

Mr. Editor, — You will not be surprised, that, having been a constant reader 

 of your Journal from the beginning, I have been impelled to put on paper some of 

 my ideas in regard to your last number ; and, if acceptable, perhaps I may here- 

 after send you my views of future numbers. 



And, first, let me rejoice with you and all your readers over the re-appearance 

 in the field of the veteran who has so long stood at the head of American po- 

 mologists. Here we have an account of the notabilities of Southern horticulture, 

 such as could only have been given from actual observation, by Mr. Wilder and 

 the keen-eyed horticulturists who accompanied him. Some of his accounts are 

 rather startling to us among our frosts and snows. Think of a camellia-tree in 

 the open air spreading twenty-five feet, and bearing ten thousand flowers ; and 

 a Cloth-of-GoId rose covering one-fifth of an acre of wall ! 



And then, too, imagine a grape-vine whose stem is six inches in diameter, and 

 whose branches cover a trellis forty feet square ! Why, sir, it makes one ask in 

 all seriousness whether the vine is really hardy with us, or adapted to the cli- 

 mate of New England and the cooler sections of the United States ; for I con- 

 fess the statement produced a twinge of doubt, if not of discontent. After all 

 our efforts for improvement and for the production of hardy, early sorts, is the 

 vine with us to become no nearer such a specimen than it is at present .-' I don't 

 like to think of it. 



Cannot you, Mr. Editor, induce your Southern friends to tell us more about 

 the wonderful products of that region, to which so many eyes are now turned .'' 



The article on " The I mprovement of the Native Plum " is most timely ; for, at 

 the rate they go on, our best plums will soon exist only in history. Our native 

 plums are not more inferior to the Green-Gage than was the Sloe, from which the 



VOL. V. 29 225 



