312 AMERICAN HUSBANDRY. 



The London Society, although its garden has been 

 established but about twenty years, has concentrated 

 in it, from both continents and from the islands of 

 the sea, embracing every clime, more than five thou- 

 sand varieties of edible fruits, including fourteen 

 hundred varieties of the apple, and seven hundred of 

 the pear, and an almost endless number of. orna- 

 mental plants, many of them before unknown in pur 

 catalogues. Its collection of pears, which embrace 

 hundreds of recent origin from Flanders and from 

 France, have been already broadly spread over these 

 states, and supply our dessert with a succession of 

 this delicious fruit. As a corresponding member of 

 this society, I have participated, and have enabled 

 others to. participate, in the good which it has been 

 generously diffusing abroad. In 1825, and at sub- 

 sequent periods, I have been supplied liberally with 

 grafts of the choicest fruits which it had collected. 



The great obstacles to horticultural improvement 

 are ignorance of the relative merits of different kinds 

 of fruits and culinary vegetables, and of the proper 

 modes of cultivating and preparing them for the ta- 

 ble. The generality of country gardens exhibit but 

 a scanty assortment of vegetable productions, and 

 these but badly cultivated, and often of inferior qual- 

 ity. The tendency of horticultural exhibitions is to 

 show the good and bad in contrast, or rather to pro- 

 mulgate a knowledge of the better sorts, of their cul- 

 ture and use, to excite useful competition, and to 

 demonstrate the utility of garden culture as a source 

 of health, pleasure, and profit. 1 have had many 

 fruits presented to me which the donors considered 

 of the first quality, but which I found, on compari- 

 son, to be of secondary or inferior grade. The man 

 who has seen or tasted only inferior fruits, may 

 well mistake them for good ones. It is as easy to 

 cultivate good fruits as bad ones ; and no one eats so 

 good fruits as he who cultivates them himself. It is 

 as easy to cultivate the vergaleu as it is the choke- 



