April 22, 1896.] 



Garden and Forest. 



169 



efforts in planting are carefully followed from year to year 

 and from place to place by Dr. Slade, and the quotations 

 from old writers, which show what plants they brought 

 with them from the old country, are not more interesting 

 than those which reveal their estimate of those which they 

 found indigenous in the new. Their optimistic descrip- 

 tions of the native fruits and berries certainly reveal that 

 determination to look on the bright side of painful new 

 conditions and to make the most of comparatively unat- 

 tractive novelties which must always mark the successful 

 colonist. Of course, Old World names are so often applied 

 to different New World things that the task of interpreti- 

 nation is not always easy. For example, Wood, writing 

 in 1629, says: "The Hornebound tree is a tough kind of 

 wood, that requires so much paines in riving as is almost 

 incredible, being the best for to make holies and dishes, not 

 being subject to crack or leak." The tree in question 

 which, Wood explains, grows " with broad speard armes," 

 was probably the Tupelo, the wood of which was used by 

 the Indians for the purposes he notes, and which, along 

 the Massachusetts shore, is still popularly called the Horn- 

 beam. Growing wild, says the same writer, were "Straw- 

 berries in abundance, very large ones, some being two 

 inches about: one may gather halfe a bushell in a fore- 

 noone. In other seasons there be Gooseberries, Bilberries, 

 Resberries, Treackleberries, Hurtleberries, Currants, which 

 being dryed in the Sunneare little inferior to those that our 

 Grocers sell in England. This land likewise affords Hempe 

 and Flax, some naturally and some planted by the Indians, 

 with Rapes if they bee well managed." The local Walnut- 

 tree, says Wood again, " is something different from the 

 English Wallnut. . . . These trees bear a very good 

 nut, something smaller but nothing inferiour in sweetnesse 

 and goodnesse to the English Nut, having no bitter pill. 

 There is likewise a tree in some parts of the Countrey that 

 beares a nut as bigge as a small peare" — the Butternut. 

 And, he continues, "the White Thorne affords hawes as 

 bigge as an English Cherrie which is esteemed above a 

 Cherrie for his goodnesse and pleasantnesse to the taste." 

 But of the native New England Cherries even Wood could 

 not speak in praise. "The Cherrie trees yeeld great store 

 of Cherries, which grow in clusters like grapes ; they be 

 much smaller than our English Cherrie, nothing neare so 

 good if they be not very ripe : they so furre the mouth that 

 the tongue will cleave to the roofe, and the throate wax 

 horse with swallowing those red Bullies, as I may call them, 

 being little better to the taste. English ordering may bring 

 them to be an English Cherrie, but yet they are as wilde 

 as the Indians. But the Plummes of the Country be better 

 for Plummes than the Cherries be for Cherries ; they be 

 blacke and yellow, about the bignesse of a Damson, of a 

 reasonable good taste." 



But, despite their readiness to be pleased with their new 

 possessions, the settlers were lavish importers of products 

 familiar at home. For example, among the articles ordered 

 to be sent to New England by the Massachusetts Com- 

 pany in 1629, were "Vine-planters, wheat, rye, barley, 

 oats, a hogshead of each in the ear ; beans, pease, stones 

 of all sorts of fruits, as peaches, plums, filberts, cherries ; 

 pear, apple, quince kernels ; pomegranates, woad seed, 

 saffron heads, liquorice seed, madder roots, potatoes, hop- 

 roots, hemp seed, flaxseed, currant plants and madder 

 seeds." It is interesting to trace as far back as this the 

 importation of the Woad-waxen which now so beautifully 

 covers parts of Essex County ; but Pomegranates certainly 

 have not acclimatized themselves so well in New England. 



More or less extensive orchards were early established. 

 The first is believed to have been that of William Black- 

 stone, to whom, in 1633, were granted "fifty acres . . . 

 near his house in Boston, to enjoy forever." In 1765 this 

 orchard was spoken of as still producing fruit, audits exist- 

 ence at even later dates is recorded. Blackstone himself 

 afterward removed to Reheboth and planted the first orchard 

 within what are now the borders of Rhode Island. 



