■^ GARDEN WRITINGS IN AMERICA 81 



must justifiably use. What a lot of modern-day favorites would be 

 barred! One notable omission alone from this list is sufficiently 

 suggestive — the phlox. The dahlia was favored with a treatise 

 all to itself, appearing in Boston in 1S39. Then came Buist's 

 Rose Manual, appearing in Philadelphia in 1844 and on the same 

 subject in 1846, Prince's and then Samuel B. Parson's Manuals. 

 Both these books achieved a considerable degree of popularity. 

 Rose books have been published occasionally ever since. 



Of more recent other writings devoted to other special flowers, 

 reference may be made to Ward's American CarnationCulture, Gallo- 

 way's Commercial Violet Culture, Harrison Dick's Siceet Peas for 

 Profit, and Holmes's Comviercial Rose Culture, all of which it will 

 be observed are decidedly of a commercial character. Doubleday, 

 Page & Company's Garden Library contains small volumes on 

 Roses, Narcissus, and Water Lilies; H. S. Adams has contributed 

 a little manual on Lilies; and the Rev. C. S. Harrison has given 

 us small pamphlets on Phlox, Iris, and Peony. But in a general 

 way we are still dependent upon importations for specimens of this 

 type of work other than those having a distinctly trade or com- 

 mercial bearing. The book on the Dahlia just mentioned was fol- 

 lowed more than fifty years later by a small treatise on the same 

 subject, by Lawrence K. Peacock, now out of print. The fact 

 remains that there is no great market yet created in America for 

 these manuals of special plants. Here again we can only hope for, 

 and look to, the future. 



More important, perhaps, than the separate books, in reflecting 

 the contemporary spirit in any subject, is its periodical literature, 

 through which, week by week or month by month, ideas and 

 thoughts are communicated. Not only are the serial publications 

 more responsive to the contemporary impulse, but they also reach 

 a wider audience, and that far more quickly. Whereas a fairly 

 successful book of a technical or special character will be considered 

 as doing well if it sells 2500 copies or from that up to 5000, in the 

 four or five years of its greatest popularity, a well-established and 

 successful periodical will reach from twice to ten times as many 

 as that maximum, and do it every week or month as the case may 

 be. 



On the other hand, with few exceptions, the book is a better unit 



