ultural novelties of the
day, merely because I was unable to purchase, or because others were
evidently realizing great sums by first originating them, and then
spreading their merits before the world, though sometimes in extravagant
terms. The world must have been waiting for them, or they could not have
become so suddenly popular. And the painstaking horticulturist would not
have devoted years of patient care and watchfulness, exercising a
consummate skill in stimulating Nature to the production of a better
plant, a more gorgeous flower, or a more luscious fruit, had he not
known that there was a waiting public, ever ready to reward his skill
and perseverance by extensive purchases at liberal prices. It is to this
certainty of generous remuneration that we are indebted for nearly all
the great and truly valuable novelties with which the horticultural
world has been supplied. A rose, with tints unknown a century ago, has
proved a stepping-stone to the discoverer's fortune. The skilful
propagator of new or rare verbenas has grown rich from annual sales of
these beautiful bedding plants. The tulip is an historical monument of
floral enthusiasm. When Mexico was opened to Northern enterprise, it
yielded of its boundless exuberance the cactus and the dahlia, sources
of untold wealth to those florists who ministered to the popular taste
for Nature's richest productions. The originator of a new and valuable
grape has found in it a fortune. Accident has sometimes been productive
of equally remunerative results. A solitary berry, growing in the
tangled hedge-row of an abandoned field, has been the foundation of an
independence.

The history of horticulture abounds in instances akin to these. The
enthusiasts who produced or discovered such novelties have conferred
inestimable benefits on the world. The originator of the Albany seedling
strawberry unquestionably added threefold to the quantity of that
surpassingly delicious fruit. He devoted years of patient care and
watchfulness to a nursery containing thousands of seedlings, of which
one only was found to be worthy of cultivation. And if he had his
reward, he was well entitled to it. He has given us a plant superior to
all that Nature's handiwork had previously produced,--superior in the
elements of commercial value, particularly in a productiveness so far
surpassing that of any of its predecessors as to establish it as the
standard by which every subsequent competitor must be