58 THE MAGAZINE CMF HORTICULTURE. 



control our course of proceeding to such a degree that we 

 must, to a greater extent than has generally been supposed or 

 admitted, be governed by rules of our own. So great are the 

 variations of temperature — so different the quality and depth 

 of soils — so uneven the quantity of moisture, even in our 

 own extensive country — that the system, of culture required 

 in one locality will not be the same as that in another. Thus, 

 deep tillage is one of the most important operations on the 

 thin soil of our New England hills ; while in the fertile regions 

 of the West, whose virgin prairies are one vast deposit of rich 

 and permeable earth, it is almost a superfluous labor, or at 

 least of little or no consequence. 



It being admitted, then, as we think it must, that these 

 differences of soil, climate, moisture, &c., do exist, should 

 they not change or modify our system of culture, and render 

 it important that we should ascertain what practice we ought 

 to adopt to attain the highest results ? If none is necessary 

 — if we have already exhausted the field of research — we 

 have only to be guided by the wisdom of the past and the 

 thorough exi:>erience of the present, trusting to our own intel- 

 ligence and its application to practice, for the achievement of 

 something more than has yet been accomplished. 



Theory teaches, and experience verifies, the fact that all 

 our improved varieties of fruits, trees, plants and vegetables 

 are far removed from the wild type, and need higher culture 

 to maintain their preeminence ; and if left to the same neglect 

 of their original progenitors, fall off in their superiority, and 

 become of only mediocre merit : not that they return to their 

 wild state, as has been too often asserted, but that they fail 

 to show the qualities which high culture can alone bring out. 

 Nature, which plants the wild crab, the austere pear, the sloe, 

 the grape, the cherry, the gooseberry, the raspberry, and other 

 fruits, throughout the temperate zone, endows them with the 

 power of abundant produce under almost any condition of 

 growth, for the perpetuation of their species ; and they rarely 

 if ever, grow where they may — on rock or hill-side, in field 

 or meadow, in hedge-row or pasture — fail to mature a crop 

 -of perfect fruit. No shallowness of soil, no vicissitudes of 



