30 
SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
find in the Revue Hortieole, of Paris, that the yield of her 
horticulture for 1846 (not including the vine) is estimated 
at $120,000,000, and giving employment to two and a half 
millions of laborers ; and that the vine culture yields a 
product annually worth $100,000,000, and gives employ- 
ment to 5,000,000 of her population. 
In an age so utilitarian as oui’s, the foregoing view of 
the subject may invest it with stronger claims to atten- 
tion than-any other. It strikes me, however, that there 
are other and important considerations, especially worthy 
of notice among the people of the South. As you well 
know, the South has for years been throwing from ten to 
twenty millions of dollars annually into the lap of the 
North, in the excursions of her people for travel and plea- 
sure during the summer months. Suppose one-half or a 
third only of these millions had been annually devoted to 
the advancement of rural architecture, to the embellish- 
ment of our grounds in landscape gardening, to the culti- 
vation of the choicest fruits and flowers among us ; and 
who can doubt but the Southerner would find his home 
invested with more than oriental beauty, and opening a 
source of enjoyment presenting far higher attractions 
than the unsubstantial pleasures of the Northern tour I 
In a country where lands are so cheap as in the South, 
there is no one but who by thrift and industry may soon 
become a landholder, and there is no occupation in rural 
life whose agencies are greater in developing social, 
moral, and intellectual refinement in a community, than 
devotion to horticulture in all its departments. Its pursuit 
adds elegance to comfort, and throws a new and magic 
charm over country enjoyment, by refining its occupa- 
tions into grace, and softening its aspect into beauty. 
In the earliest history of our race, we read that the patri- 
arch had attained the summit of earthly happiness, when 
he could sit under the shadow of his own vine and fig 
trees ; and no higher, or sublimer tribute to the beautiful 
was ever penned, than when the sacred writer exclaims, 
“ Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow ; they 
toil not, neither do they spin ; and yet even Solomon, in 
all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.” 
No. 2. 
In my last article, I called your attention to the open 
field the pursuit of horticulture presents to the people of 
tlie planting States, as a source of wealth, and also the well 
ascertained fact, that the value of the horticultural pro- 
ducts of our country amounts annually to over $400,000,- 
000. This immense production, however, is confined 
chiefly to the Northern, Middle and Western States. By 
the census reports of 1850, I find that the value of the pro- 
ducts of the orchard, (not including the garden,) of the 
small State of Massachusetts, amounts to nearly as much 
as the entire products of ooth gardens and orchards, in the 
vast area covered by the planting States of South Carolma, 
Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. If, 
as I contend is the case, both the soil and the climate of 
the planting States is better adapted to producing a larger 
yield to the acre of these products than that of Massachu- 
setts, why, you will ask, this general neglect in the South 
of so important a branch of our industry I The answer, 
it strikes me, is plain, and easy of solution; and it is, that 
the South, until very recently, has been entirely dependent 
upon the Northern nurserymen for their seeds and their 
fruit trees. This is a matter of grave consideration with 
us. I do not doubt but the planting States in the last 30 
years have purchased from European and Northern nurs- 
erymen to the extent of many millions of dollars ; and the 
almost universal failure in the growth, and indifferent 
quality of the fruit from imported trees, has given rise to 
the belief so prevalent, that the soil and climate of the 
South was unsuited to the production and maturity of the 
popular fruits. 
I grant that the Peach may be transplanted from the 
North to the South, and do well, and in some instances the 
Apple, and that under a favorable combination of circum- 
stances, such as the early lifting of the trees at the North 
in the fall, short voyages out, and a propitious season for 
transplanting, that even the Pear may have succeeded in 
some hands ; but where one has met with success, thou- 
sands have made failures, and have erroniously deemed 
the climate or soil of the South in fault. 
I cannot better illustrate this point than by giving my 
own experience. Some 15 years ago, I imported from 
England 100 trees of the Pear dwarfed upon the Quince; 
at that time a great novelty, and not to be procured from 
Northern nurseries. The trees opened sound and healthy; 
were carefully planted out, and as carefully mulched and 
cultivated. Most of them, however, died the first summer ; 
some few for years made feeble attempts at growth, and at 
this day but two trees out of the whole shipment are liv- 
ing, and these have never yet borne fruit; -while buds I 
inserted from these trees into home-grown stocks, have 
made trees of luxuriant growth, and borne fruit worthy 
the gardens of the Hesperides. 
Again — I imported from different Northern nurseries in 
all about 1,000 trees ; and finding in the first shipments 
put up with matting in bundles, that rats had barked the 
roots of most of them, I ordered subsequent shipments put 
up in tight boxes; paid 50 cents per foot for freight by 
steamers, but again met with loss and disappointment ; 
for although the trees opened sound, and healthy-looking 
externally, the black streak in the pith when the wood 
was cut foretold too plainly their fate when planted. 
Nearly all died, as they had undergone a heating or sweat- 
ing process on the voyage through the Gulf, and out of 
my whole importation, not one-third of the trees are now 
living ; and such even as have lived, have neither grown 
so vigorously, nor borne specimens of fruit so large and 
healthy, as I have raised from their scions grafted into 
native seedlings. Pa- contra — wishing to procure some 
Eutopean varieties of the Pear and the Apple of great 
rarity, and knowing that Mr. Affleck, of this county, had 
imported the genuine sorts from the famous English nur- 
sery of “Rivers,” and propagated them upon native stocks, 
I ordered fi om his nurseries 200 trees of the Pear, and 100 
of the Apple, and out of this order I lost but a single tree ; 
all grew off luxuriantly, and many of them have borne 
fruit which may be equalled, but not excelled, in any 
region of our country. In looking over the patent office 
reports for the answers to the enquiries upon the subject 
of fruit growing in the South, I find complaints of North- 
ern trees noted in every volume. 
Mr. Van Buren, of Georgia, states as follows: — “South- 
ern raised trees succeed much better, come into bearing 
sooner, and are more durable than those imported from 
Northern nurseries.” 
Mr. Morton, of Virginia, says: — “Northern trees, how- 
ever fine tkeir fruit in their appropriate climate, seldom 
yield good fruit here. I have 12 or 13 acres in fruit trees, 
and while I do not believe I have lost one native tree by 
the weather, several of Northern origin die annually — 
most of them die from the freezing of the sap, bursting 
the bark from the wood, which happens in hard weather 
after one of the warm spells in winter.” 
Mr. Whitfield, of Hancock county, in our State, asserts 
that $30,000 have been thrown away in that county in 
the importation of fruit trees from the North. This view 
of the subject is corroborated by Mr. Chisholm, of South 
Carolina, and Mr. Harwell, of Alabama, and indeed by all 
the horticulturists of any eminence in the Southern States, 
whose opinions have been made public. 
If it is so plain, then, that the want of succcess in the 
South in fruit culture has been mainly owing to our de- 
pendence on Northern nurseries, it is no less plain that 
