SECOND BANQUET TO GARDENERS. 69 
In the past and present weeks there are being held and 
have been held throughout the country nearly fifty Chrys- 
anthemum shows, some of which are of an extent calculated 
to make the exhibitions of the old country seem small and 
insignificant. In fact, there are Chrysanthemums grown 
in this country that have never been seen in Europe, and 
the same may be said of roses, or almost any other flower. 
The hard working and intelligent American, either native 
or adopted, has given his whole heart to his work. Horti- 
culture is advancing, and enterprise is everywhere. There 
are to be sure establishments where plants are simply 
manufactured, so to speak, instead of grown:— just so 
many hundred thousand sent out annually. But we must 
look for this progress chiefly to those others who raise new 
varieties, either from the seed or by means of better 
methods, or to those who introduce new and unknown 
plants from the tropics, rather than to those who are 
merely in the profession for the money there may be in it. 
I think there is more credit. in either raising a new and 
superior variety of an already existing kind, or introducing 
a new and desirable plant from the tropics — there is mvre 
credit to a man from that one plant than there is in grow- 
ing a million plants annually of an established variety. 
I think, gentlemen, that this kind of horticulture should 
be more encouraged; and I am pleased to see that amongst 
the premiums offered at your coming St. Louis exhibition, 
is one given by the Trustces of the Garden founded by Mr. 
Shaw, for encouraging such work. It is only by being 
wholly interested in plants, and not in the dollars and cents 
that may be in them, that we can interest others. I do not 
see why every florist should not have a few choice plants 
that he prizes so much that money could not buy them from 
him. Such piants he could improve and raise new vuricties 
of, and thereby interest amateurs far more than by only 
saying of his plants, ‘* Well, so much a thousand, or so much 
a hundred !’’ —a few plants such as old Mr. Menand had, 
when he said to Mr. Smith, the Curator of the Botanical 
