benefit of the art generally, and espe- 

 cially of Pomology, than that of Hawthorn Grove. 



Let us say a word or two to make this plainer to the general reader. Horti- 

 culture has been so much perfected in the last thirty years that it may, be said 



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