ADDRESS. 269 



been introduced, culture has been much improved, the 

 markets better supplied, and prices cheapened. 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 thousand varieties of edible 

 fruits, including fourteen hundred varieties of the apple, 

 and seven hundred of the pear, and an innumerable vari- 

 ety of ornamental plants, many of them before unknown 

 in our catalogues. Its collection of pears, which ejn- 

 braces hundreds of recent origin, from Flanders and from 

 France, has been already broadly spread over these 

 States, and sup])lies our dessert w^ith a succession of this 

 dehcious fruit. As a corresponding member of this So- 

 ciety, I have participated, and have enabled others to 

 participate, in the good which it has been generously dif- 

 fusing abroad. In 1825, and at subsequent periods, I 

 have been supplied liberally with grafts of the choicest 

 fruits wiiich it has collected. 



The greatest 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 table. The 

 generality of country gardens exhibits but a scanty assort- 

 ment of vegetable productions, and these are but badly 

 cultivated, and often of inferior quality. The tendency 

 of Horticultural exhibitions is, to show the good and bad 

 in contrast, or rather to promulgate a knowledge of the 



better sorts, their culture and use, to excite useful 



competition, and to demonstrate the utihty of garden cul- 

 ture, as a source of health, pleasure, and profit. I have 

 had many fruits presented to me, which the donors con- 

 sidered of the first quality, but which I found, on com- 

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

 who has seen or tasted only inferior fruits, may well mis- 

 take 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 pear ; the green gage as 

 the horse plum ; and yet the difference between them, in 

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