xni. 



AMERICAN vs. BRITISH HORTICULTURE. 



June, 1852. 



WHEN a man goes into a country without understanding its 

 language — merely as a traveller — lie is likely to comprehend 

 little of the real character of that country ; when he settles in it, 

 and persists in not understanding its language, manners, or customs, 

 and stubbornly adheres to his own, there is little probability of 

 his ever being a contented or success&l citizen. In such a country 

 as this, its very spirit of liberty and progress, its freedom from old 

 prejudices, and the boundless life and energy that make the pulses 

 of its true citizens — either native or adopted — ^beat with health and 

 exultation, only serve to vex and chafe that alien in a strange land, 

 who vainly tries to live in the new world, with all his old-world 

 prejudices and customs. 



We are led into this train of reflection by being constantly re- 

 minded, as we are in our various joumeyings through the countiy, 

 of the heavy impediment existing— ^the lion lying in the path of our 

 progress in horticulture, all over the country, in the circumstance 

 that our practical gardening is almost entirely in the hands of for- 

 eign gardeners. The statistics of the gardening class, if carefiilly 

 collected, would, we imagine, show that not three per cent, of all 

 the working gardeners in the United States, are either native or 

 naturalized citizens'. They are, for the most part, natives of Ireland, 

 with a few Scotchmen, and a still smaller proportion of English and 

 Germans. 



We suppose we have had as much to do, for the last sixteen or 