Wood, writing between 1629 and 1633, mentions many 



fruitful gardens in the regions about Boston, where, in his 

 time, Boston itself was not the largest town. "The greatest 

 Towne in New England," he says, was Dorchester, and a 

 mile away lay " Roxberry, which is a faire and handsome 

 Country-towne, the inhabitants of it being all very rich." 

 And Boston is described as being "two miles North-east 

 from Roxberry," and "although it be neither the greatest 

 nor the richest, yet it is the most noted and frequented, 

 being the Center of the Plantations where the monthly 

 courts are kept. Here likewise dwells the Governour : 

 This place hath very good land, affording rich Corne-fields 

 and fruitful gardens." Brooklineis noticed as a place called 

 Muddy River, two miles from Boston, where the inhabit- 

 ants of that place " for their enlargement have taken to 

 themselves Farm-houses ; where is good ground, large tim- 

 ber, and store of Marsh-land and Medow" — a description 

 which is not out-of-date to-day. 



In 1632, Conant's Island, in Boston harbor, was granted 

 to Governor Winthrop, and was thereafter called "The 

 Governour's Garden." Josselyn, writing in 1639, reported 

 that he had received from there "half a score very fair Pip- 

 pins . . . there being not one Apple tree nor Pear 

 planted yet in no part of the Countrey but upon that 

 Island." 



But it was not long before the town of Boston was filled 

 with such trees, and Mylne Street (now Summer Street) was 

 especially a street of gardens. The one owned by Gamaliel 

 Wayte was planted in 1692, and long remained famous; 

 and in the eighteenth century this and neighboring towns 

 were well entitled to boast of their horticultural products. 

 Paul Dudley, writing of Roxbury in 1726, said, "Our 

 apples are without doubt as good as those of England and 

 much fairer to look upon, and so are the pears, but we 

 have not got all the sorts. Our peaches do rather excell 

 those of England, and then we have not the trouble or 

 expense of walls for them ; for our pear trees are all stand- 

 ards, and I have had in my own garden seven or eight 

 hundred fine peaches of the Rareripes growing at a time 

 on one tree. Our people of late years have run so much 

 upon orchards that in a village near Boston, consisting of 

 about forty families, they made near three thousand barrels 

 of Cyder. This was in the year 1721. And in another 

 town of two hundred families, I am credibly informed, they 

 made near ten thousand barrels." 



Many of the fine ornamental gardens laid out in Boston in 

 the eighteenth century were preserved until comparatively 

 recent days — for example, the one attached to the Faneuil 

 mansion, nearly opposite King's Chapel, with which, Dr. 

 Slade relates, he himself was intimately acquainted. 



But it is impossible to follow his account of the progress 

 of New England horticulture down to the present day ; nor 

 is his book of the sort which lends itself well to the 

 reviewer's ordinary process of condensation and exposi- 

 tion. We have preferred not to attempt this, but, instead, 

 to quote a few paragraphs from its earlier pages, which 

 may suggest to our readers the interest of all the others. 



As he reaches more recent times, Dr. Slade speaks of the 

 great good done by the Massachusetts Horticultural So- 

 ciety, founded in 1829, and notices many of the charming 

 suburban country places for which the environs of Boston 

 have long been famous— places which, alas, must for the 

 greater part soon perish before the steady advance of the 

 city's streets. Nor does the volume lack some pages 

 devoted to the consideration of gardening as a fine art — as 

 an art of arranging surfaces of ground so that they may 

 please the artistic sense — which are instructive as well as 

 agreeable reading. 



Notes. 



One of the prettiest early yellow llowers is that of Iris 

 orchioides, which was introduced into cultivation by Dr. 

 Regel from the mountains of Turkestan. It is perfectly hardy 

 and llowers with the early Daffodils. These Bowers an' not 

 very large, but they are a pure rich yellow, with small blotches 

 of olive or purple on the fall. The leaves at the time of Bow- 



