PREFACE. 



FEW objects are more engaging than the culture of fruit. Hope, 

 with all her pleasing fancies, encircles every planter of a fruit tree ; 

 while year after year, as it is nurtured and advanced to a bearing 

 state, Hope yet remains entwined with prospective reality ; until at 

 last its branches, loaded with ripe, ruddy, delicious fruits, bear out the 

 goddess in sustaining the efforts of man to gratification of taste and 

 feeling, as well as profit pecuniary. 



Fortunate is it for the author of a work on fruits in this practical 

 age, that no excuse is required for presenting himself before the pub- 

 lic, or crowding upon ground apparently now so fully occupied. 



Hazardous as the thought may appear, after so much of matter 

 upon the subject has been prepared and published, minutely, practi- 

 cally, and theoretically explanatory, by such writers as Coxe, Lind- 

 ley, Downing, Thomas, and others, I yet have imagined there was 

 room for another work ; at least it may induce an extended interest 

 in the subject ; and in a country so broad of extent so prolific of 

 fruits and men composed of such great diversity of soil and cli- 

 mate as ours, there may possibly be garnered some little items that 

 heretofore have escaped the vision of my brother lovers of the sub- 

 ject. 



Pleasantly, therefore, during the past ten years, have I been nur- 

 turing of trees and noting their products ; gradually have I drawn 

 in from the stores of my many friends, the votaries of Pomona, 

 specimens of their skill and trust. These I have carefully examined 

 and compared, and have meted to them in the following pages such 

 award as seemed to me just. 



(v) 



