is the adjunct. In other words, the stress is laid upon the plants as 

 domesticated and cultivated subjects. Special efforts have been made to 

 portray the range of variation under domestication, and to suggest the 

 course of the evolution of the greatly modified forms. Garden plants are 

 worthy subjects of botanical study, notwithstanding the fact that they 

 have been neglected by systematists. It is desired to represent the 

 plants as living, growing, varying things, rather than as mere species or 

 bibliographical formulas. 



The Editor desires to say that he considers this book but a beginning. 

 It is the first complete survey of our horticultural activities, and it is 

 published not because it is intended to be complete, but that it may 

 bring together the scattered data in order that further and better studies 

 may be made. A first work is necessarily crude. We must ever improve. 

 To the various ai'ticles in the work, the teacher of horticulture may assign 

 his advanced students. The Editor hopes that every entry in this book 

 will be worked over and improved within the next quarter century. 



Horticultural Department, ^' ^- -oAiLiiii 1 . 



College of Agriculture of Cornell University, 

 Ithaca, New York, December SO, 1S99. 



NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION 



In the second edition sevei'al changes have been made for the purpose 

 of reducing typographical errors and inconsistencies, a class of shortcomings 

 which is to be found chiefly in the first volume. Perhaps a half-dozen changes 

 have been made in statements of fact in the first volume. There has 

 been no attempt at a revision, since it is the purpose of the Editor, as 

 explained in the preface to Vol. IV of the original issue, to let the work 

 stand as an expression of American horticulture at the time it was made. 

 This expression is very imperfect, as the Editor is well aware, but it can- 

 not be greatly improved by mere changes in the plates. Therefore, Crataegus 

 and other subjects which recently have been much studied are left as they 

 were understood by their authors in 1900. 



In typographical matters the Editor desired to use such forms as he 

 thought would help the reader in consulting the articles, without making 



