This question was, several years ago, discussed in the New England Farmer, a paper which does equal credit to its accomplished editor as to those who support it by their subscriptions. A writer stated there that he had extensively travelled on the sea-shore from Holland to Denmark in order to collect the marine plants for a friend of his, then engaged in the preparation of a botanical work; but he had not met with a single specimen of asparagus. He had, however, seen asparagus growing in great abundance in a certain locality of the Hainleite, a calcareous ridge in Thuringia, stretching parallel with the Harz and Thuringerwald, from west to east. It grew there in the woods, not far from the city of Frankenhau-sen, in such profusion that children and poor people used to cut it for the market. The asparagus was thin, it was true, not thicker than the stem of a white clay pipe, yet of a flavor surpassing that of the cultivated kinds.

As the writer of the article had never received a satisfactory answer when he asked, whether it was true that asparagus is a marine plant, being generally referred to the books which said so, he wished to see the question discussed.

I saw then a number of articles not only in the New England Farmer, but also in other agricultural papers, to show by authority that asparagus was a marine plant. Some of them were based on rather surprising grounds. That the Encyclopedia Americana was adduced to corroborate the fact may be overlooked, although its distinguished editor, Dr. Francis Lieber, my highly esteemed friend, would never have dreamed of seeing his work used to decide a botanical question like that. The Encyclopedia Americana was never intended for such a purpose. Its statement that asparagus is found growing on the English coast and ou some of the British islands, is undoubtedly correct, but it would never claim those localities exclusively as the native birth-places of a plant so widely disseminated all the world over. This will become apparent from the following.

A gentleman of Connecticut invited the writer to pay him a visit; he would show him asparagus at the mouth of the Connecticut River, and on the shore of Long Island. This is singular; for the gentleman seemed to think that asparagus is an American plant, an assertion so bold and ludicrous that one is prompted to say with Horace of old, " Risum teneatis, amici!"

A boy conversant with the alphabet of botany will not believe a place where a plant accidentally grows wild, its native birth-place. In walking through the fields near New York, a tolerably careful observer will hardly see any other weed than of European origin. Would he without hesitation pronounce them American because found to grow without cultivation on American soil?

The discussion interested me much, and would have done the more so, had it been conducted at least with common sense. I could not follow it then further than to the Connecticut and Long Island stage, as I, by accident, moved to a distant place, where my attention was directed from agricultural pursuits. Yet in recently perusing some numbers of the New England Farmer, I fell in with several of the articles alluded to, and propose to contribute a little to the settlement of the question still open for doubt.

It is, however, necessary to premise a few remarks having immediate bearing on the subject.

It does not follow that a place where a certain plant grows wild, is just the only place where it can be found. Do not our trees grow in a variety of places and soils? Are not a number of our wild plants found nearly every where, on the mountains, in valleys, in barren sand, in peat bogs, in the deepest shade as well as in the full sun? Botanists designate such plants by saying that they grow in all places (omnibus locis). I have found asparagus growing wild in a peat-bog very near New Durham, N. J,; I have found it on the Catskill Mountains; I have found it in the Highlands of New York, remote from all habitations of man, back of Fishhill; I have found it on the trap-rock near West Hoboken; I have found it in graywacke soil by the roadside; I have found it on the beach in New Rochelle, West Chester Co., N. Y. There I found it towards the close of October in full bloom. I have the plant still carefully pressed and preserved, together with a beautiful blossom of the red Azalea, (Azalea nudiflora,) which I had picked a few days before in the Catskills.

I ask, would any one venture to ascribe asparagus to peat-bogs, or to the Cats-kills, or the Highlands, or to Graywacke, or to Trap-rock? Would any one be willing to assert that asparagus blossoms in October along with the Azalea nudiflora?

It is true enough that asparagus is benefited, at least not injured, by the application of salt, although I have been in countries where they raise asparagus in the greatest perfection without a particle of salt. Does it follow that asparagus must be a marine plant, because of its bearing salt as an addition to its soil? I should not wish to show that I think so little of the judgment of any of the readers of the Horticulturist, if I attempted to point out the large number of trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants that are benefited by salting without being marine plants. In salting can certainly not be found a reason that asparagus belongs to the marine plants.

To the authority of the Encyclopedia Americana that of works on Natural History could easily be opposed. Without searching, Lenz, for example, occurs to me, who asserts, in the fourth volume of his justly celebrated book, (p. 247,) that asparagus grows wild in Germany, in sandy places. Still, this would be of no avail, as the correctness of 'such an assertion might be questioned by pointing out other localities with different soils, and yet producing wild asparagus in profusion.

The task of going back from age to age, from book to book, to find the first notice of asparagus, would be too tedious to be likely accomplished by any one, however great an interest he might take in investigating thoroughly matters in themselves so trifling.

That asparagus grows in Thuringea, on the calcareous ridge mentioned above, there can be no doubt; that it grows there originally, not accidentally, may be more than probable, on account of the extensive area it there occupies.

Not long ago I happened to open Juvenal, an old friend of mine. In his eleventh Satire he has, in v. 68 and 69, the following words:

* * * et montani Asparagi, posito quos legis villica fuso.

This means, literally translated, "and mountain asparagus, which the wife of the farmer collects, after the spinning is over." Juvenal speaks there of a meal, on which shall appear a kid, with more milk in it than blood, and which never touched the coarse food, of which the goats are fond, and mountain asparagus. In Italy, therefore, in the times of Juvenal, (at the close of the first and beginning of the second century after Christ,) asparagus was a mountain, not a marine plant.

Perhaps it had been transplanted from Britannia into Italy. Should it seem probable to any body that such was the case, it might not be difficult to prove that the grape vine had originally come from Massachusetts and Rhode Island, called vine-land by the Northmen, and had been disseminated in France. This, however, must, in regard to asparagus, have taken place in times out of mind, before the Romans knew any thing of Britannia; for, according to Martial, the great Roman epigrammatist, a contemporary of Juvenal, asparagus was, in his times, already artificially cultivated, as well as growing wild. He says, in Book xiii., Epigr. 21:

Mollis in aequorea quae crevit spina Ravenna Non erit incultis gratior asparagis.

This means that the asparagus cultivated in Ravenna was not more tender and agreeable than that growing wild.

[Horticola, in his learned dissertation, has certainly produced some strong arguments against the popular belief that asparagus is a marine plant. We have seen it growing wild under the most diverse circumstances. It seems to us quite certain that asparagus is not alone indigenous to the seashore of Great Britain, as is commonly supposed. It is distributed over all portions of the world, being most usually, however, found growing in light and sandy soils. In the sandy steppes of Russia it is said to grow so abundantly that cattle are pastured on it. We confess to archaeological proclivities, even in Horticulture, and should be glad to have this subject further discussed. - "Ed].