In the early periods of the history of our race, while men were nomadic and wandered from place to place, little attention was paid to any department of agricultural improvement, and still less care was bestowed upon horticulture. Indeed, it can scarcely be supposed that, under such conditions, either branch of the art could have existed, any more than they are now found among the wandering hordes of Tartars on the steppes of Asia. So soon, however, as men began to take possession of the soil by a more permanent tenure, agriculture and horticulture also, attracted their chief attention, and were soon developed into arts of life. With advancing civilization, this has been successively more and more the case; the producing art being obliged to keep pace with the increased number of consumers, greater ingenuity was required and was applied to the production of food for the teeming millions of human beings that covered the earth, and, as we find, in China, at the present time, the greatest pains were taken to make the earth yield her increase. High civilization demands high culture of the soil, and agriculture becomes an honored pursuit, with every department of art and science coming to its assistance. At the same time, and impelled by the same necessities, supported and aided by the same co-adjutors, horticulture also advances in a similar ratio, and, from its very nature, assumes the rank of a fine art, being less essential than pure agriculture, and in some of its branches being rather an ornamental than simply a useful art. It is not admitted, however, that any department of horticulture is to be considered useless, and many of its applications are eminently practical, and result in the production of vast quantities of human food of the most valuable kind. This pursuit always marks the advancement of a community.--As our western pioneers progress in their improvements from the primitive log cabins to the more elegant and substantial dwelling houses, we ever find the garden and the orchard, the vine-arbor and the berry-patch taking their places beside the other evidences of progress. These constitute to them the poetry of common life, of the farmer's life.