Text: C. F. Briggs (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), June 28, 1845, vol. 1, no. 26, p. ??

BOOKS LATELY RECEIVED,

The Fruit and Fruit Trees of America; or the Culture, Propagation. and Management in the Garden and Orchard, of fruit trees generally. With descriptions of all the finest varieties of fruit, native and foreign, cultivated in this country. Illustrated with many engravings. By A. J. Downing. New York and London: Wiley and Putnam. 1845.

This is the moat valuable of all the books which Mr. Downing has contributed to the higher departments of our rural literature, and it is the most charming book of the season, although rather ponderous in dimensions only. Some idea may be formed of its completeness from the fact of its containing a list of no less than 490 sorts of apples. Mr. Downing claims the right to talk about fruits and trees from having been born in “one of the largest gardens, and upon the banks of one of the noblest rivers, in America;” every body will concede the right, since he has shown himself so competent to his task. “Fine fruit is the flower of comma dities;” and, as Mr. Downing says in his preface, “it is the most perfect union of the useful and the beautiful that the earth knows; yet there are many who seem to live under some ban of expulsion from all the fair and goodly productions of the garden.” But this should not be. Every proprietor of a piece of ground big enough to bleach a pocket handkerchief is bound to cultivate a fruit tree of some Lind, if not for himself, for the sake of others; and if there be any people who are indifferent to pomological matters, we advise them to procure Mr. Downing's work and plunge into the midst of his pearmains, rare-ripes, and damsons. All the true disciples of pomology will get the book, as a matter of course.