NOVEMBER. 499 



quinces, as trees, succeed so perfectly Avell that I could name 

 persons all around here, and no doubt Mr. Editor you could 

 do the same in your vicinity, who yearly reap handsome 

 profits from their Japanese friends? I know a gentleman in 

 Connecticut who has five quince trees in a small garden, and 

 who clears most every year, besides the supply of his family, 

 from twelve to eighteen dollars. What native would pay 

 better? 



Certainly indigenous trees are more hardy in general, al- 

 though we see the button-ball dying out, and actually the 

 hickories on our mountains showing signs of decay. But 

 imported or naturalized trees are not less hardy. The cherry 

 the peach, the apricot, have been imported by Lucullus, from 

 Persia, on the staff {!) of his banners. The lilac, the Pau- 

 lonia, the ailanthus, the Norway spruce, and some hundreds 

 of exotic trees or shrubs, are now the ornaments of our gar- 

 dens, squares and cemeteries. The pear tree itself is not a 

 native of this continent, and has been imported, as the quince, 

 from climates where more moisture prevails, and atmospheric 

 conditions are different. T have no leisure to consult Michaux 

 or others, but I doubt if the most useful tree in the world, 

 the apple tree, is not an exotic in our middle and southern 

 States. We have the crah in northern latitudes, a good 

 grafting stock, but perhaps different from the European 

 standard. Take away what is imported from climates and 

 countries widely different from our climate and soil, and you 

 rob us of many of those fine trees and shrubs which adorn our 

 private and public grounds. 



The argument brought against that poor abused quince, so 

 useful and paying so handsomely, would have been taken 

 back, I believe, by its author, if he had considered not only 

 the fitness of foreign plants to adapt themselves to our 

 climatic conditions, but the hardiness of the quince tree 

 itself. In those very moist climates, as Belgium and northern 

 France, they were all frozen in 1838; ten or fifteen below 

 zero, which rarely occurs there, kills every quince in Belgium. 

 That same low temperature seems to have no influence here, 

 for, after the last terrible winter, quinces look well and bear 



