180 THE BIAGAZINE OF HORTICULTURE. 



observant of the true science involved in such an inquiry, to 

 be an invertion of the processes implied by horticulture and 

 agriculture, to make so much of seed-culture, when land-cul- 

 ture, or tillage, is the main thing accounted worthy of consid- 

 eration. Of course, it is a great thing for the race " to make 

 two blades of grass grow where one grew before," withovt 

 impoverishing the soil, — and these italicized words constitute 

 a very material emendation of the statement, as every good 

 cultivator well knows ; — but is it not quite as material, after 

 all, to know with precision what kind of grass will spring up 

 when we have tilled the ground and sown the seed ? I think 

 so. Yet this no one can know with any such desirable cer- 

 tainty, even in the matter of the grasses, without more atten- 

 tion than has hitherto been paid to the production of pure 

 seed. 



So we are only coming back in such inquiries to mother 

 Nature, to learn wisdom from her beautiful provisions, and 

 especially from her never-failing care of the progeny of her 

 products ! She is particular to take care of the perpetuity of 

 each species in successive generations, and so has furnished 

 various methods, by any one of which fertilization may be 

 secured, and proper seed be produced. And in the rich fruits, 

 which we have learned to prize for themselves only or chiefly,* 

 we are to discover simple seed-vessels, which may decay 

 when they have finished their office in protecting the seed, 

 which, at its full maturity, falls out from the corrupting mass, 

 an ever-living thing, capable, thousands of years afterwards, 

 of reproducing its kind of fruit. The thick-fleshed melon 

 and squash, — the one so delicious to the taste, the other so 

 valuable for food, — only illustrate how profuse is her contri- 

 bution to human enjoyment and comfort, even while she is 

 doing her work for the seed within. So if we have popularly 

 and selfishly reversed her arrangements by rejoicing over the 

 shell, to the utter neglect of the kernel, it may be worth 

 while to remember, that the luscious pulp of the peach, and 

 pear, and apple, and the profitable rind of the squash, are only 

 the outer garments of the greater germs they encase ! 



Besides, the " improvement and preservation " of these good 



