on Gardening and Rural Affairs. 87 



the orange and the camellia, as well as the rare plants of New Holland and 

 the Cape of Good Hope, thriving under their care." 



Dr. Mitchill recommends to the Society the extension of their intercourse 

 with similar societies throughout the world, and mentions that seeds have 

 been received by the New York Society from " public gardens in Batavia and 

 Cuba, as well as from those of Paris and Kew " (an incidental confirmation 

 of our Correspondent's remark, Vol.11, p. 513., on the kind of liberality which 

 prevails in the last-named garden). Till a proper house and a garden are 

 procured, the members are recommended to make experiments on their own 

 grounds; and, if they cannot publish a volume of transactions from time to 

 time, they are advised, instead of keeping " the history of their doings, like 

 seed in a bag, within the scribe's desk, or leaving them to perish, like a plant 

 by the way-side, with the fugitive columns of a newspaper, to fix them 

 permanently in the pages of one of the respectable periodicals which our 

 age has produced." 



This is in the true spirit of patriotism ; as soon as knowledge is obtained 

 let it be universally diffused, and let every country in the world, and every 

 human being in every country, have an opportunity of improvement. When 

 this Society publish their transactions, we hope they will publish them in a 

 form, and at an expense, which will come within the reach of practical 

 men. Nothing, in our opinion, can be in worse taste than to publish agricul- 

 tural and gardening works at a price which cannot be reached by farmers 

 and gardeners. The late Communications of the Board of Agriculture 

 of London, and the present Transactions of the Horticultural Society 

 of London, are in this respect highly objectionable. The plain language 

 of such practice is, you shall not benefit by us unless you belong to us ; which 

 is rising no higher in the scale of patriotism than the mark of a private in- 

 dividual who publishes to live. 



A library is commenced by the New York Horticultural Society. " Books," 

 Dr. Mitchill observes, "being the repositories of knowledge,are indispensable 

 to the enquiring man. Their excessive multiplication, however, in modern 

 times, increases largely both the labour and expense of study. Instead of at- 

 tempting, therefore, to procure every publication bearing a horticultural, or 

 a kindred title, efforts should be directed, as particularly as circumstances 

 permit, to procure a moderate number of standard and classical volumes ; 

 and, when to those are added a good supply of the journals, magazines, and 

 tracts upon the different branches of the subject, you will have made com- 

 fortable provision. Topographical maps of gardens, drawings of buildings, 

 of the modes of affording heat and light, and of the mechanism for water- 

 ing, are worthy of being collected. So are delineations of vegetables, re- 

 markable for their rarity, beauty, or usefulness ; and figures of the insects 

 that are ever marring the gardener's labour : also a dry garden or Hortus 

 Siccus." 



After recommending more attention to the native timber and fruit trees, 

 Dr Mitchill continues : — 



" It may be expected I should speak to you of meteorological observ- 

 ations. I have, however, not much to say in favour of their utility to 

 practical men like yourselves. The thermometer indicates the degree of 

 heat, indeed, in the spot where it is placed, and therefore has its use in the 

 green-house and the hot-house. It may be employed, too, to determine 

 the temperature of waters from the well or the cistern. The barometer, 

 which indicates the greater or less weight of the atmosphere, seems to be 

 of very limited use in this country as a weather-glass. Neither of these 

 instruments affords any means of predicting the heat or the cold, the winds 

 or the storms, of the coming seasons ; and the long columns of figures we 

 find in some of the books under that title, are of as little real value as 

 almost any thing we find in print. To note the rise and fall of the mer- 



