The American Home Garden

PREFACE.

It is related of one Eliezar, in proof of the vastness of his knowledge, that "he made not less than three hundred constitutions concerning the manner of cultivating cucumbers." The author of the following work has no ambition to rival or to imitate Eliezar. He has aimed to present, in a digested and plain form, such directions and information as will, if applied, enable any one who has a garden to supply the home table with its pleasant and healthful products at the least possible outlay of labor and expense, and add choice fruits and flowers to the family stock of rational, cheap, every-day enjoyments.

He has sought to instruct his readers by general principles and directions rather than by extended details, believing that the good sense of those for whom he writes will readily and understandingly apply them, with or without modifications, as the circumstances of soil, season, or latitude may require. With much less labor he might have made a book twice as large, and not half as intelligible.

The time of planting the principal corn-crop forms an isothermal line throughout the various latitudes, and may therefore serve as a kind of equator for the cultivator in respect to the times, earlier or later, for putting in garden crops; and this circumstance has been, to some extent, taken advantage of. in the directions given in this work, so that it will be found intelligible and suitable in any latitude or locality. Adaptation to this generality of use has also been consulted in the enumeration of insects, and their remedies or preventives.

The details of the culture of fruit, flowers, and shrubbery are

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more fully elaborated than might otherwise have been deemed necessary, with the view of inducing our youth to give some attention to them; by their own skill and labor multiplying around the homes of their boyhood those pleasant associations and enjoyments, the fragrant and ever-blooming memories of which may yield them refreshment in the dusty road of afterlife.

Additional interest might be given to such efforts by obtaining the seeds, or scions, or grafts from scattered school or classmates. With the cheap mail facilities we now possess, there seems to be no reason why there should not be, through this channel, an extensive annual interchange of grafts of valuable fruits, and flower and vegetable seeds, between the different parts of our country.

With the still farther hope that his book may find a familiar place in many a farm home, the author has added brief notes on farm crops, with the modes of estimating their value, etc., and a table of their chemical analyses.

In preparing the limited selections of the various fruits contained in this volume, the author has been aided by the treatises of Downing, Cole, Thomas, Elliott, and others. In the descriptions given of particular insects he has often availed himself of the reports of Dr. Asa Fitch, made to the Legislature of New York, on the noxious and other insects of the state, and the report on the insects of Massachusetts, made to the Legislature of that state, by the late Dr. T. W. Harris; while for most of the illustrative drawings which form an important feature of the work he is indebted to his wife, and has pleasure in acknowledging the obligation. His thanks are also due to the engraver for the general truthfulness and excellence of the illustrations, some of which presented peculiar difficulties in their execution; and to the publishers for the liberality and taste with which the work is got up.

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