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The Canadian Horticulturist. 



OUR BELOVED CANADA. 



NOTES FROM A FRUIT-GROWER S STANDPOINT. 



My country, of thee I slug, 

 Land of the golden fruit, < 

 Of herb and grain and root, 

 Of thee I sing. 



Land of the crystal spring ; 

 Of furrowed field, of lake expanse 

 Could I thy fame enhance, 

 Of thee I'd sing. 



HE Canadian has a rich inheritance in the land that he pos- 

 sesses. In primitive days he sang of his inheritance as the 

 land of forest and river and lake ; and with this theme was 

 inseparably associated the woodsman's axe. In patriotic 

 sentiment it has been the land of the beaver and the maple 

 leaf. And it has held a place in fame as the land of the 

 toboggan and the ice palace. But, comparatively speaking, all that had a reality 

 in these bygone conceptions of this land of ours has passed away and little, save 

 the sentimental, remains of them. The forest has been transformed into the 

 cultivated field ; the rivers and lakes have lost their romance and become the 

 highways of commerce ; the beaver has vanished before the heavy draught-horse 

 and the dairy cow ; the maple leaf, except as an ornament, has been replaced by 

 the plum, the pear and the apple bough ; the toboggan has migrated to the north- 

 land and the ice palace has melted away, and so likewise has the false fame that 

 it provoked. The reality that remains with us is the fairest and most favored 

 land that man possesses. The enthusiast in horticulture has come to view the 

 prospect, in this part of the Dominion at least, as one of incomparable possibili- 

 ties ; and the practical fruit-grower does not look without encouraging promise 

 into the future, as he contemplates the profitable results of the past two years, 

 and the reputation the apple of Ontario has made for itself abroad. 



Thirty years ago, I was a boy living in the vicinity of Port Hope. It was to 

 me an enchanting spot, and memories ever recur to me of the days when I used 

 to ramble through its deep ravines in search of wild strawberries ; or into the 

 breaks and woodlands for the wild plum and gooseberry ; or invade sylvan glades 

 where rippled the trout-brooks ; or climbed the pine-wooded ridges to look — as 

 Byron used to do the ocean — upon the lake, which, to my boyish fancy, was a 



majestic sea. 



Ontario, how sweet thy memory brings 

 My careless boyhood back to nie ; 



When ardent hope on fancy's wings 

 Beheld life's future gleam like thee. 



