viii PREFACE. 
sons can make proper allowances for changes of circum- 
stances, and are interested in knowing how many things 
can be accomplished where greater obstacles to success are 
presented than they themselves are forced to contend 
against. -T'o persons interested in Horticulture and Fruit 
culture, residing in the more northern sections of the Union, 
and especially the British provinces, where considerable 
difficulties are met with from the shortness of summers, and 
rigor of winters, a work containing the latest and best 
information relating to the modes of rendering the natural 
sources of heat as efficient as possible, cannot fail to be 
acceptable. The same may be said of those who in every 
section of our country desire to be able to raise fruits, veg- 
etables, and flowers, under protection, and by the most 
judicious application of artificial heat, bring these to per- 
fection in every month of the year. 
Within a very short time the vine culture has met in 
the United States with extraordinary success, and the pro- 
duction from native grapes of wine rivaling some of the best 
kinds derived from the Rhine and Moselle, has occasioned 
no little surprise, especially among those who entertained 
the prevailing theory that no good wine could be produced 
on the eastern portion of a continent. Mr. Longworth of 
Cincinnati, the chief among many pioneers, by refuting this 
dogma has laid his countrymen under the greatest obliga- 
tions, and added a new resource to the already teeming 
wealth of the American soil. It is the importance which 
we think invests this subject, thathas led us to devote such 
particular attention to American grapes and the modes of 
culture adopted successfully in the vicinity of Cincinnati, 
for much of which information we have been indebted to an 
extremely valuable publication made last. year by Robert 
Buchanan, Esq., of that city. 
