20 Soil and CUmate of WasJiaiglon. 



" Here eglantine embalmed the air. 

 Hawthorn and hazel mingled there." 



Before the revolution^ and even after that epoch, our an- 

 cestors continued, as it would seem by mere force of habit, 

 io j)la lit iimi: but even that habit has died away, in the 

 boasted '-march of intellect!" Very few now think of 

 planting nnv thing, the fruit of which cannot be enjoyed in 

 less than ten or fifteen years ; and tlic trees that arc plant- 

 ed, are for the most part soon abandoned, as foundlings by 

 their unnatural paroits, without care or culture, exposed to 

 all the bull'etings and peltings of the pitiless storm, and 

 other ills that trees, as well as flesh, are " heirs to."' 



We in the south will, perhaps, imitate the nice care and 

 good management of fruit trees, and gardens, which pre- 

 vail in New England, when estates here, as there, shall 

 have been divided and sub-divided until they will bear it 

 no longer ; and when, thus, there shall appear some pros- 

 pect that the homestead, and the graves of the fathers, may 

 descend to at least the lirst and second generation ; and 

 when the patrimonial inheritance, being in like manner re- 

 duced to some fifty or sixty acres, he who plants and nur- 

 tures a fruit-bearing tree, shall know that it will confer on 

 the farm a visible, distinct, and computable incrca.sc of its 

 2)roductive and saleable value. 



But it was not my design to write any thing like a dis- 

 sertation opprobrious of this region of our country, for its 

 almost universal neglect, except in the immediate vicinity 

 of the cities, of fruit trees, grape vines, and vegetable and 

 flower gardens : yet less did J tliink of attempting a philo- 

 sophical inquiry into the political, domestic, or other causes 

 of the remarkable difference in the habits of eastern and 

 southern people on these points. I took my pen merely to 

 vindicate our soil and climate from the injustice of ascribing 

 to them any of the no-fruits, or the bad fruits, which grow 

 either out of our peculiar institutions, or out of the im- 

 provident, hand-to-mouth policy and habits of the large 

 land-holders, south of Mason's and Dixon's line. 



Coxe, one of our earliest writers on fruit trees, assigns 

 the Molunrk river., in New York, and the James river, in 

 Virginia, as the limits, north and south, of that district of 

 our country which may be said to produce the apple with 

 that due degree of richness and flavor, which best fit it for 

 '• the production of the flner liquor and table apples." Be. 



