ABOUT PRmrS, FLOTVTTBS AKD FARMING. 411 



PROGRESS OF HORTICULTURE IN INDIANA.* 



I AM induced to send you some remarks upon Horticul- 

 tural matters, from observing your disposition to make your 

 magazine not merely a record of specific processes, and a 

 register of plants and fruits, but also a chronicle of the 

 yearly progress and condition of the Horticultural art. I 

 should be glad if I could in any degree thus repay the pleas- 

 ure which others have given me through your numbers, by 

 reciprocal efforts. 



The Indiana Horticultural State fair is held annually, on 

 the 4th and 5th of October. Experience has shown that it 

 should be earlier ; for, although a better assortment of late 

 fruits, in which, hitherto, we have chiefly excelled, is se- 

 cured, it is at the expense of small fruits and flowers. The 

 floral exhibition was meagre — the frost having already visit- 

 ed and despoiled our gardens. The chief attraction, as, in 

 an agricultural community, it must long continue to be, was 

 the exhibition of fruit. My recollection of New England 

 fruits, after an absence of more than ten years, is not dis- 

 tinct ; but my impression is, that so fine a collection of fruits 

 could scarcely be shown there. The luxuriance of the peach, 

 the plum, the pear and the apple, is such, in this region, as 

 to afford the most perfect possible specimens. The vigor 

 of fruit-trees, in such a soil and under a heaven so conge- 

 nial, produces ii-uits which are very large without being 

 coarse-fleshed ; the flavor concentrated, and the color very 

 high. It is the constant remark of emigrants from the 

 East, that our apples surpass those to which they have been 

 accustomed. Many fruits which I remember in Connecticut 

 as light-colored, appear with us almost refulgent. All sum- 

 mer and early fall apples were gone before our exhibition ; 

 but between seventy and a hundred varieties of winter ap- 



* A letter published in Hovey's Magazine of Horticulture, February, 

 1846. 



